A fighter in front lines for wage law: State Sen. Tartaglione has battled a paralyzing injury and spent years pushing for Pa.'s new minimum-pay rule. - The Philadelphia Inquirer (Philadelphia, PA)

Byline: Amy Worden

Jan. 1--HARRISBURG -- Among those whom low-wage workers can thank for getting a bump in their paychecks this week is a soft-spoken but tenacious lawmaker from Philadelphia. State Sen. Christine M. Tartaglione, along with a handful of Democratic colleagues, toiled for six years to overcome powerful Republican leadership and business interests to win passage of the first minimum pay raise since the federal increase in 1996. Few realize that she waged her fight from a wheelchair.

A freak boating accident in 2003 left her paralyzed from the waist down. Tartaglione, 46, quickly bounced back, rounding up support for the wage bill from her hospital bed, while enduring a series of complex back surgeries and excruciating rehabilitation. Doctors said she'd never walk again, but she proved them wrong for a minute or two during an emotional moment on the Senate floor last summer. Tartaglione said she never considered stepping down. 'Everything happens for a reason,' she said. Daughter of Margaret Tartaglione, a longtime Philadelphia elections commissioner and Northeast ward leader, she grew up stuffing campaign literature in doorways. As a teenager, she said, she never missed attending a state Democratic committee meeting with her mother. Tartaglione's first political job was working as an aide to then-state Treasurer Catherine Baker Knoll. She went on to work as a business representative with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, before making a failed attempt to unseat Republican State Rep. John Perzel in 1992. In 1994, after surviving a nail-biter election, Tartaglione became the fifth woman elected to the state Senate.

It was Labor Day weekend in 2003 when Tartaglione unexpectedly faced her biggest challenge. She and several friends were aboard a small powerboat cruising off the Jersey Shore when a larger pleasure boat zoomed past, kicking up a big wake. Her boat was rocked so violently that she was thrown to the deck, landing sharply on her back. Tartaglione said she knew she was severely injured when she couldn't feel the sting from the green-headed flies buzzing around her. 'I knew I had a spinal-cord injury,' she said. Tartaglione spent eight months in critical care and had three major operations to rebuild her spine.

Still, the prognosis was not good. But Tartaglione was determined to get on her feet. 'I was not going to be in this chair forever,' she said. Sure enough, Tartaglione was back in Harrisburg -- still using a wheelchair but driving herself there -- 18 months later.

On June 28 -- three days before her minimum-wage bill passed the Senate -- as her astonished fellow lawmakers looked on, Tartaglione took a dramatic walk across the floor of the ornate chamber. Clutching a walker with an aide by her side, she took 20 laborious steps to her seat. Senators clapped, cheered and wept. 'The predictions were dire,' said State Sen. Michael O'Pake (D., Berks) from the rostrum, pausing to regain his composure. 'Whoever said miracles never happen doesn't understand Tina Tartaglione. She is a profile in courage.'

She said making the 50-foot trek was in part an effort to diffuse tensions during heated budget negotiations. 'It seemed like a mile,' she said, moved by her colleagues' show of emotion. 'I've never seen so many tears, and they were not trying to wipe them away.' Last year, she coped with additional family tragedy: the death of a sister, and a car accident that left her 73-year-old mother and 80-year-old father seriously injured. Through it all, Tartaglione remained focused on improving conditions of low-wage workers. 'The 20,000 women in Pennsylvania who are single heads of households were the people I had on my mind when I was negotiating,' Tartaglione said. John Dodds, coordinator of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project, which advocated for the wage increase, said Tartaglione worked backroom negotiations with Senate leaders to persuade them to send the bill to the floor for a vote. 'She was very persistent and never wavered,' Dodds said. Next up for Tartaglione: introducing a bill to add a cost-of-living increase to the new minimum-wage law. 'Energy costs, health-care expenses and food prices don't wait for politicians,' Tartaglione said. 'The daily erosion of buying power starts robbing minimum-wage families immediately.' Contact staff writer Amy Worden at 717-783-2584 or aworden@phillynews.com.

Copyright (c) 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer

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