Green Party Mourns Young Hopeful Killed by SUV

(Sept. 23) -- Her best friend was her dog, Bill. She crocheted. She spent weekends exploring unfamiliar neighborhoods around Baltimore. As a runner, swimmer and cyclist, she told people she was "never happier" than the day she learned the triathlon combined all three sports in one. And right up to the end, she said she wanted to help her country return to its ideals.

In an election season lousy with candidates waving the banner of fury, Natasha Pettigrew couched her dismay with a smile. Her open manner extended as far as posting her cell phone number online. Against the backdrop of mainstream opposition research, attack ads and political black ops, her Green Party campaign for the United States Senate seemed downright winsome.

There was the time she spent a whole day looking to invest her savings in a community bank that hadn't taken any federal bailout money. There was the birthday she spent filing election papers, punctuated with a cupcake. There was the Fourth of July parade where she wore her green natashaforsenate.com T-shirt to mingle among marchers in tri-corner Revolutionary War caps. She announced each new development with an exclamation point, or sometimes three. "I Filed!!!" she wrote on her Facebook page in early July, after signing her Declaration of Intent form with the Maryland State Board of Elections.

Winsome and winning are different things, of course. Federal election records show Pettigrew, 30, had not actually raised any money to support her Green Party candidacy. Her opponent, four-term incumbent Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat, has a 67 percent approval rating, according to a new survey.

But in a senatorial cycle that has drawn out extremes -- from Rand Paul, the Kentuckian who spoke against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to Alvin Greene, the South Carolinian who appears to be running for lack of other employment prospects -- even a relatively unassailable incumbent can face a crowded field. Lots of people want to be heard. Aside from the 11 Republicans who have sought to challenge Mikulski, candidates have emerged from her own Democratic party, the Constitution Party and no party at all.

Then there was Pettigrew. She grew up in suburban Maryland, raised by a single mother working three jobs. She studied zoology at Ohio State, by her own account, before going on to law school in Florida.

"My sole interest in attending law school was, and is, to help others," she wrote. "Despite a break to run for United States senator, I will become an attorney. Every educational track I have taken has been to help."

To that end, she spent a year in AmeriCorps. She worked for her hometown government. She volunteered at a homeless shelter, a foster dog care program and the Red Cross.

On her campaign website, she staked out moderately left-of-center positions on education, energy, the economy (she thought the Wall Street bailout could have been handled differently), health care and youth, "who have far too much free time."

Above all, she wrote, she wanted to listen.

"As we develop stronger, more cohesive communities, we can appreciate the strengths that each of us brings to the community table," she wrote on her campaign site. "The possibilities are endless."

Last weekend, with less than two months left to pursue her candidacy, Pettigrew was struck by a Cadillac Escalade during a pre-dawn bicycle ride around the Baltimore suburbs. She was up early training for a triathlon, the Maryland State Police said.

Doctors at Prince George's Hospital Center pronounced her dead at 10:30 p.m. Monday. The driver of the SUV, who could not be reached for comment, did not stop but called the police after arriving at home and discovering Pettigrew's bike lodged under her SUV. She has not been charged with a crime, the police said.

"We all looked forward to working with Natasha for years to come," Brian Bittner, co-chairman of the state Green Party, said in a statement. "Natasha was a bright, hard-working young woman who had talked to many Maryland voters as a candidate and meant much to many Marylanders as a person."

Pettigrew's Facebook page, the forum she used to engage her neighbors, remains online for the moment. Up top, she displayed a favored quotation from the Gettysburg Address: "Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."