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Then along came Kelley McDaniel of Portland -- No. 48 on the day's speaker list.
She's a part-time librarian at King Middle School -- and a very good one at that.
She drove to Augusta with her 11-year-old daughter, Aedin, in tow because Aedin is on King Middle School's debate team, loves politics and dutifully met her mother's condition that she write a letter to each of her teachers explaining why listening to her mom testify at a state budget hearing was at least as important as a day in school.
Talk about a teachable moment.
If politics these days is all about what the experts call "driving the message," McDaniel spent all of her precious three minutes in the fast lane.
She told the committee that she recently won a national "I Love My Librarian" Award from the Carnegie Corp. and The New York Times -- an honor that included a check, made out to McDaniel, for $5,000.
"I plan to report that money on my income tax and I expect to pay taxes on it," she told the lawmakers. "Even though I donated the money in its entirety to the public middle school where I work."
You heard that right.
She gave the whole five grand, after taxes, to her school. If you live in Portland, that's your school, too.
It was only the beginning.
McDaniel said she's "happy to pay those taxes" because the way she sees it, taxes are "like membership dues" for being a citizen of this great state.
She said that while she gets lots of things (education, health and safety, arts and recreation) in exchange for those "dues," she realizes "I may not personally benefit from everything that tax money is used for."
She has no problem with that. As McDaniel put it, "I try to trust that elected officials will spend money to the best benefit of society and not just to a handful of individuals."
Then, without missing a beat, she turned her attention to the budget.
