There has been some discussion recently about Chellie Pingree’s being a one-issue candidate. This charge is as misleading as it is unfair. Indeed, much has been made of former Sen. Pingree’s leadership on the issue of prescription drugs, as all of us in Maine are proud of her groundbreaking success in working for lower drug prices for seniors and everyone else. The pharmaceutical industry is so frightened of the Pingree’s price-cutting approach to this serious problem in health care that they have taken Maine’s law to the Supreme Court – and lost.

Meanwhile, the belated concern of Pingree’s opponent for the U.S. Senate seat in November, Susan Collins, led to a watered-down, Senate-defeated bill designed and supported by the pharmaceutical industry. That is the very industry that has already given more than $65,000 to Collins’ reelection campaign. Along with Pingree’s prominence on the prescription-drug issue, she has already made a record of substantive success on many other issues in the Maine Senate, which the one-issue critics seems to have missed.

On the education front, she cosponsored legislation to fully fund special education, to create college savings accounts and tax credits for State College Savings Program, to increase funding at all of Maine education levels and to allow public school choice. Pingree consistently received 89 percent to 100 percent ratings from the Maine Education Association, while Collins has a lifetime record with the NEA of 44.2 percent. Pingree stood out in the State Senate in her support for environmental protection in Maine and nationally, and she continues to monitor and criticize the shameful Bush administration’s backtracking on national environmental standards, so faithfully supported by Republican Collins. Pingree risked her political status when, as Majority Leader of the Senate, she sponsored legislation to acquire public land with a large bond proposal. She received a 100 percent rating from both the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the League of Conservation Voters.

On corporate responsibility, Pingree led the field when in 1998 she sponsored Maine’s corporate accountability laws, while Collins supports the corporate captives Bush and Cheney to the hilt. Pingree again showed great leadership for Maine’s economic development.

In the Senate, she was co-chair of the Maine Economic Growth Council and Chair of the legislative Housing and Economic Development Committee. With solid experience in business, she championed laws that

recognized small entrepreneurs. Collins, who voted for the obscene Bush tax cut for billionaires in 2001, has shown typical indifference to small business and the average taxpayer. This is only part of a record of accomplishment by a solid Maine leader, Pingree, but enough to reinforce the great opportunity we in Maine have to keep the United States Senate in Democratic hands and counterbalance the distorted corporate influence now found in the White House.

It is crucial that Maine send a Democrat to the U.S. Senate this time, and we are fortunate in having a very qualified candidate ready for action.

Tom Schroth lives in Sedgwick.