This is almost the last editorial we'll write on this subject. As soon as the state elects a female governor, we'll write our last one.

But in the meantime, just about every door, ceiling, brick wall and Jersey barricade has been broken in Maine politics as of this week.

On Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Mitchell was unanimously elected president of the Maine Senate, becoming the first woman in the United States to be elected presiding officer of both legislative chambers in her state. Mitchell was elected Speaker of the House in 1996 and is the third woman in a row to head the Senate.

Down the marble hallway from the Senate, the Maine House of Representatives unanimously elected Democrat Hannah Pingree as its chamber's leader.

And the Legislature on Wednesday also elected the state's first female attorney general, Democrat Janet Mills, a state representative from Farmington.

Pingree, Mills and Mitchell join a group of Maine women in high positions so numerous that it threatens to become routine, which is called progress. Leigh Saufley is chief justice of the Maine Supreme Court; Anne Jordan is commissioner of public safety; Dora Mills (Janet's sister) is head of the state's Centers for Disease Control.

Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are the state's two senators; Chellie Pingree (Hannah's mother) is the state's new representative to Congress.

Education Commissioner Susan Gendron and Health and Human Services Commissioner Brenda Harvey combined oversee 80 percent of the state budget.

While the men and women who visit the Statehouse still must pass through corridors lined with historic portraits of stern males, in the rooms and chambers that open off those halls, there's a new picture of Maine. And as the Sisterhood joins the Old Boys' Network under the Capitol dome, it's beginning to look a whole lot more like the real Maine in the People's House.