Maine Women Lead Politics

Maine women to lead Legislature
Pingree elected House speaker, Mitchell Senate president
AP PHOTO BY PAT WELLENBACH
Hannah Pingree (left) is escorted into the House of Representatives at the State House in Augusta on Wednesday. Pingree was later elected to be Maine’s Speaker of the House.


By The Associated Press

By Glenn Adams

AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s glass ceiling developed a few more cracks Wednesday as women were sworn in as Senate president and House speaker. And in one of its first acts, the newly seated Legislature elected Maine’s first female attorney general.

“It’s so good to see things moving ahead,” said Janet Mills, a Democrat who won bipartisan support to become the state’s 55th attorney general. “Just because there are a lot of firsts doesn’t mean there can’t be a lot of seconds, thirds and fourths along the way. Maine men and women are sharing responsibilities more than in many other states, most other states.”

Also Wednesday after the formal swearing-in of the Democratic-controlled Legislature, Sen. Elizabeth “Libby” Mitchell of Vassalboro was elected the chamber’s president and Rep. Hannah Pingree of North Haven was elected House speaker.

Both were elected unanimously after minority Republicans, in a gesture of bipartisanship at the start of what’s expected to be a difficult session, threw their support behind the two Democrats. It’s the first time both of Maine’s legislative chambers are being headed by women at the same time.

And Mitchell is the first woman to have served as presiding officer in both the Maine House and Senate.

Maine has a history of electing and appointing women to lofty positions, although never a governor. The chief justice of the state supreme court, Leigh Ingalls Saufley, is a woman. Maine’s two U.S. senators, Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, soon will be joined in Washington by Democratic Rep.-elect Chellie Pingree, who was in Augusta Wednesday to see her daughter ascend to the House rostrum.

The 32-year-old Hannah Pingree noted that while she’s the second woman to serve as speaker, she’s not the youngest person to hold the title. In her acceptance speech, Pingree pointed to Hannibal Hamlin, who at age 27 wielded the Maine House gavel. Hamlin went on to serve as governor and in the U.S. House and Senate be-fore serving as Abraham Lincoln’s first vice president.

In her address to the Senate, Mitchell made reference to Maine’s record electing women.

“I would be remiss if I did not take a moment to reflect on how unremarkable an accomplishment it is to elect a woman president of the Senate,” Mitchell said. “I am proud that in Maine, this is not a big news story. In Maine a young woman can not only dream of becoming anything she wants to be, but she can actually achieve it.”

Mills, of Farmington, who was a western Maine district attorney for 15 years, must give up her House seat to which she was just re-elected in order to serve as attorney general. The mother of five stepdaughters, Mills is a former assistant attorney general who has practiced law for three decades.

She comes from a family with a history of political activism, including a brother, Peter Mills, serving as a Republican senator from Cornville and a sister, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, who is director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Three other prominent state offices also were filled Wednesday as Democrats were joined by Republicans in re-electing Matthew Dunlap as secretary of state, David Lemoine as treasurer and Neria Douglass as auditor. The secretary and treasurer serve two-year terms, and the auditor serves a four-year term.

Republican Rep. Kenneth Fletcher of Winslow said his party considers each of the Democratic candidates qualified and saw no gain in placing token candidates’ names in nomination.

“Don’t pick a fight that serves no purpose,” said Fletcher. “Why be contrary just to be contrary?”

Lawmakers were sworn in by Gov. John Baldacci, who had a sobering but optimistic message a day after he and the nation’s other governors met with President-elect Barack Obama in Philadelphia. In the State House, Baldacci reiterated Obama’s message that government must adopt the best ideas regardless of which side of the political aisle they come from.

“These are very difficult times facing our state and the nation,” said Baldacci. “In Maine, we put people above politics. We will need all our talents combined to ensure that Maine successfully weathers this economic storm and comes out stronger.”

John McCain Doesn't Care About Women

This is why John McCain can suck it. Woman hater.

MTA = Shady

Trial Looms Over MTA's Negligence in Platform Rape

A lawsuit against the MTA is about to go to trial surrounding the rape of a woman on a G train platform in Queens three years ago. And the victim, now 25, told the Daily News this weekend that she forgives her attacker ("I know he was sick in the head"), but not the token booth clerk at the 21st Street station, "I can't forgive those five seconds when I stared into his eyes, screaming for help, imploring him with my tears and all I got back was a cold stare."

The victim's suit, filed two years ago, claims the MTA is negligent for not properly training its subway workers as well as lacking the proper communication tools between a booth and the platform below. As the woman was being attacked, she says not only did the token booth clerk see her yet stay in his booth, but another conductor whose train entered during the attack saw her being assaulted and allowed his train to leave the station. The only action taken by both the clerk and the conductor respectively was to call into their command center for further help.

For his part, the clerk claims he wasn't supposed to leave his booth, according to MTA rules, saying the victim "is very wrong" to blame him, adding, "She doesn't remember a lot of things." When asked in a pre-trial deposition why he didn't try to at least scare away the attacker by informing him that police were on their way, he said, "I did not even think about it." He says that when the woman was taken out of his view to the platform for the ten minutes that followed, he did "nothing really. I was just waiting for the police."

The only positive update to comes since we first reported the attack back in 2005 is that Right Rides, the volunteer organization that offers women, transpeople and gender queer individuals safe rides home late on Saturday nights now serves 35 neighborhoods in four boroughs (as opposed to a small section of Brooklyn and the LES back then). They are always looking for volunteers and sponsors for the Zipcars they send out.

The Economy Affects Women The Most

Wall Street Takes Welfare It Begrudges to Women

Run Date: 09/24/08

By Mimi Abramovitz WeNews commentator

The bailout of Wall Street is particularly galling for women on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, says Mimi Abramovitz. They've already spent the past 30 years steadily losing ground without anyone seeming to notice or care. Editor's Note: The following is a commentary. The opinions expressed are those of the author and not necessarily the views of Women's eNews.

(WOMENSENEWS)--Today we sit and watch as the high-rolling gamblers and critics of "big government" take welfare. These are many of the same people who thought it was just fine to deprive millions of women of critical resources and let them fend for themselves. Even before the catastrophic news out of Wall Street in recent days, women have been worried about their economic security. Last March a Gallup poll found that in the past two years more women than men said that they worry about the economy (64 percent versus 57 percent). The same holds for health care, crime, the environment, drug use, unemployment, hunger and homelessness. More men are employed by Wall Street and more men have money invested there. That means the male anxiety meter is probably much higher now that they risk losing their jobs, pensions, portfolios and homes. But women's worries have probably shot up even more. Women are likely to lead in the economic-anxiety gap because distressing economic events fall harder on people with less. "I don't play the stock market, but it does affect us. It affects me personally. It affects the little guy," a female dispatch supervisor of a limo company that serves investment bank employees recently told the New York Times. The same holds for all the secretaries and housekeepers who keep investment houses clean and running. Decades of Lost Ground But what makes the bailout of the fat tomcats so galling is that women at the bottom of the economic ladder have lost ground during the last 30 years, with very few seeming to notice or care. From F.D.R.'s New Deal in the 1930s to L.B.J.'s Great Society in the 1970s, the expansion of government programs for the middle class and the poor--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, public assistance, as well as health and social services--provided a modest economic backup for women who predominate among recipients. Great Depression leaders who saw government as the solution to that economic crisis bailed out banks in exchange for tighter regulations to curb speculation. But they also created cash-assistance programs that increased women's purchasing power and protected them against economic hardship. Those programs redistributed income downward and expanded the capacity of the federal government to kick-start the economy while cushioning consumers and workers from the vagaries of the market. Beginning with President Carter in the mid 1970s, our leaders changed their tune, blaming economic woes on "big government." Successive administrations relaxed the rules on financial markets and cut funding for the safety net. Benefits Didn't Trickle Down Advocates of "less government" promised that benefits would "trickle down" to the rest of us. Instead their laissez-faire strategy weakened government benefits, one of the three interlocking pillars of economic support counted on by thousands of women from all walks of life. The Congressional Budget Office recently reported that government spending for domestic discretionary programs fell from a high of 4.8 percent of national output, or gross domestic product, in 1978 to 3.4 percent in 2007. That equals billions of dollars in cuts. Except for rising health care costs, spending on entitlement programs--such as Social Security, unemployment insurance and public assistance--also fell from 8.5 percent of the gross domestic product in 1983 to 7 percent in 2007. During the past eight years, war spending zoomed ahead, bringing us to the present spectacle, where we see U.S. military spending exceeding that of the rest of the world combined. Meanwhile, Bush tax policies diverted dollars from public services and boosted corporate profits to a record high of almost 14 percent of national income while the share going to wages dropped to its lowest level since 1929. Combined with relaxed government oversight and rampant speculation the way was paved for abusive mortgage practices that turned Wall Street into one big profit bubble waiting to pop. With these excesses as a backdrop, women saw their other two pillars of economic security weaken as well: marriage to a wage-earner and paid employment. Falling marriage rates combined with three decades of sagging male breadwinner wages have undercut the capacity of matrimony to provide women with the financial security it once offered. Wobbling Wages and Work From 1979 to 2006, the real value of the median weekly wage of men 25 years and older fell steadily to $797 from $807. The massive entry of women into the work force since World War II--one of the most significant social trends in modern U.S. history--gave them a third pillar of support. But this too is now wobbling. As male wages stagnated many women went to work--not as a matter of choice, as headlines about women opting in and out might suggest--but just to make ends meet. Between 1970 and 2005 the proportion of married couples with two earners jumped to 62 percent from about 46 percent, Labor Department data show. The U.S Women's Bureau finds wives' contribution to family income rose to 35 percent from 26 percent. But many of today's 68 million wage-earning women have recently suffered more job losses than men and a larger drop in wages than the general population, according to the Women's Bureau. In 2006 full-time female workers earned an average of $627 week or about $32,000 a year. While we watch the spectacle of the government channeling untold billions of taxpayer dollars into failing Wall Street giants the three pillars of economic support for women--the safety net, marriage and wages--continue to crumble. The public bailout of corporate America may be necessary given the risks of a collapse to the global economy. But why is it that the rich and reckless accept "welfare" for themselves while steadfastly rejecting the same for women in need? It's time to take a billion here and there to assist the women raising families on too little income to keep a roof over their heads. Mimi Abramovitz, the Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy at Hunter College School of Social Work, is the author of "Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Policy From Colonial Times to the Present," the award-winning "Under Attack, Fighting Back: Women and Welfare in the U.S." and co-author of "Taxes Are A Women's Issue: Reframing the Debate." She is currently writing "Gender Obligations: The History of Low-Income Women's Activism Since 1900." Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.