This summer, Hannah Pingree ’98 announced she was running for governor of Maine, her home state. On Oct. 31, Pingree made a fundraising stop on College Hill at the University Club, where she was met by former classmates and local politicians.
Pingree will face at least six other candidates in the June 2026 Democratic primary before the November general election.
For the last six years, Pingree has worked for Maine Gov. Janet Mills.
Pingree led the Office of Policy Innovation and the Future and co-chaired the Maine Climate Council. There, she has worked to build “a lot of housing based on pretty proactive policies and actions that Maine has taken,” she said. Pingree also helped start “an Office of New Americans to figure out how to get immigrants … involved in our workforce.”
Before working for Mills, Pingree was a member of Maine’s House of Representatives from 2002 to 2010, serving as the state’s House speaker for the last two years of her term.
Pingree’s mother, Chellie Pingree P’98, has served in Congress representing Maine’s first congressional district since 2009.
At the Providence event, Pingree was introduced by Rep. Seth Magaziner ’06 (D-R.I. 2). Other politicians, including Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, attended the event.
During her speech, Pingree discussed issues of housing, climate change and the economy in Maine, as well as women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, health care access and protecting the integrity of elections.
Since “it is a really important time for national politics,” Pingree said in her speech, “state-level leaders really do matter.”
Pingree stressed that she does not take the responsibilities of the governor’s office lightly, saying that “these are times in which we are going to have to rebuild our entire way of governing, and that’s pretty serious.”
“It is going to be up to governors in the coming years to keep our states and our systems and our democracy and, honestly, our country, afloat,” she added.
Pingree discussed her time as speaker, during which she was a “lead co-sponsor of gay marriage in Maine,” she said. She also took on environmental and public health initiatives, saying that early in her career, she had her “body tested for toxic chemicals” in an effort to learn about the chemical dangers Maine was facing.
Pingree grew up on an off-shore island called North Haven, a town so small it lacked its own emergency services. To bridge that gap, community members, including her parents, had to volunteer as first responders.
“When I think about politics and public service, it does come from this sense that you have to be involved. If there’s a challenge in your community, you have to figure out how to solve it,” Pingree said.
On a small island, “nobody else is going to fix things,” she said, adding that now the country is in a similar situation. “No one’s going to come save the Democratic Party or save our democracy. It is going to be up to each one of us.”
Pingree thinks that Americans could learn from “this kind of reliance on each other.”
Clinical Associate Professor of Surgery Rashmi Licht ’98 MD’02 has known Pingree since her first year at Brown and attended the Providence event to support her friend. Pingree and Licht both recalled volunteering for Planned Parenthood and taking a public health course together.
“Even back then, Hannah was the type of person that was always so involved and knowledgeable about all things politics,” Licht said.
She also lauded Pingree’s “ability to make people feel comfortable and to see both sides.”
William Gilbane III ’99, who met Pingree when he joined the sailing team as a first-year student, described her as “the steady voice of reason” and “really unflappable.”
Referring to the “partisan politics situation that we find ourselves in,” Gilbane said that “Hannah can speak across the aisle.”
In an interview with The Herald, Pingree said that while she arrived at Brown already interested in politics, her time on College Hill “gave (her) the confidence to figure out how to get things done,” and “really figure out how to engage with all kinds of people.”
“I love my home state of Maine,” Pingree told The Herald. “I’m running because I really do love solving problems and getting things done and figuring out how to bring people together.”
