Chellie Pingree

NORTH HAVEN — Hannah Pingree went out for a drive to show some visitors the place she lives on a recent morning. The sun glistened off the ice cold ocean water, visible in many spots through the not-yet green trees, as she made her way down winding country roads.

Pingree, a Democratic front-runner in the Maine governor’s race, is one of about 400 year-round residents of this island, which lies off the coast of Rockland in Penobscot Bay. It takes an hour to get there by ferry, and the boat only comes three times per day, whether it’s the tourist-heavy summer months or the quiet of winter.

It’s a beautiful and remote spot, and one where it’s hard not to notice the plethora of connections to Pingree and her family.

There’s the community center where Pingree helped start a childcare program. The Nebo Lodge, which her mother, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, and a group of other local women purchased and launched into a business. And the town office, where her husband, Jason Mann, is planning board chair.

As she drove around this place so indelibly shaped by her family, Pingree laid out how her politics were shaped by her hometown. It’s a place where neighbors help neighbors, she said.

“For me, it’s really driven this sense of, you have to make things happen,” she said. “On the island you’re not going to write a letter to your state representative saying, ‘We need a childcare center,’ you’re going to figure out how to do it.”

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The Pingree name is already etched into Maine’s halls of power. Her mother, Chellie, is in her ninth term as one of the state’s two U.S. House members, and served eight years in the Maine Senate. Now, Hannah Pingree, also a former lawmaker and speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, is seeking her own high office: the Blaine House.

Like her mother, who has made charging against the Trump administration her Congressional calling card, Pingree has made her anti-Trump stance a key tenet of her campaign. But she’s also pitched herself as someone who can bring people together to deliver the results Maine needs.

Those who’ve worked with Pingree say both are possible.

“She was an unapologetic Democrat,” said Josh Tardy, a former Republican lawmaker from Newport who served in the Legislature with Pingree. “She was very principled and she could be partisan at times, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Despite her partisan beliefs, she felt it was important for both parties to work together to find common ground.”

In her run for governor, Pingree is one of five Democrats looking to succeed Gov. Janet Mills. She leads the field in fundraising and has the backing of a lengthy list of leaders in Augusta.

But in a race with no clear frontrunner, Pingree has at times struggled to stand out.

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Polling has her in the middle of the pack. Her connection to her mother, who is running for a 10th term in Congress, has likely boosted her name recognition, but she hasn’t been in the public eye as much as some of her competitors, like Nirav Shah and Shenna Bellows.

Shah led Maine through the COVID-19 pandemic as director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and gained near-celebrity status for his televised briefings. Bellows has been a fixture in the news as Maine’s secretary of state, a job that has become more high-profile lately due to Bellows’ clashes with Donald Trump over ballot access and voter data. (Also in the race are Troy Jackson, the former president of the Maine Senate, and Angus King III, a renewable energy entrepreneur and the son of U.S. Sen. Angus King.)

Pingree, meanwhile, is running on her record of accomplishments in Augusta. But she’s doing so at a time when many Democratic voters are focused on Trump’s D.C.

Pingree, 49, is confident in her base of support. Her experience at the local level, state level and in the executive branch of government, as well as her approach as both a consensus builder and someone who’s not afraid of tough fights, make her the best pick, she said.

“I’m running on experience that actually brings people together to get things done,” she said.

GETTING STARTED AS A LAWMAKER

Pingree’s father, Charlie Pingree, a boatbuilder, still lives in the house Pingree grew up in.

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In 1977, when Pingree was about a year old, her parents moved to the island. Her dad had family there, and it was a good place to look for work in the maritime industry. Plus, they liked the community.

A yellowed Kennebec Journal front page from Dec. 4, 2008, sticks out among a menagerie of pictures and magnets on Charlie Pingree’s refrigerator. In the lead photo, his daughter pounds the gavel on the opening day of the legislative session.

The headline, ‘Year of the Woman,’ references a quote in the article about the moment in Maine politics.

Pingree was the second woman in Maine history to be named speaker of the House. The first, Libby Mitchell, took over as Senate president in 2008, marking the first time that both chambers were led by women. And Mills was named Maine’s first female attorney general that same session.

Pingree’s tenure as speaker, from 2008 to 2010, was the culmination of a legislative career that almost ended before it began.

After high school — Pingree was one of five graduates in the Class of 1994 at the North Haven Community School, all of them girls — she attended Brown University. She got a fellowship to learn about city government and public policy in New York City, then went to work as a producer for iVillage.com, a website and online community geared toward women.

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In 2001, Pingree came back to North Haven to help her mom, then a state senator, run against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. It was then that Pingree, just 25 at the time, was approached by the then Democratic Speaker of the House, Mike Saxl, about running for the Legislature.

Pingree was hesitant about a commitment to stay in Maine. She had dreams of returning to New York and going to law school. But she was convinced by Saxl’s argument that young people were needed at the State House. (It’s a good thing she didn’t move away: Pingree started dating her now-husband while working for her mom’s Senate campaign.)

Saxl, who knew Chellie Pingree from the Legislature, said recruiting her daughter was a “no-brainer,” and not just because he was trying to get more young people and women in office.

“I immediately saw she was smart as a whip, that she was an effective communicator and that she had a hunger to be involved in pubic policy and helping to make people’s lives better,” Saxl said. “You could just see it emanating off of her.”

During eight years in the Legislature, Pingree worked on legislation to protect working waterfronts, create more affordable housing and expand rural broadband access.

In 2009, as speaker, she was the lead co-sponsor of a bill to legalize gay marriage. The bill passed and was signed into law by then Gov. John Baldacci, but it never took effect and was overturned by a people’s veto later that year. (Maine legalized gay marriage via a citizen’s initiative in 2012.)

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Emily Cain, a former Democratic lawmaker from Orono, said Pingree’s leadership was key to getting the bill passed at a time when even some lawmakers in their own party were not on board.

“This would not have happened the way it did without Hannah’s leadership,” Cain said. “She was unapologetically for this, and she brought others along with her.”

Pingree was also a leader on environmental bills, working to pass one of the first-in-the-nation laws to ban flame retardants in furniture and the Kid Safe Products Act, requiring manufacturers to disclose products containing certain harmful chemicals. The law was used to ban sales of children’s sippy cups and other containers made with a plasticizing agent linked to cancer.

Tardy, who was the House Republican leader while Pingree was speaker, said he and other Republicans had disagreements with Pingree over tax reform and other issues, but he noted she was also open to bipartisanship.

“I know Augusta has unfortunately moved away from a model that allows those who disagree to continue conversations,” he said. “I do think that her leadership qualities and style would certainly be a much needed improvement to the atmosphere.”

LEADING WORK IN THE MILLS ADMINISTRATION

After she termed out of the Maine House, Pingree went to work as an advisor for a national group called Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families on efforts to pass updated consumer protections. She served on the school board and as executive director of North Haven Sustainable Housing, a nonprofit focused on increasing the availability of affordable housing, and also worked at Nebo, her family’s inn and restaurant.

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In 2019, Mills, whom Pingree had served with in the Legislature, tapped her to start a new office, the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future.

It was a dream job.

Under Pingree, the office took the lead on Maine’s responses to the opioid crisis and climate change, coordinated groups focused on improving the lives of children and the elderly, managed the spending of federal COVID relief money and started the Office of New Americans to focus on better integration of immigrants into the state.

Her work won her fans in her own party. She boasts more endorsements from lawmakers and state officials then perhaps any of her primary competitors. Last fall, her campaign released a list of more than 100 current and former leaders who endorsed her, including Ryan Fecteau, D-Biddeford, the current House speaker.

Mills has not endorsed in the race, but the governor praised Pingree when she departed the administration last year, shortly before announcing her campaign.

“I have been so impressed, but not surprised, at the results she has driven for Maine in each initiative she has undertaken,” Mills said.

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Still, many voters are undecided among the candidates in the Democratic primary — including several who attended a recent campaign event, a meet-and-greet house party in Bremen.

Mary Voskian, a Democrat, wants a candidate who will stand up to Trump and who supports tribal sovereignty, affordable healthcare and women’s reproductive rights. Voskian noted that all five Democrats seem to support those things, but she thinks Shah and Pingree are the strongest.

“They both seem to have this strength of character that really shines,” she said.

While most in the crowd were Democrats, Republican John Thorpe attended since his family was hosting the party. He said he was impressed with Pingree.

“I will vote for any candidate, Democrat or Republican, if I get the impression they know how to listen to the other side,” he said. “That’s the criteria, and she’s shown she does that.”

In a speech delivered on the back porch, Pingree highlighted that skill.

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But she also made clear she wouldn’t back down from a fight with Trump.

“Governors are truly on the front lines,” she said. “They are protecting our reproductive rights, our LGBT rights, the rights of immigrants and our voting rights.”

LEAVING THE ISLAND FOR THE BLAINE HOUSE?

Before catching the 12:30 p.m. ferry on a recent afternoon, Pingree stopped at the North Haven Market, the only grocery store on the island, for lunch. She picked out a turkey sandwich and a Wild Root ginger kombucha.

She greeted other customers by name on her way to the checkout. And as she settled into a booth in the dining area, her teenage daughter, on a lunch break from school, made a surprise appearance. (High schoolers are allowed to leave school for lunch and can easily walk to the market from the school, a short distance away.)

It’s not always convenient to live on an island that’s connected so seldomly to the mainland. Pingree and her husband also have a house in Rockland, which helps.

Housing security like that is getting less common in Maine. But Pingree says she has thought about how to address the concerns of those struggling.

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Her plans on housing include investing $100 million per year in new construction and preservation of Maine’s housing stock, streamlining state permitting and approval processes and expanding programs for middle-income housing and first-time homebuyers.

“We’ve laid the ground work to make progress and we have made progress, it’s just not fast enough,” she said. “That’s why I’ve laid out a housing plan that goes bigger in every way.”

Pingree left the market, and sauntered over to the ferry for the return to the mainland. It was nearly empty, so she stretched her legs out across one of the benches and sipped her kombucha. The other passengers were all people she knew — her husband’s aunt, a high school classmate’s father. She chatted with them.

Over the low humming of the ship making its way across the water, she talked about the office of the future, as she calls it for short, and how she’d like to build on the work she started there.

Pingree said people she worked with encouraged her to think about running for governor. She also had many discussions with her family about it before deciding to get in the race.

It wasn’t always her plan to run, she said. But she never thought she’d run for the Legislature, either.

“I got sucked in,” she said. “And once I did it, I was like, ‘I love this.'”