[10] While campaigning to represent her Allegheny County district, she pledged to vote against the state's planned acquisition of land to build the proposed Lake Erie-Ohio River Canal.
[12] Gillette won her primary race by defeating her opponent, Harry McCallister of Curtisville, without accepting any campaign contributions and by spending just $682.
While serving on the Pennsylvania House Conservation Committee in 1969, she traveled with her fellow committee members to Minersville, Pennsylvania in early March to investigate strip mine landfill dumps in the state's anthracite coal region, as part of the committee's information gathering as it considered two proposed waste disposal bills (House Bill 153, a solid waste materials act that would regulate the transportation of solid waste across county lines and prohibit dumping in mines if it would create environmental or health hazards, and House Bill 279, which would amend the Clean Streams Act to toughen penalties for polluters).
[26] That same year, she watched the progress that she had made in securing her colleagues' 1976 passage of the "Lifeline" energy bill dissolve when the Pennsylvania House voted 106-90 to defeat her newest version of the legislation, which would have defined lifeline rates for lower-income consumers and authorized utility companies to set peak demand or time of day pricing to encourage their customers to conserve energy.
[27] During her six-term tenure, she became known for her disagreements with Governor Milton Shapp[28] and her fellow members of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party[29] regarding its platforms at the time regarding the death penalty and the 1973 Abortion Control Act.
"[31] After leaving her legislative position in 1978,[32] she pursued an unsuccessful campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the office of lieutenant governor,[33] losing to Robert P. Casey, a teacher and ice cream parlor owner from Monroeville whom voters apparently mistook for the well-known state politician Bob Casey Sr.[8] Following her legislative career, Gillette resumed work with her insurance business, but continued to remain active in politics, joining with her former colleagues just a few months before her death to urge the current state legislature to take up action on campaign finance reform and reduce the impact of special interest groups on the state's budget development process.