Gov.-elect Hannah Pingree’s transition committee is a roadmap to her agenda, and most of its members helped get her elected.
The 22 people introduced Tuesday to help pick her Cabinet span business, labor, tribal leaders and a former Republican senator, but their political giving is overwhelmingly Democratic. Thirteen gave to her campaign, and some backed her through groups they lead.
The volunteer panel has little time. Pingree wants to name every commissioner before her Jan. 6 inauguration, and she must send lawmakers a plan to close a $1 billion budget gap by early February.
“I said throughout this campaign that I was running to deliver results, and the results start with the right people making leadership decisions,” Pingree said.
The committee tracks her biggest promises. Co-chair Maulian Bryant leads the Wabanaki Alliance, which endorsed Pingree after she pledged a tribal sovereignty bill in her first 100 days. Gov. Janet Mills generally resisted the push from tribes, although she made piecemeal reforms.
Education is well represented, too. Co-chair Roger Katz, a former centrist Republican state senator, chairs the University of Maine System board of trustees, and Vicky Cohen sits on the State Board of Education. Pingree, who has promised more teacher training, named education commissioner as one of her most important picks.
Other members bring deep policy portfolios. Ken Colburn, a Bar Harbor consultant who co-chairs the Maine Climate Council’s energy working group, has long pushed to tie utility profits to performance. Pingree’s energy plan promises to “tie utility profits to lower bills.”
Maureen Drouin leads Maine Conservation Voters, which spent about $850,000 to help Pingree win the June primary. Her group broke with Mills after the governor vetoed a ban on large data centers in April to save a project at the former paper mill in Jay. Pingree backed a ban on the campaign trail, and the developer filed for state permits on Monday.
“Jay should not be the testing ground for a data center project before Maine has strong regulations in place to protect communities,” Pingree said in a statement.
Liza Fleming-Ives runs a lender that finances the kind of affordable housing Pingree wants to fund with $100 million a year. Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, the outgoing budget committee chair, knows the gap better than anyone on the panel. Two doctors, former state Rep. Richard Evans and Barbara Crowley, are on board as Pingree pushes a public insurance option.
The panel also mirrors the coalition Pingree built to win a crowded primary. She drew support from Mills, other establishment Democrats and environmental groups, then won over unions that had backed former Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner and his successor, former Senate President Troy Jackson.
Former L.L Bean CEO Steve Smith and Luke Holden, the founder of Luke’s Lobster, sit alongside Grant Provost of Ironworkers Local 7 and Ben Waxman, a former AFL-CIO aide who runs a union apparel company in Westbrook.
Fleming-Ives and Waxman were Pingree’s biggest donors on the committee, at about $3,000 each, and Katz gave $2,500. Not everyone was with her from the start. Waxman gave matching amounts to Jackson in the primary, and Provost backed Jackson before the Maine AFL-CIO endorsed Pingree in August. Holden also gave $250 to former gubernatorial candidate Jonathan Bush, the only gift to a Republican by a committee member this cycle.
Pingree said Tuesday that her Cabinet could include independents and Republicans. She said committee members were not being eyed as candidates, though she did not know how the process would play out.
“I think we did ask people to join this committee with the understanding that they were not applying for jobs,” she said.