Staff Writer

Rep. Peggy Pendleton thought she had heard her final gavel fall in a Maine Legislature session last week.

It turned out to be a false alarm: Legislators returned to Augusta Monday to complete details of a $57 million bond package for voters to consider June 8.

With the adjournment of the 124th Legislature, Pendleton is winding down a public office career spanning 22 years, both legislative houses and the Republican and Democratic parties.

“I always get depressed when a session ends,” she said as she reflected on a career that began almost accidentally in 1988.

While teaching at what is now Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Pendleton became convinced regulations were needed for training of certified nursing assistants. Pendleton observed private nursing home and assisted living centers already offered free training for CNAs.

The lack of regulation worried her because  training methods were suspect and potentially harmful to CNAs and the patients they served, she said.

She and others began speaking at legislative hearings to support establishment of state guidelines. The response was not what she hoped to get.

“They would just pat us on the back, and that would be the end of it,” she said.

Pendleton recalled venting to her husband, Robert Pendleton, after one hearing. He suggested she run for the House seat then held by George Lawson, a Democrat.

The suggestion became reality when Robert Pendleton got 27 signatures on the needed paperwork and turned them in less than an hour before deadline – Peggy Pendleton became the Republican candidate.

Her first campaign took her door to door every evening in a district comprised of sections of Scarborough and Saco. Pendleton said the visits became her favorite part of serving in public office.

“I’m on my second generation now,” she said of visits to constituents. “When I get to Augusta, I have a pretty good idea of what constituents want and how they feel.”

Her initial victory seemed daunting,” Pendleton recalled.

“I got shaky in the knees,” she said.

Serving in the Statehouse was different than appearing at committee hearings, she recalled.

“You get your own locker – it’s like going back to school,” she said. She initially wondered why she was being called “hon” when she saw the initial for “honorable” preceding her name.

Near the end of her third house term, Pendleton switched parties to become a Democrat. She said she decided to switch because Republican Party leaders did not want to discuss ways to provide accessible and affordable health care to Maine residents.

“I got frustrated. It was like trying out for the football team and ending up on the basketball team,” she said.

She also decided not to run for the House seat in 1994. Instead, her husband ran and won, and Pendleton spent two years pursuing nursing degrees, she said.

In 1996, she won the Senate seat she kept until term limits prevented her from running for it in 2004.

While Pendleton worried her party switch “was political suicide,” reactions were benign from her constituents and other legislators.

“I had no trouble at all on the switch, I never was partisan,” she said.

As a Democrat, Pendleton could also buck party lines. She was named Legislator of the Year by the United Bikers of Maine in 1997 and 1999 and the Maine Nurses Association Legislator of the Year in 2001 and 2003.

The award from the motorcyclists came after her work getting the organization slogan on license plates, she said. Pendleton does not support mandatory helmet laws.

She said she also could not support a proposed legislative resolution asking President George W. Bush to use only diplomatic means to solve problems in Iraq before the U.S. invasion in 2003.

“It was an insult to the soldiers who were already in Kuwait,” she said.

Pendleton’s service spanned the terms of three governors and saw establishment of the Clean Election Fund, term limits of eight years in one office and passage of equal and marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

She said term limits and clean funding have helped bring in younger legislators with fresh ideas.

“The debates are much better,” she said. “You hear statistics, you hear reasoning.”

Despite term limits, Pendleton said one thing remains constant.

“Term limits came about in part because of (Rep.) John Martin, (D-Eagle Lake). He’s still there,” she said.

The low point in her career came in January 2001 during a heated confrontation with Rep. John Michael of Auburn, Pendleton said.

What began as Michael’s effort to get a bill he sponsored to a committee Pendleton chaired became a temper tantrum when Michael yelled at Pendleton and Sen. Neria Douglass in a hallway and then an office.

Michael eventually was censured – an official reprimand – by the Maine House. According to the official record of the censure proclamation, he was the first member of the House ever to be censured. Michael apologized for his outburst on the House floor.

The episode shook Pendleton, she said, but a discussion with her granddaughter buoyed her spirits because her granddaughter told her friends Pendleton “went and told on a bully.”

While preparing to return to private life, Pendleton’s term does not officially end until her successor is inaugurated after elections in November.

Two candidates filed to run for her seat, and Pendleton has endorsed Scarborough Board of Education Chairman Brian Dell’Olio, who is running as a Democrat.

Republican Lynda K. Griffith said this week she will not run, although she has filed papers with the Maine Secretary of State’s office.

With running for office behind her, Pendleton said she discovered a personal trait that endures.

“I never knew how competitive I am. I do not like to lose,”

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337, ext. 219