When North Haven’s Chellie Pingree first ran for the State Senate in 1992, her oldest daughter, Hannah, helped out.
Mother and daughter went to Knox County Town Meetings together as Chellie introduced herself to mainland voters. “I came over to Rockland and knocked on doors with her,” said Hannah, who was in high school at the time.
The two were also together at a Portland event that sparked this campaign, where Patricia Schroder, then a congresswoman from Colorado, urged the women in the audience to become more involved in politics. A friend urged Chellie to run for the senate seat.
Hannah remembers her mother wasn’t sure about running. “I was like, ‘Mom it would be so cool, you should do it.”
From that beginning, mother and daughter often worked together on political campaigns. With the Nov. 4 election, mother and daughter have achieved many political firsts.
Chellie Pingree, 53, was elected to the U.S. Congress District 1 seat on Nov. 4, beating her Republican challenger Charlie Summers 55 percent to 45 percent.
Hannah Pingree, 32, a state representative for District 36, had no opponent in this year’s race. She served as Democratic majority leader for the State House of Representatives in her third term of office. On Nov. 13, the Democratic Caucus at the State House unanimously chose Hannah to be the next Speaker of the House.
Chellie is the first resident of an unbridged Maine island to be elected to the U.S. Congress. She is also the first Democratic woman from Maine to be sent to Congress. It’s also the first time in United States history that the majority of one state’s congressional delegation is made up of women.
Hannah is the youngest woman ever to be elected as speaker of any state legislature in the country, according to Millie McFarland, clerk of the state house. She would also be the youngest women speaker to serve in Maine.
Interestingly, Hannah is the second House speaker from an unbridged island. In 1857, Charles A. Spoffard of Deer Isle, which then had no bridge, served as speaker.
While there are numerous examples in political life of sons following in their fathers’ footsteps, the concept of a mother-daughter political team is relatively new. “We have both been involved in politics and have been supportive of each other,” said Hannah. She sees daughters following mothers into politics as “a new tradition. I see that emerging a lot more in the next few years.”
For both mother and daughter, what they learned being part of an island community and taking part in its politics has shaped their views of politics in general. For one thing, politics is part of the fabric of community life on islands in a much different way than on the mainland.
Hannah can remember going to Town Meetings as a child. And both her parents served on the school board, although at different times. “When you live on an island, politics is so much closer,” Hannah said. “It’s not a matter of ‘our politicians need to do something,’ it’s more, who is going to do this? Everybody has to participate.”
“I’ve said that everything I know about politics, I learned on an island,” said Chellie. Islanders “are tough and they expect you to be honest,” said Chellie. “It keeps you grounded.”
And the solutions that islanders have found to issues such as energy use can inspire the entire nation, she believes. She points to the Fox Islands Wind Power Project, which will supply both Vinalhaven and North Haven with all their electricity needs when finished. “If we can do it with less than 2,000 people, that we can do it” with larger communities, she said.
There is little room for the kind of ideology that has tainted national politics in recent years, they said. Chellie remembers serious fights in the State Senate, but “that is nothing, compared to a difficult town meeting, where you were arguing with friend and neighbors,” who could be sitting next to you the following day on the ferry. “It basically means you have to work it out,” Chellie said, compared to a lot of national political fights “where people walk away from them.”
Hannah agrees: “On the island, when we have big fights, we all have to live with each other and take care of each other. You have to appreciate differences and move on. That is an attitude I have tried to have in Augusta.”
“Having grown up on an island where both government and politics is so much more accountable and close-it is a great place to learn about how public service should work,” said Hannah.
Chellie began her political career on the North Haven School Board, where she served as chair. As islanders know, the school is the key institution. “There’s no place like an island to show that if this school doesn’t survive, there is no future for our community,” said Chellie. “I tell people that serving as the chair of the school board is the most difficult job in public office.”
Chellie served the maximum four terms in the State Senate, and was majority leader for the last four years. In 2002, she ran against Sen. Susan Collins. By then Hannah had graduated from the North Haven Community School (part of a class of five), gone to Brown University in Providence, R.I. and was working in New York City for iVillage, the largest website for women. In 2001 she moved back home to work as fundraiser for her mother’s U.S. Senate campaign.
Chellie lost that campaign, then went on to become president and CEO of Common Cause, the nonpartisan citizen’s lobbying group in Washington, D.C., from 2003 to 2007.
Hannah, who was then 25, decided to stay on North Haven after her mother’s U.S. Senate campaign. Mike Saxl, then Speaker of the House, encouraged her to run for the State Legislature.
This time, Hannah wasn’t sure- “do I want to start a political career at such a young age?” Hannah said she had not imagined herself living on North Haven and running for office in her 20s. Her mother said, “you made me run for office, I think you should do it-you would be great,” said Hannah.
Chellie is very proud of her daughter’s selection as speaker. “I learned a lot from her, and from raising kids on an island and how that affects a family.”
While Hannah said she has learned a lot from her mother, she feels the learning goes both ways. “A lot of the decisions about politics in our lives, I have asked her advice and she has asked mine,” Hannah said. “We are political advisors to each other. I think we have both grown up in politics together.”