AUGUSTA – Things are looking good for Sen. Peggy Rotundo’s bill to make Moxie the official beverage of Maine.

On Friday, Gov. John Baldacci hinted he would sign the bill should it reach his desk.

“True confessions: I am a Moxie drinker. I do the Moxie Festival every year,” Baldacci said Friday. The summer festival is held in Androscoggin County, in Lisbon Falls.

“After the festival, I go to their little lunch counter they’ve got there,” he said, where he serves ice cream and Moxie floats. Baldacci grew up working in his family’s Italian restaurant in Bangor, Momma Baldacci’s, and enjoys serving food to people.

Although the governor hasn’t yet seen the legislation, “I would be supportive of Moxie and the Moxie Festival,” Baldacci said.

Rotundo, D-Lewiston, sponsored the legislation after being asked to do so by “passionate” Moxie drinkers. On Friday, she said she didn’t realize that the governor is one of them.

“That’s good news,” she said.

Rotundo, who is not a Moxie drinker, co-chairs the Appropriations Committee, and said the Moxie legislation “is normally not the kind of bill I’d engage in. I’d be delighted to talk to people about the other very serious legislation” facing legislators.

The Moxie bill now is a legislative document, L.D. 85. On Tuesday, the Senate assigned it to the Committee on State and Local Government, which will hold a public hearing on the idea. That hearing hasn’t been scheduled yet.