Anne Gass couldn’t sleep.

It was the night Donald Trump was elected president in November 2016, and she was lying there “awake all night.”

“I was thinking about what we would likely see happen in the coming year,” said Gass, 58, a grant writer and affordable housing advocate who lives in Gray.

By dawn, she had her answer: “I had been urged to run (for office) and I realized, now is exactly the right time. I felt very solid and confident in that decision.”

Although she has never run for office before, she’s no stranger to women and politics. She spent years researching and writing a book about her great-grandmother, a suffrage leader in Maine. She even retraced a cross-country journey suffragettes took in 1915, when they drove from the Pan Pacific Exposition in San Francisco to Washington, D.C., to deliver petitions to Congress and the president.

“I think women have been in subtle and not-so-subtle ways discouraged from entering politics,” she said. “We saw that happen in Hillary (Clinton’s) race for the presidency. We see that all over the place.”

“I’m very excited to see so many women are willing to step up at this point and say no more.”

The time feels right for her run, she said.

“There’s a real hunger for change and for going beyond party politics,” she said.