Nevada State Senator Maggie Carlton back to waiting tables

The first waitress and union member to serve in Nevada's Senate is back pouring coffee and iced tea and hauling around food trays weighing 30 pounds.

She's still a senator, but now that the four-month legislative session is over, she has returned to her job as a waitress at the Treasure Island's Lookout Cafe.

And she hasn't had much of a problem making the adjustment from full-time senator to full-time coffee shop waitress.

"It's a bit difficult as far as physically coming back," she said recently after her 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. shift was over. "Now I'm back to picking up heavy trays, walking eight hours and being constantly on the move. It was more mental energy there and more physical energy here."

Carlton is a freshman senator who won her District 2 seat in the primary by defeating Democratic incumbent Jack Regan, who died in January.

Carlton earned good marks during her first session. She laughed and speculated that might be because people had low expectations that a waitress with no prior elected experience could move easily into being a state senator.

The 41-year-old woman is a union shop steward for Culinary Local 226 and was thrust into the spotlight during President Clinton's March 1998 visits to Las Vegas. She was given the honor to introduce him and demonstrated her poise, enthusiasm and ability to express herself. She told Clinton her family represented "the middle-class dream" and she credited the strength of unions for making Las Vegas "one of the few places a waitress can afford to buy a home."

"Because I have a union, I don't have to work two jobs," she told Clinton and a cheering union crowd.

Her union backers turned out for her in the 1998 election and helped her defeat Regan 67 percent to 33 percent.

As a waitress married to a state probation and parole officer and the mother of two daughters, 13 and 14, Carlton believes she brings something unique to Nevada's citizen Legislature -- "the working family attitude, knowing what it's like to raise children, balance a check book, and work for someone else. I'm not a business owner. I bring basic common sense to the process."

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