Full name: Michael Wakefield, 30

Address: 5 Silver Ridge, Windham

Family: Married with two children

Michael Wakefield is the Green Independent challenger for House District 110, comprised of portions of Windham and Gray. A landscape foreman, Wakefield has lived in Windham for three years.

Maine’s natural resources are not only the source of its beauty, Wakefield said, but the ticket to its economic future. Technologies for wind, solar, tidal and hydro power are the wave of the future, and that’s a wave Mainers need to catch, he said.

“Maine should be a pioneer in the industry. We are a small state and we have to use our resources wisely,” said Wakefield. If elected, Wakefield would use the power of his office to promote the creation of fair-paying jobs related to alternative energy. “I think Maine should be right up there as a leader with the new technology.”

Wakefield also supports the reintroduction of industrial hemp as a viable crop. Hemp, he said, has a wide variety of applications, as it can be used as a source for biofuel as a replacement for corn, as fiber for paper, and to create clothing material, among other uses. The United State is the top importer of hemp, Wakefield said, so the country is missing out on the tax revenue and jobs that could be created if it were grown domestically.

Hemp is illegal because people don’t understand its distant relationship to marijuana, and because of the power of the corporations that control alternatives to hemp in the biofuel and plastics industries. Those entities have made people fear legalizing hemp would lead to crime, Wakefield said.

“It won’t lead to anything but economic stimulus,” he said.

Wakefield wants Augusta to turn its eye to food safety. It is important that people understand where their food comes from, and how to keep it safe and the agriculture industry sustainable for the long haul, Wakefield said. He would start by educating students on organic farming.

“People are detached from where their food comes from,” Wakefield said.

He is also concerned about the privatization of the water industry in Maine. More regulation is needed to help protect the water supply from corporate interests that are increasingly a part of the equation in Maine, he said.

“If they are taking it from the ground, it really is everybody’s water,” Wakefield said.

Michael WakefieldMichael Wakefield