Pingree eyes spot in Maine history with Congress seat

PORTLAND – Hillary Rodham Clinton put “18 million cracks” in the glass ceiling in her unsuccessful bid for president. Back in Maine, Chellie Pingree hopes to break through another glass ceiling with her congressional campaign.

Despite its “blue state” status and having sent Republican women to Congress, Maine has yet to send a Democratic woman to Capitol Hill.

Pingree hopes to change that.

“It’s amazing how many people don’t realize that [Democrats] haven’t elected a woman to higher office in Maine,” Pingree said after the election from Washington, D.C., where she attended the annual luncheon for EMILY’s List, which backs Democratic women who support abortion rights.

Maine already has elected three Republican women to Congress, the first being Margaret Chase Smith, the late senator who holds the distinction of being the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency at a major party’s convention.

Since then, the GOP’s Olympia Snowe was elected to the House and then the Senate, and fellow Republican Susan Collins was elected to the Senate.

But despite those successes, women continue to be underrepresented on Capitol Hill. Only 16 percent of the seats in Congress – 16 in the Senate, 71 in the House – are currently held by women, according to Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.

In Maine, women have served as House speaker and Senate president in the Legislature, but have never been sent to the Blaine House. And for Democrats, never to Congress.

Some might view that as more of an oddity than a glass ceiling, but not Pingree.

“There is a glass ceiling,” she said. “I think it’s fascinating how few gains women have made.”

Nationally, this is a good time for women to run. Dennis Simon from Southern Methodist University said conditions are similar to two years ago, when the director of the Center for American Women and Politics described a “perfect storm” favoring female candidates.

Things haven’t changed much since then: People continue to be frustrated over the war in Iraq, and now the economy has soured, and fuel prices have soared. Generally, women get a boost in elections in which the electorate seeks change, said Simon, who studies women in politics.

Whether fair or not, women tend to be viewed as more liberal than men and voters favor them on issues of health care, education and social welfare, while men tend to be viewed as more competent on budget, tax and defense issues, Simon said.

The makeup of Maine’s 1st District gives a natural advantage to Pingree because it favors Democrats and because there are more registered Democrats than Republicans, said Anthony Corrado, professor of government at Colby College.

“An open seat [in] the 1st District offers one of those increasingly rare opportunities not only for the Democrats to continue to hold the seat but for a woman to be elected,” he said, noting the early involvement of EMILY’s List in the campaign last summer.

But Republican Charlie Summers, whose moderate views line up with those of Snowe and Collins, shouldn’t be ruled out because the race will be decided by independent voters, Corrado said.

“It’s a fact that if Chellie were to be successful, she’d be the first Democratic woman,” Summers said. But, he added, he thinks issues will trump other factors. The two candidates have different views on several issues, energy being tops on voters’ minds, he said.

State Sen. Ethan Strimling, one of the five men beaten by Pingree on Tuesday, said he thinks Pingree will resonate with voters this fall.

As a single mother, Pingree raised three children while starting a small business on the island of North Haven before launching her political career in Augusta. She served as president of Common Cause in Washington after failing to unseat Collins in 2002.

“She really does bring to the table what we need now, the Washington experience while being grounded in Maine values,” Strimling said.

Pingree, for her part, sees being a woman as an added factor in her favor, along with her positions that she believes line up with 1st District voters.

On the campaign trail, she has said repeatedly that people are ready for change in Washington after eight years of leadership by President Bush. Women are automatically associated with change because the political establishment continues to be dominated largely by men, she noted.

“Electing women is the ultimate symbol of change,” she said, “because we’re not the status quo.”