There are pieces of information that most people would know about their elected officials. Congresswoman Pingree represents Maine’s 1st Congressional District and made waves as the first Democratic woman to represent Maine in U.S. House of Representatives. Pingree has three children: Hannah, Cecily, and Asa.
Pingree was first elected in 1992 to the Maine State Senate and went on to win re-election until she was termed out in 2000, becoming the Senate Majority Leader in 1996.
In 2002, Pingree lost the U.S. Senate race to Susan Collins, but obtained 42% of the vote. In 2008, Pingree proceeded to run for the U.S. House of Representatives and won with 55% of the vote. In 2010, Pingree won re-election with 57% of the vote, and won again in 2012 with 65% of the vote. The Congresswoman is running for re-election in 2014.
Despite her professional career, every person has a personal story. The purpose of this profile is to look at the life of Congresswoman Pingree alongside her political career.
Pingree is originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota and moved to Maine as a teenager after meeting Charlie Pingree at an Outward Bound program in the midwest. Charlie would go on to marry Chellie, but the two were not married when they first moved to the island of North Haven. Because of their age and marital status, the pair were not greeted well by many island residents.
Congresswoman Pingree talked about her decision to move to North Haven and said “it’s kind of a long story, but the short version is, I had moved to Maine and to the island of North Haven because I had followed a boy.”
Lucie Bauer, a resident of Rockport, spent her summers as a child in North Haven with her parents at their summer home. Bauer remembers when the Pingrees first moved to the island.
“Sometime in the early 1970s, Chellie and Charlie came to the island, no one would offer Chellie work. They were living in a little cabin that had belonged to Charlie’s grandmother. My parents, who were childhood sweethearts, met in their freshman year in high school. They really connected with Charlie and Chellie in this plight and they offered Chellie a job when no one else was offering her a job. Chellie worked for my parents for a couple of years. My parents really, really admired her. As you probably know, she’s extremely bright, very capable and able person. My parents loved this connection and so did Chellie... I think she was probably sixteen or seventeen. They were so brave, the two of them. They did it the hard way.”
Pingree said “the reason I knew Lucie was because I moved to North Haven in about 1971 and there weren’t a lot of jobs available for young women at the time... Lucie’s [parents] offered me a job coming over to their house, I don’t know, six hours a day or something, and I would do everything from cleaning to helping paint storm windows, or whatever other jobs they had available. Both her father and mother had fascinating stories of their lives. They’re no longer around now, but it was a great experience for me just to kind of work for them and get to know them better, it was fun.”
The island of North Haven has a year-round population of about three-hundred fifty people, so Pingrees’ arrival to the island was noticed by all. Chellie had a profound impact on the lives of island residents during her time there, but arguably her impact was felt most by Bauer’s parents. “I knew my parents were reliving their own youth, and they were appalled with what the island was doing. It’s very dear that they loved Chellie dearly. They loved Charlie and Chellie and cared so much for them, thought so much of them. So Chellie’s appearance in their lives meant a lot to them. It was a very mutual relationship there.”
After working for Bauer’s parents, the Pingrees moved to the mainland to further their education. Chellie attended the University of Southern Maine and went on to graduate in the first class of College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor in 1979, while Charlie went to boat-building school.
Congresswoman Pingree said “after we lived on the island of North Haven for a couple of years, it was just clear that I was just too young and inexperienced to find any kind of job, and it was a little bit hard to get into farming when I didn’t know enough about it, so I just applied to College of the Atlantic.” Pingree had been up to the college once before when they were in their first years as a pilot project and decided it was where she wanted to go.
The pair returned to the island after school, where Charlie built boats and Chellie did really successful market gardening.
Bauer said “ Then Chellie started a knitting business. She was looking for ways to help island women make money. They developed something called North Island Yarn, which did knitting kits for sweaters, and that was very successful.” Pingree started North Island Yarn in 1981, which expanded and became North Island Designs.
In 1992, Chellie ran for the State Senate and continued in that capacity until she was termed out in 2000. By that time, Bauer says that Chellie was already well versed in activism.
“Chellie served in various capacities on the island. One of them was on the comprehensive planning ... my father was the chair of that committee. I was off teaching at Dartmouth and I would come home to see my folks. Chellie was on the comprehensive planning committee, she was on the board of assessors, and the school board at some point. I was used to her being in island politics, so to speak. Serving as a public servant on the island, and certainly accustomed to her having a real sense of responsibility, trying to see what she could do to help the island economy. That isn’t too big a stretch then when she ran for office. I was very excited when she first ran for office. I thought, ‘wow! This will be great!’ I think enormously highly of her. I felt absolutely delighted that she was running for office and I have been really overjoyed to watch her develop, to watch her just grow, and grow, and grow, and grow.”
Pingree’s daughter Hannah came back from college to work on the 2002 campaign and was recruited to run for the house district that covered their hometown and parts of Mount Desert Island. Pingree had this to say about her daughter entering politics; “I was really excited, I thought was great. I think she’s a great politician, and someday I’ll be able to retire and she’ll run the world, so I’m very happy.” Hannah would go on to become the Speaker of the House in Maine.
During her career in the State Senate, Pingree was selected as an Eisenhower fellow in 1997. Pingree went on to run for the U.S. Senate, and then the U.S. House of Representatives, where she currently resides. Pingree met Donald Sussman in 2007, and the pair became engaged in 2008. In 2011, Pingree and Sussman were married.
On her time in Congress, Pingree said “I’m trilled to be a member of Congress. I’m very lucky to be representing one of the two districts in Maine. Obviously the last couple of years have been a little frustrating in Congress, the Tea Party Republicans have dominated a lot of the activity in the House. A lot of us feel frustrated that we’re not able to do more. But I have been working on agricultural issues and wrote a title for the farm bill, so I got a chance to work on a lot of pieces of the farm bill, put some things in there to help support organic agriculture and sustainable agriculture and make it easier for people to buy food at farmers markets, or low-income people to buy healthy food, so that part has been really great. You kind of just have to find the issues that you can work on, even if it’s a time when Congress is stuck and can’t do anything.”
Bauer is now a constituent of Pingree and is very satisfied with her service. “I’m very pleased with her as a constituent, I know I can count on her. She was one of the greatest supporters of marriage all the way along. She was very involved. When we won in 2012, Chellie was also running at that time. When we won, I came down off the stage in Portland, there was Chellie and her husband. There they were, right there. They had come from her victory party. She won early, but there they were, celebrating with us.”
Pingree has remained true to her issues and constituents steadily, even during her early years in the State Senate.
“Annie and I have been together for twenty years now, and in 1996 we had a commitment ceremony," said Bauer. "There were over one hundred people who came here. Chellie was at that time President of the Maine State Senate and we invited her to come. She came, she was at our commitment ceremony and she came as a friend and the President of the Maine State Senate.”
Pingree has been a long outspoken advocate of rights for the LGBT community, even in the early days, said Bauer.
“When she came to our commitment ceremony, marriage was not on the horizon back then. It was for Annie and me, because that was our own story, our issue. We wanted to be legally married, so we were talking about it, but nobody else was on a national scale. In the state, we were just trying to get non-discrimination at that point, and we still had nine years to go. We lost in 2000 and we lost in 1998, so I’m talking about 1996. So for Chellie to even appear at the commitment ceremony of two women was a really strong thing to do, and a very courageous and bold thing to do.”
On the issue of LGBT rights, Pingree said “Even when I was a State Senator I thought it was important that no one should be discriminated against and everyone should be allowed to marry whoever they love. I’ve always been proud to work on these issues.”
Congresswoman Pingree enjoys the work she has accomplished in Congress and said “I’m actually very happy with what I do. I’m not one of those politicians who’s kind of always looking for the next job. I really like serving in Congress, and the longer you’re there, the more knowledgeable you get about the issues you work on, the more seniority you get. So I hope that I can continue to serve in Congress. I’m on the Agriculture and Appropriations Committee and the Interior Appropriations Committee, and those are great places to work and have a lot of interesting issues on those two committees, from food and farm policy to national parks and the Environmental Protection Agency. So I really like the issues that I work on and I am just hoping that Congress gets a little bit more functional so that we can get a little bit more done.”
Pingree is an established politician from Southern Maine, but what most do not know about elected officials, are aspects of who they are at a deeper human level. To constituents, those aspects matter the most. When their elected officials stand up as a strong advocate for them, constituents feel properly represented.
As the Congresswoman said, “there’s always something to be fixed or to be done, you just have to find a way to go about doing it.” Everyone has a story, and those who share their stories stand out. According to Constituents, Pingree is a stand-out politician with great integrity.
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