Congresswoman Pingree discusses the latest news and public policy issues in Washington and Maine.
Host Keith Shortall speaks with:
Chellie Pingree was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1955, the youngest of four children. Chellie moved to Maine as a teenager, attended the University of Southern Maine, and graduated from the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor. After college, she moved to North Haven island.
Chellie has worked as a mother, as a farmer, as a small business owner, and as a politician.
Chellie 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. After being term-limited from the Maine Senate in 2000, Pingree unsuccessfully challenged incumbent U.S. Senator Susan Collins in 2002.
From 2003 to 2007, Chellie 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.
In 2008 Chellie was elected to Congress from Maine’s 1st Congressional District—the first woman elected to Congress from that District. It also marks the first time in American history that women make up the majority of a state’s Congressional Delegation.
