PITTSBURGH — State Sen. Jane Orie had a voracious appetite for winning elections, an appetite that fueled the illegal campaign work forced upon her state-paid staffers, according to a former employee who testified Wednesday.

Cristy Folino is just one of 15 former staffers who’ve already taken the witness stand in Orie’s ongoing political corruption trial.

The sitting state senator is charged with misusing her taxpayer-funded staff to illegally work on campaigns for herself and her sister, current state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin.

All 15 former staffers to testify in the weeklong trial admitted to engaging in varying levels of campaign and political work while on the state’s time, and Folino was no different.

“Beating an opponent by a margin of 70 percent to 30 percent (of the vote) wasn’t good enough,” she said. “That’s why there was relentless campaigning.”

The former staffer gave testimony that alleged Orie was not only complicit in her employees’ campaign work, but also often directly engaged in it with them.

When she gave her resignation in March 2004, Folino got a response back from Orie that was displayed on a projector screen for the jury to see, a response that asked “who will be my new door-knocking partner?”

Folino also said Orie more than once referenced knocking on doors. In another instance, the senator asked Folino if she was glad she was undertaking so much of the task, because the exercise was clearly helping with her diet.

William Costopoulos, Orie’s defense attorney, didn’t deny Wednesday that his client engaged in copious amounts of knocking on doors with her staff.

But it was part of a “legitimate legislative purpose,” he said, because Orie’s 40th Senatorial District had just been redrawn under reapportionment and the senator was simply going around neighborhoods in southern Butler County introducing herself to new constituents.

Folino countered with allegations that staffers routinely and frequently went into neighborhoods that had long been a part of Orie’s district, and that staffers were always awarded compensatory time for their work.

She said the task almost always had “definite political intentions.”

Pam Wahal, another staffer who testified Wednesday, worked out of the senator’s Cranberry Township office and alleged she and another employee were fired by Orie after speaking out against campaign work.

Wahal said in one instance she had plans to take her three boys skiing on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is a holiday for all state workers.

But Orie mandated that every one of her employees was to engage in door-knocking that day, and Wahal knew her hands were tied and that she’d have to reschedule the family trip.

“You knew if you didn’t go, there would be repercussions,” she said.

Shortly after, Wahal said she refused to continue engaging in campaign work during normal work hours because it made her feel uncomfortable. Not long after, she and another employee were fired.

Costopoulos maintained that Wahal was fired because of complaints from constituents and local municipal leaders who said she never returned their calls. Wahal contended several times that she was never once given that explanation.

Michele Lantz, a former staffer who lives in Butler, also testified Wednesday to organizing a large fundraiser at the Butler Country Club in 2002.

Not long after the fundraiser, Lantz said her husband got orders for deployment in the military for 18 months, and that she often relied on the help of in-laws to take care of her young children.

She soon went to Orie with a simple request that she be able to leave work at 4:30 p.m. on days when there weren’t any evening events planned.

Despite the fact that all state workers in Orie’s office only work until 4:30, Lantz said no employee was allowed to leave work until former chief of staff Jamie Pavlot gave them permission.

Sometimes Pavlot would be on the phone with Orie for an hour or more, and staffers had to sit and wait until she told them to leave.

All she wanted was a little flexibility, Lantz said, to leave at normal quitting time. That request was shot down by Orie, so she quit the job after only a year.

Another former staffer, Johnna Kerner, said she often was forced to travel across the street from Orie’s North Hills office to make calls in a fake campaign office set up by Orie.

Orie steadfastly denied ever having a fake campaign office across the street, denials that were the basis of a majority of the perjury charges brought against her after her last trial.

During that trial, Orie testified to never having another office across the street and also denied knowing the landlord who owned the building.

Kerner testified Wednesday that the fake office was mostly just empty space with a telephone, and that it was “for show” in case “something like this ever happened,” referring to the criminal charges and trial.

Testimony will resume today, when the prosecution is expected to present more staffers to the jury.