BRUNSWICK

The race for House of Representatives District 63 between Republican challenger John Bouchard and Democrat incumbent Charlie Priest is a contest defined by party lines and perceptions.

Priest, 66, a three-term legislator, is optimistic when he describes a state that largely is on the mend, even while working through difficult issues such as budget deficits, economic stagnation and “brain drain” as Maine’s youth seek jobs elsewhere.

On the other hand Bouchard, a 53-year-old real estate agent, cited a laundry list of problems he attributes to misguided governance:

“We’ve got high taxes, high energy costs, we’ve been overregulating our businesses and companies that come into the state, very little job growth, and have really increased the size of state government a lot, which obviously keeps the taxes up,” he said.

The two candidates agree that more jobs are needed to carry Maine’s economy first into recovery and, eventually, into prosperity. However, where Priest espouses traditional democratic values of universal healthcare and effective, responsible government, Bouchard instead is a hardline conservative who would decrease tax rates and environmental regulation, as well as the size and reach of state government in hopes of increasing its efficiency.

“In the past 30 years the State of Maine has been going in the wrong directions,” Bouchard said. “Medicaid (expenses have) increased 78 percent in the last 10 years, and we’re at the point now where we can’t afford to pay the bills. We do have people who need that safety net and the funds are running out — the handicapped and elderly — and our budget is so big now that, if we keep putting more and more people on (Medicaid), we wont be able to take care of those folks the way we should,” he said.

A fiscal and social conservative, he is just getting started.

Bouchard also echoed Gov. Paul LePage’s opinion that Department of Health and Human Services is a primary culprit of overspending that has led to budget projections of a shortfall in the hundreds of millions. Bouchard advocates limiting unemployment or benefits to five years, with the amount gradually decreasing by 20 percent each year until it phases out after the fifth year.

He also proposes linking state aid to job training, so that recipients would be able to leave benefits and move into employment. But for it to work, there has to be a job available. For Bouchard, everything hinges on job creation.

“We don’t need to raise taxes, you always hear people talking about taxes,” Bouchard said. “But you never hear people talking about revenue, and that’s what feeds government. I think we’re on the right track, but it’s tough. People don’t want to live in a state with high taxes. You’ve got to get your spending under control.”

Priest takes a somewhat rosier view.

“I think we’ve been fairly successful with Brunswick Landing, we’ve added about 300 jobs out there now,” Priest said. “It’s made us the (state’s) best town that has gone from a closed base to a successful job attraction program. We have more to do, but we’re on the right track.”

He sponsored single-payer healthcare legislation during each of his previous two terms, insisting he will continue working for it even in the face of majority opposition.

He believes it is a moral imperative that most people eventually will come around to recognize.

“We can have that, as most industrialized countries do, at a price that is much lower than we pay now. Good preventive health care leads to better health for everyone,” Priest said. “You’ve heard the old wistful, truthful saying, ‘Americans will always do what’s right after they’ve tried everything else’?”

Bouchard and Priest share common ground, at least theoretically, on job creation and environmental conservation. They agree that both are critical to Maine’s recovery and that they don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Bouchard stresses that he is not calling for wholesale removal of environmental regulation. But he insists the process can be reduced without losing the intended effect.

“No business wants to come in and trash the state of Maine’s natural resources,” he said, “but you’ve got to have a good balance so that it works for both sides.”

“Jobs is the top issue because without them lots of other problems get bigger, with them lots of problems get smaller,” Priest said. “But the environment is key, too, and we’ve got to protect it.”

He recalled the fight between paper companies and naturalists in the 1970s and ’80s, when the popular slogan was “payroll or pickerels, you can’t have both.”

“Well, it’s 2012 and we’ve got paper companies and we’ve got pickerels in the rivers,” Priest said. “But the biggest problem, of course, is that we don’t have a lot of well-educated workers with skills employers need.

“We definitely need to work on that, spend more money on adult education to be able to find jobs. But $600 million (of projected shortfall) is a lot of money, so we’ve got to do more than just chip away,” Priest said. “It’s because of tax breaks the Republicans handed out and then didn’t pay for.”

jtleonard@timesrecord.com1