SCARBOROUGH — With just over a week until Election Day, candidates are pulling out all the stops. For the Democratic candidate in the gubernatorial race, U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, that meant calling in a favor from a former first lady, who was also a U.S. senator and secretary of state.

On Friday, Hillary Clinton was the featured speaker at Scarborough High School in a campaign rally for Michaud. Other Democrats running for office, like Emily Cain, who is in the second district U.S. Congressional race, and Shenna Bellows, who hopes to be the state’s next U.S. senator, also made an appearance. All made a plea that those in the audience do all they can to get out the vote for Michaud and his fellow Democrats.

Maine’s current governor, Republican Paul LePage, who is running for a second term as the state’s leader, was painted as an obstructionist, divisive and having done little to help the state recover from the recession.

“This election raises to me a lot of important issues about how we’re going to work together,” said Clinton. “This election boils down to the simple question: Who’s on your side?”

Michaud, she said, “will make sure Maine’s economy works for everyone, not just a privileged few.”

“Who will go to Augusta and make it absolutely clear the governor is the servant of the people?” asked Clinton.

“I think there’s only one answer, and that’s why I like Mike,” she said, echoing the “I like Mike” statement that was written on signs and chanted by the crowd.

While Clinton was the last speaker of the night and followed a speech by Michaud, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, the one Democratic politician at the event who isn’t on the November ballot, spoke before him.

She spoke about how the former paper mill worker ran for the state Legislature, and won, because he was worried about the health of the Penobscot River. She spoke about his support for the environment, renewable energy, women’s reproductive rights, expansion of the local food and farming system, increasing the minimum wage, education, and other issues important to Maine’s middle class.

Having worked with him in the U.S. Capitol, said Pingree, “He was a well-respected member of Congress.”

Michaud, she said, “is a solid person of deep integrity who always remembers where he came from.”

Michaud focused his message on his ability to work across the aisle, something he said he did when he was president of the Maine Senate and has continued to do during his years in Congress.

That is just one of the ways he’s different from LePage, said Michaud, adding that the current governor uses issues to divide Mainers.

If elected, he said, from his first day in office he will focus on some of the state’s problems that LePage has failed to solve, such as, people working too hard with little to show for it, not enough capital to lend to Maine businesses, underfunded schools, the growing debt of the state’s college students and child hunger.

“LePage doesn’t share our vision,” Michaud told his supporters. “For four years, he has worked to divide all of us, and our economy has suffered as a result.”

“I’m committed to bringing us back together,” he said.

— Staff Writer Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 324 or dmendros@journaltribune.com.