Six Democrats are seeking to represent their party in the contest for the 1st Congressional District seat being vacated by Tom Allen. Here are profiles of the candidates, who will be on the June 10 ballot:
Michael Brennan – End war first
A licensed clinical social worker who works on child and family issues at the Muskie School of Public Service, Michael Brennan served in the Legislature from 1992 to 2006, first as a House member and then in the Senate. He’s running for Congress, he says, because what was once taken for granted in this country is no longer available to the working class.
“The cost of education and the cost of health care in this country have gotten to the point that working class and middle class people can no longer have even the smallest part of the American dream,” he said.
Brennan supports universal health care and scholarships to public colleges and universities for all those graduating from public high schools.
He believes those programs could be paid for, in part, by ending the war in Iraq.
“The first thing I want to do is make sure we end the war in Iraq,” he said, and take the money being spent there to help pay for health care and college.
Democrats and Republicans alike have continued to fund the war, most recently approving an additional $170 billion appropriation, he said. “That $170 billion gets us pretty close to universal health care coverage or college for free,” he said.
Brenan, 55, was born in Portland and has lived there for the last 32 years. He got a bachelor’s degree from Florida State University and his master’s from the Muskie School, where he now serves as a policy associate.
He talks about the race in terms of his two sons.
Brennan said when he and his wife went to pay for their children’s college tuition, they had to take out another loan on their home, which they had already paid off once. When one of those sons went to work at a job that didn’t offer health insurance, he paid $2,400 a year for a plan with a $10,000 deductible.
“At the end of the year he had paid Anthem $2,400 and had not gotten 1 dollar in health care coverage,” Brennan said. “That’s why I’m running for Congress.
Adam Cote – War needs deliberate resolution
An attorney with Pierce Atwood in Portland, who served tours of duty in Bosnia and Iraq, Adam Cote, points to his family’s blue-collar roots and his military service when he’s on the campaign trail.
“Very few people running for office today come from blue-collar families,” Cote said, referring to his life as a kid growing up in Sanford, where his dad was a high school teacher and coach.
Cote, who refers to himself as an “outsider” to the political process, talks about a plan for ending the war in Iraq that is more nuanced than the other Democrats in the 1st Congressional District race.
“Everybody’s trying to figure out how to get out of Iraq without having a major disaster in the process, but there’s only one Iraq war veteran in Congress, and I’ve spent more time there than any member of Congress,” he told a gathering recently. “We must be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. This means finding a way to bring our troops home that prevents them from needing to return in the future to stop genocide, regional civil war, or a terrorist stronghold from forming,” he says.
Cote was in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 with the Maine National Guard. He also served in Bosnia with the military police, having signed up with the Army Reserve after graduating from Colby College. He got his law degree from the University of Maine School of Law and now works on real estate and energy issues at Pierce Atwood. He and his wife have three young children and live in Portland.
“I have a background in energy issues and the military,” Cote says, and can address the war in Iraq and skyrocketing energy prices with experience.
At age 35, Cote also can claim to be the youngest candidate in the race.
“I think we need some fresh blood in Congress,” he said. “I think we need a new generation that’s going to bring about some change.”
Mark Lawrence – Restore trust in government
Mark Lawrence is the district attorney in York County and a former Senate president, who points out he is the only person running for Congress with a law enforcement background. He believes it’s time to restore the constitutional balance of power in Washington, which he says the Bush administration has eroded.
“We need to restore public trust in government, restore belief that no one is above the law,” he said. That includes President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, he said, whose administration has sanctioned the firings of U.S. attorneys and condoned domestic surveillance programs without judicial review.
Lawrence said the leading issues in the campaign are the cost of health care, education and an economy that does not offer promise to the middle class.
“What we have seen is the slow nickel-and-diming of the American middle class, whether it’s in education, whether it’s in health care, whether it’s in these ridiculous tax cuts that have been passed that have shifted wealth in this country to the extreme wealthiest,” he said.
Lawrence supports a universal health care system, similar to ones in Europe or Canada, and like the other Democratic candidates in the race, believes Social Security must be preserved. He believes the war in Iraq must end, starting with a withdrawal of troops.
Lawrence, 49, served four years in the state House and eight years in the Senate, the last four as Senate president. He ran an unsuccessful race for U.S. Senate in 2000 against incumbent Sen. Olympia Snowe, and then went on to be York County district attorney. He went to Bowdoin College as an undergraduate and then the University of Maine School of Law.
He talks about the rising cost of tuition as a major drag on the middle-class.
“The day I graduated, 28 years ago, my college tuition cost one-quarter of my father’s salary at the (Kittery) shipyard. Today, the person who holds his job, his entire salary would go to pay one year of the college I went to,” he said.
Steve Meister – Control health-care costs
Steve Meister is a physician and Navy veteran, who has never run for political office before, but says he is motivated by the need to improve the military and health care systems in this country.
A pediatrician in Augusta, Meister said he decided to run when a father, bound for Iraq, brought in his son with symptoms of stress.
“I said, ‘The last time this happened you were in Iraq,'” Meister recalled. As it turned out the father was being sent back again. “Fifteen-month deployments are way too long and it harms families and it harms service members and somebody needed to do something about it.”
Meister, a veteran of the first Gulf War when he ran an emergency room in a field hospital near the Kuwait border, calls the war in Iraq a “tragic mistake” but worries that if funding is cut too quickly or without thought, troops will suffer.
“I want our combatants home as soon as possible. But I will never vote to leave our troops with inadequate resources,” he said.
Meister, 53, whose wife is also a doctor, is the father of two college-age sons. He went to Tufts University Medical School on a U.S. Navy scholarship and worked for the Navy in California and Kuwait before moving to Maine in 1996. He is a pediatrician on staff at MaineGeneral Medical Center and works with the state foster care program evaluating children’s medical and mental health needs when they enter the system.
He believes steps have to be taken to reduce health-care costs, like introducing electronic medical records, in order to make care more affordable for everyone. He supports universal health care – emphasizing preventive care for all children up to age 18 – but not a single-payer system.
“I have a problem with single-pay because if you have a problem with that payer, you have a problem with the whole system,” Meister said.
Meister said he decided to run despite his lack of political experience because, “It takes a citizen to stand up and make a difference.”
Chellie Pingree – War, health care urgent needs
A former four-term state senator from Knox County, Chellie Pingree spent four years as head of Common Cause in Washington, D.C., before coming back home to run for Congress.
She went to work for the national citizen advocacy group after losing her 2002 bid for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins – a race where she took some unpopular stands.
“It wasn’t an easy time. I was opposed to the war. I wanted universal, single-payer health care,” she said – stands that are now part of the lexicon of many of the Democratic candidates running for Congress.
She gets kudos on the campaign trail for sponsoring the first-in-the-nation Maine RX program, which allowed the state to negotiate lower drug prices for seniors and others without prescription drug coverage – a bill strongly opposed by the pharmaceutical industry.
“I mean, sometimes you have to say no to the special interests,” she said.
Pingree, 53, is a mother of three grown children, including House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, who is in line to become speaker next year.
A graduate of the College of the Atlantic, she has lived on the island of North Haven for 30 years and proudly says she is a small business owner, who knows what it’s like to make a payroll. Pingree started a yarn and knitting company on the island and now is part owner of a bed and breakfast there.
Pingree refers to the 2008 election as “the most important one in our lifetime” with the war in Iraq, high energy costs, high health-care costs and increasing college tuitions, all urgent needs that have to be addressed by Congress.
“We need people who have had a range of experiences, whether it’s owning a small business, or being a mother or taking on things like the pharmaceutical manufacturers on health care,” she said.
Ethan Strimling – Economy is key issue
Ethan Strimling, who runs a social-service agency for at-risk children and low-income families in Portland, has served in the Senate since 2002, making a name for himself as chairman of the Labor Committee – a platform he has used to successfully push for increases in the state’s minimum wage.
He says the key issue for him in his campaign for Congress is to improve the economy for the working class.
“I thought the war would be the most important issue, and certainly the war must end,” he said. “But I found quickly that the issue right now is our economy. How are we going to be able to stay in our homes and feed our families and retire comfortably?”
Strimling, 40, is finishing up in the Senate after three terms. Along with his labor issues, he has been a strong opponent of legalized gambling in the state, arguing that instead of offering economic opportunity, it drains money from the people who can least afford it. He also supports universal health care.
Born and raised in New York City, Strimling went to the University of Maine for his undergraduate degree and then received a master’s in education at Harvard University before making his way back to Maine.
He often refers to his work at Portland West, an agency helping the poor in Portland, as shaping his agenda.
“For 12 years I have run an agency that works with families that are struggling,” Strimling said, adding this year has been particularly tough on people because of unprecedented price of oil.
“When you get a call from somebody saying, ‘My child is cold and I cannot heat my home,’ it creates an activism in you that you can’t let go of.”
“The economy is what scares me,” he said. “If we don’t do something about the economy today, I believe we are going to lose a generation. It’s going to be the first time that our children are not going to do better than our parents and that’s not something I’m willing to stand by and allow happen.”
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