Women: Key to the Senate?

North Haven, Maine

In the fall of 1991 Chellie Pingree was selling yarn and knitting kits on an island off the Maine coast, raising three school-age children and serving on the board of a school district where a "big" high school graduating class numbered five. When she heard that Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder, a Colorado Democrat and pioneering woman in politics, would be speaking at a local college, Pingree and her 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, took an hour boat ride to the mainland and headed down the coast to hear the woman who had almost run for President in 1988.

It was a journey that would change Pingree's life. "When I went to see Pat Schroeder, the last thing I was thinking about was going into politics," Pingree recalls. "But she said something in her speech that really struck me: 'Good people don't want to run for office anymore.' She was explaining how young people, especially young women, were turned off by the roughness of politics. I remember thinking: 'That is so weird.' I loved going to town meetings, putting together budgets, debating issues. Then, after the speech, a woman I knew came up and said, 'Chellie, you should think about running for your State Senate seat.' I laughed, but on the way home I asked Hannah and she just said, 'Go for it, Mom!'"

Pingree did just that. Her grassroots Democratic campaign--financed by contributions tossed into please help elect chellie coffee cans on store counters--won her a traditionally Republican seat. Faced with a Republican majority in the legislature, she recruited other women candidates and developed a strategy that put Democrats in charge. Then, as State Senate majority leader, she beat legions of pharmaceutical corporation lobbyists to pass prescription drug reforms designed to force drug makers to bring their prices closer in line with fees charged under Canada's national healthcare program.

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