LEWISTON – Sen. Peggy Rotundo, D-Lewiston, has been awarded this year’s Rising Tide Award by the Maine People’s Alliance. The alliance, which represents consumer, environmental and social justice issues, gives the award to one Maine legislator each year.

Rotundo was chosen because she’s “committed to the local community and to progressive issues we work on, health care and the environment. She has a real sense for organizing and bringing others along with her,” Jake Grindle, the alliance’s Androscoggin Valley community organizer, said last week. The organization would be “hard-pressed to find a legislator more worthy of this year’s award than Sen. Rotundo,” he said.

In making the award, the alliance considered voting record, community involvement and commitment to representing people who are underrepresented at the State House.

Rotundo “really stood out as exceptional in all the areas we looked at,” Grindle said. She worked to strengthen education in Lewiston and beyond, as well as enhance the environment and increase access to health care and to government, Grindle said.

Winning the award “is very humbling,” Rotundo said.

Issues she has worked on include legislation to protect the environment and the Androscoggin River; public access to government information; and, as an Appropriations Committee member, state budget cuts, during which she said she worked to protect Maine’s most vulnerable citizens.

The alliance also cited her connections in the Lewiston-Auburn community, including service on the boards of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce, L/A Arts and Head Start, and as president of the Maine School Boards Association.

She also is a founding member of the Lewiston Aspirations Partnership; president of the Lewiston Educational Foundation, a nonprofit that encourages private giving; and director of the Center for Service Learning at Bates College, a position she’s held since 1995, which connects students to their community through service.

Grindle said the alliance represents “22,000-plus members in Maine” and has successfully pushed for pioneering laws, such as Maine Rx, Dirigo Health Care and Maine’s Clean Election law. “We’re at the forefront of what’s going on nationally,” Grindle said. The alliance has offices in Lewiston, Bangor and Portland.

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