Chellie Pingree

From KeyWiki

Chellie Pingree is a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives, representing the 1st district of Maine.

She is married to Donald Sussman, a hedge-fund manager who invests in Chinese companies, and a board member of the Democracy Alliance.^[1]

Early Life

Chellie Pingree was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1955, the youngest of four children. Her father, Harry, worked in advertising and her mother, Dorothy, was a nurse. Chellie Pingree moved to Maine as a teenager. After college, she moved to North Haven, an island town of 350 people twelve miles off the coast of Rockland, to raise her family and make a living. She ran a small business, served on the school board and as the local tax assessor, a job no one else in town wanted. Johnson has three grown children. Her eldest, Hannah Pingree, is the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and married to filmmaker Jason Mann. Her daughter Cecily, another filmmaker, is currently working with Penobscot Bay East Resource Center on a film about Maine's fishing industry. And her son, Asa, is a small business owner and proud father of Pingree's first grandson, Smith.^[2]

Education

She attended the University of Southern Maine, and graduated from the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor.^[3]

Politics

Pingree was elected to the Maine State Senate in 1992, representing Knox County. In 1996, Chellie was chosen by her peers to be the Maine Senate Majority Leader. She helped lead the Senate for four more years, until leaving office due to term limits. As a Senator, she fought for economic and social justice, taking on powerful adversaries - most notably the pharmaceutical lobby. In her last session, Pingree sponsored one of the nation's first prescription drug pricing bills, MaineRX. After a legal fight that led all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the bill became law, and has since been a model for states around the country working to lower prescription drug prices.

Chellie also sponsored the successful "Parents as Scholars" program, a national model for welfare reform, which continues to help working Maine parents gain access to education to help them achieve a better life for their families. She led successful efforts to protect Maine's environment, for corporate accountability, to protect workers, to promote a women's right to choose, and in support of Maine's small businesses. As a state Senator, Chellie was also a founding member of the Maine Economic Growth Council.

Pingree's leadership in Maine politics led to numerous international appointments. She traveled to Hungary as an Eisenhower Exchange Fellow, served as a member of the White House delegation to observe elections in Bosnia, and was a member of a U.S. delegation to Northern Ireland, working with women political leaders there.

After being term-limited from the Maine Senate in 2000, Pingree challenged incumbent U.S. Senator Susan Collins in 2002. As one of the few outspoken opponents of the Iraq War running for U.S. Senate, Chellie mounted a strong, but ultimately unsuccessful campaign.^[4]At the time she was a member of UAW local 1961. ^[5]

Common Cause

From 2003 to 2007, Pingree served as the National President and CEO of Common Cause, a non-partisan citizen activist group with nearly 300,000 members and 35 state chapters. Common Cause's mission is to help citizens make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest. Under Pingree's leadership, Common Cause increased its membership and diversified its agenda to include limiting media concentration and consolidation, promoting Net Neutrality, and election reform, while continuing to pursue its traditional goals of campaign finance reform and oversight of government ethics and accountability.^[6]

United States House of Representatives

In 2008 Pingree was elected to Congress from Maine’s 1st Congressional District—the first woman elected to Congress from that District.^[7]

Northeast Action conference

The 2001 regional conference of Northeast Action on February 9-10 "brings together hundreds of progressive leaders, activists and elected officials for two days of discussions and workshops on public education, universal health care, clean elections, criminal justice reform, etc. Speakers included

• Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Illinois)
• Chellie Pingree, the Senate Majority Leader of Maine;
• William McNary, President of USAction.

The conference took place at the Sheraton Hotel in Braintree.^[8]

Congressional Progressive Caucus

As of February 20 2009 Chellie Pingree was listed as a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.^[9]

Abortion

Planned Parenthood

Peingree received $1009 in lobbying funds from Planned Parenthood in 2008.

EMILY's List

Pingree has been supported by EMILY's List during her campaigning.

Supported by Council for a Livable World

The Council for a Livable World, founded in 1962 by long-time socialist activist and alleged Soviet agent, Leo Szilard, is a non-profit advocacy organization that seeks to "reduce the danger of nuclear weapons and increase national security", primarily through supporting progressive, congressional candidates who support their policies. The Council supported Chellie Pingree in her successful 2008 House of Representatives run as candidate for Maine.^[10] He has also been previously supported by the Council.^[11]

Staff

The following are past and present staff:^[12]

External links

• Pingree's website with the House of Representatives

References