Seacoast Online - "Iraq Exodus Tops Pingree's List"

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Seacoast Online - "Iraq Exodus Tops Pingree's List"

This is one in a series of articles profiling candidates seeking the District 1 congressional seat in Maine during primary voting on June 10.

Chellie Pingree has spent much of the past few months on the road, crisscrossing the southern half of Maine in her bid to be the Democratic candidate for the District 1 congressional seat. And she is heartened by what she has seen.

"This is an incredibly engaged electorate," she said. "People sense this kind of hope they haven't felt for a long time. Everyone in the last six years has been so discouraged. Now, people are saying whether it's a woman or an African American, there will be a whole different face to America."

Pingree said she's ready to be part of that difference. She is the only Democratic candidate who has run for statewide office (against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in 2002), the only one who has worked in Washington, D.C., as president and chief executive officer of Common Cause, a non-partisan citizen activist group with nearly 300,000 members, and the only woman in the field.

In the June primary, Pingree faces state Rep. Ethan Strimling, former state Rep. Michael Brennan, Portland attorney Adam Cote, York County District Attorney Mark Lawrence and Augusta doctor Steve Meister.

All of her experience, including time as state Senate Majority Leader in the 1990s, has prepared her for Congress, she said. But experience or not, national enthusiasm or not, she said the country is poised at a critical juncture. As excited and as engaged as the electorate is now, that enthusiasm has a limit.

"Here we are ready to have a new president, but we're going to need a new Congress who will back him or her up," she said. "We can't send a president to Washington and then become timid. It's an important time to be bold, and we have a short window of opportunity to do that or people will become discouraged -- and for good reason."

She finds fault with the current Democrats in Congress, who she said were ushered in two years ago on a tide of anti-Republican fervor and yet have not done enough to make changes.

"Sure it's difficult when you have a president who says he'll veto. So you keep bringing it back over and over and over again. And I haven't seen a lot of that," she said.

It is incumbent on the freshman members of Congress to be mavericks, to push back and to keep pushing back, she said -- and she is particularly well prepared for that.

As president and CEO of Common Cause, the consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader, she came to know the likes of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others in congressional leadership positions. For four years from 2003-2007, she lobbied Congress on an array of issues including campaign finance, ethics, ownership of media and FCC rules.

"They already know me, and they know I already am someone who is going to be pushing in Congress," she said. "I think I have a lot of respect. I do think that's different (from the other candidates). I would like to be seen as an outspoken player in a complicated political process."

Indicative of this is her stand on Iraq. Pingree said she was one of the first to come out against the war when she ran against Sen. Collins in 2002, and she hasn't changed her mind one iota in the years since. She is not swayed by recent polls that seem to indicate a softening in the public's view on the war.

"You shouldn't be running for office if you are going to change your mind because of a poll," she said. "For a whole variety of reasons, I'm more convinced now than ever that we need to get out. I have seen nothing that's made me change my mind. Stop the debate about whether we can win this war and leave."

With the money saved from the war and from reversing Bush-style tax cuts "that have bled us dry" the country can tackle another important issue for her, health care. As Senate Majority Leader, Pingree sponsored one of the nation's first prescription pricing bills, Maine RX, which was successfully challenged by pharmaceutical companies all the way to the Supreme Court.

She said bold changes need to be made in health care immediately so that people can see something is being done. "I want Congress to do something big" toward universal health care in the first months it is convened, she said. The economy can't be viewed as a deterrent, she said. She harkened to England, which introduced universal health care in the years after World War II "when it was broke." With the money saved from the war, the country can also invest in road and bridge infrastructure and in green industry, she said.

The bottom line, though, is that none of this will happen without a sea change in Congress.

"If we want to govern," she said, "we have to prove we're going to do something different."

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