Senator Peggy Rotundo was first elected to the Maine State Senate in 2000. For the past three years she has served as the Chair of the Appropriations Committee, overseeing the State’s 6.3 billion dollar biennial budget. She also currently serves on the Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee and the Senate Ethics Committee. While in the Senate she has also chaired the State and Local Government Committee and has served on the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee. She has also served as Chair of the Senate Committee on Bills in Second Reading.

She has been appointed to statewide commissions to study tax reform, ways to increase the number of students going on to post secondary education, as well as state policy around rail transport, freedom of information issues, Native American tribal issues, and state budget reform.

She also has represented the State of Maine as a Commissioner on the Education Commission of the States, and currently serves as the Senate Chair of the Citizens Trade Policy Commission.

Senator Rotundo helped found the Center for Service-Learning at Bates College in Lewiston in 1995, which is a nationally recognized program that connects Bates students to the community through service. She currently serves as the Director of Special Initiatives for the Bates College Harward Center for Community Partnerships. She is actively involved in her community, having served on a variety of boards including the Androscoggin Chamber of Commerce, Head Start and LA Arts. Senator Rotundo was a founding member and co-chair of the Lewiston Aspirations Partnership with L. L. Bean, and served on the steering committee to establish the Lewiston-Auburn Youth Lacrosse Program in 1996. She was also a founding member and former president of the Lewiston Education Fund, and currently serves on its board. She also serves on the board of the Higher Education Compact, the Advisory Committee of the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy and the Drug Court Advisory Board.

In 1993, she was elected to the Lewiston School Committee, which she chaired for four years. As a past president and the first vice-president of the Maine School Boards Association, she traveled extensively across the state and around the country speaking on behalf of public education and advocating for the educational needs of Maine’s children.

Senator Rotundo graduated from the public school system in Schenectady, New York and earned a B. A. from Mount Holyoke College. She has been honored with numerous state and local awards for her civic leadership, including recognition of her work on behalf of the environment, public education, protection of citizen’s access to governmental information, promotion of civil discourse in public life and the promotion of economic, political and social justice.

Senator Rotundo and her husband, Loring Danforth, have two children, both of whom attended the Lewiston Public Schools. Her son, Nicholas, a graduate of Yale University, is currently in graduate school. Her daughter, Ann, is a student at Vassar College.

Updated August 2007