HARRISBURG -- Departing state treasurers spend their last days on the job as the rest of us do. Barbara Hafer, treasurer for eight years and auditor general for the eight years before that, has busied herself the past few weeks by cleaning out her desk, attending going-away parties, reminiscing with old colleagues, packing knick-knacks into cardboard boxes.

The knick-knack packing helps to explain the recent office appearance of a squawking stuffed chicken, which Hafer held to the phone for a reporter to hear, presumably to establish that she was, in fact, in possession of such a creature.

"People have just given me these things over the years. Toy donkeys, elephants," gifts given to her as she switched from one party to another, from Democrat to Republican in 1975, then back to the Democratic side of the aisle just more than a year ago.

But a chicken?

"I don't know why somebody gave me a stuffed chicken," she clucked. "I hope it's not a reflection of what they think of me."

It can't be. You can call Hafer a lot of things -- many have called her a traitor, stubborn, prickly or worse -- but a chicken isn't one of them. For decades, she's been unafraid to tread where she was often unwelcome, into election races for which she'd received no invitation to run, into political arenas traditionally, and still, dominated by middle-aged men.

When she officially leaves office in two days, giving way to Democratic successor Robert P. Casey Jr., she leaves a dearth of women holding critical positions in state government.

Though Catherine Baker Knoll holds the lieutenant governor's post, there are 32 women in the 253-member state Legislature, and influential ones are few and far between. And now that former Education Secretary Vicki Phillips, who was replaced by a man, is working in Oregon, six women remain among Gov. Ed Rendell's two dozen cabinet department heads.

"It's sad in many ways," Hafer said last week. "I've worked all my life to get women to serve and run for office, but it's still tough. There's a void."

As for the workday void that will be created when she leaves Harrisburg, Hafer plans to fill it with her role as the head of the newly created Hafer and Associates, a consulting firm that will help local governments navigate tricky financial waters.

She starts this week, she said. "I don't need any time off." The firm's main office will be in Pittsburgh, and another office will be in Harrisburg. Hafer's home is in Elizabeth Borough.

Hafer's odd path to the treasurer's office, and now back into Pittsburgh, started in her hometown, Los Angeles. She and her family moved to a home on the back side of Mount Washington when she was 3, and then moved to Mt. Lebanon in 1951, with Hafer in the third grade.

The path eventually led through the South Side Hospital School of Nursing, then to Duquesne University, where she received a nursing degree in 1969. Hafer's nursing experience, in turn, instilled in her a sympathy for the many abuse and sex assault victims who ended up in the hospital.

That's why she helped start the Center for Victims of Violent Crime. In lobbying for $50,000 in seed money, the young nurse had her first encounter with Pittsburgh's political power structure, circa 1974 -- Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, Tom Foerster, former city Councilman and Magistrate Bernard Regan, District Attorney Bob Colville and Eugene Coon, former sheriff.

"There was a fight for that money," Hafer recalled. "That was my first taste of politics."

She liked the taste, and she won the money.

By the next year, partly at the behest of Republican philanthropist Elsie Hillman, Hafer had changed her party registration from Democrat to Republican and was pondering a political career. Her first race, a successful one, put her on the obscure "government study commission," which was charged with proposing reforms to county government. In 1979, she ran for the county treasurer's seat and lost, but in 1983, she mounted a winning campaign for a seat on the three-headed commissioner's board that used to run Allegheny County.

After winning a second term there, Hafer trained her sights on state government. In November 1988, she defeated an incumbent Democrat, Don Bailey, for the auditor general's post. She's been in Harrisburg ever since. "I've spent 16 years going back and forth between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg," she said.

Throughout those 16 years, there has been no shortage of Hafer headlines: she ran a disastrous race for the governor's office in 1990, had run-ins with state GOP leaders when she wanted to run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination again in 1994 and 2002, feuded with Knoll, was rumored to be on President Bush's shortlist of candidates to head the U.S. Treasury, endorsed Ed Rendell over fellow Republican Mike Fisher in the 2002 governor's race.

Along the way, Hafer has traded barbs with the best of them, calling the late Gov. Robert P. Casey a "redneck Irishman" and saying Knoll was a liar for her alleged role in a fraud scandal that consumed her second term in the treasurer's office. Knoll, for her part, said Hafer's reign as treasurer was "cancerous," claiming Hafer billed the state for her own campaign expenses and pricey steak dinners.

Hafer contends that she and Knoll "long ago buried the hatchet."

"Once the races are over, you get on with your life," she said. "At the time, I was the auditor that was auditing her books. She wouldn't let me in the door ... but those were old times. These are new days," and the two are now sisters in the same party.

Finally, in December 2003, Hafer formally returned to the Democratic Party, an announcement that offered all the surprise of a sunset, given that her endorsement of Rendell had severed her ties with the GOP.

"My cycle," Hafer said, "was complete."

The political cycle may be complete, as she says, but the political career probably is not. Though her immediate future will involve many hours at Hafer and Associates, Hafer expects to announce in the next six months whether she intends to run against Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum when his seat is contested in 2006.

She's been mulling an entry into the Democratic primary race for more than a year.

The contest, she says, is "very attractive," because she thinks Santorum can be bested. "I've been talking to people in other states, in Washington, in the Senate, about running" and raising money, Hafer said.

She's never been a dynamic fund-raiser, but Hafer may benefit financially now that she has an ally in Rendell, who will be running for re-election in 2006.

Some political observers say either Hafer or her imminent replacement, Casey, has the best shot at unseating Santorum, as both are so-called "moderate" Democrats. Casey, for now, says he has long-term goals of winning the governor's seat and doesn't want to uproot his family, but Casey appears to be at least contemplating a Senate run, at the urging of many Democratic colleagues.

Casey and Hafer spent much of last year trading barbs with each other over Casey's attempted audits of two public-employee pension funds. Hafer, who sat on the boards of both funds, said Casey, the auditor general, had no authority to do the audits.

Nationally, Democrats have made it clear that Casey is their preferred candidate. But if Hafer's winning history and statewide appeal are indicators, don't be terribly surprised if the "little nurse from Elizabeth," as she was once derisively called, is once again packing her boxes in 2006, headed for Washington.

Even if nobody's invited her.

Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette
Departing state Treasurer Barabra Hafer has made helping women serve in state goverment a priority. "I've worked all my life to get women to serve and run for office, but it's still tough. There's a void," she said.
Click photo for larger image.

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Age: 61

Residence: Elizabeth Borough

Family: Married to Jack Pidgeon since 1986; one daughter and three stepchildren.

Education: She earned a nursing certification from South Side Hospital School of Nursing, then a bachelor's degree in science and nursing from Duquesne University.

Occupation: Former state treasurer; forced to leave office because of the law forbidding a third consecutive term, she's now the head of her own consulting firm, Hafer and Associates.

In the news: One of the most resilient characters in state politics, Hafer's doing little to diminish speculation that she'll run against Republican Rick Santorum when his U.S. Senate seat is contested in November 2006.

Quote: "Santorum is beatable."

First Published: January 16, 2005, 5:00 a.m.