Greg Kesich confuses fiscal conservatism with economic depression. Characterizing Maine as “fiscally conservative” (“Governor’s race could echo all the way to Washington,” July 7) might be laughable were it not ludicrous.

Numerous studies across the spectrum, including the Brookings Institution’s “Charting Maine’s Future,” emphasize the relationships among Maine’s fiscal imprudence, its high taxes and low standing as a business-friendly state.

Three times, Kesich raises the minor issue of same-sex marriage while barely acknowledging the overwhelming concerns of a majority of Mainers: Where are the good-paying jobs that will enable them to support families and retain our best educated young people?

Paul LePage was so decidedly victorious in June because he gets this better than all his opponents.

He will succeed in November because he knows from personal experience, in a way his opponent cannot, how to leverage these concerns into practical political action.

Attempting by innuendo to paint him as an iconoclast, when the source of his political strength is success in reaching out to a heavily Democratic audience, fails the test of reason.

As one of those fiscally disciplined, socially moderate, “Snowe-Collins Republican” types that Kesich seems to believe are a voting monolith, I saw no alternative to Paul Le- Page in June as I see no alternative to his victory in November.

I am pleased to know and support this man who will be Maine’s next governor, and look forward, indeed, to his victory not only echoing all the way to Washington but re-echoing across the country in that famous political maxim from 1888 — “As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”