Previous Offices Held
First ran for and won an at-large seat on the Brunswick Town Council in 2018. Reelected in 2021. Served five total years. Elected to the Maine House in 2022 and again in 2024. Served four total years so far. No election losses since a Student Senate race in grade school.
Top Three Priorities
First, clean water: drinking water, healthier rivers, lakes and ponds; a major infrastructure bond for wastewater management, stormwater management and drinking water infrastructure; and stronger support for the kind of local aquaculture that cleans our bays. Second, major tax reform that focuses especially on the regressive property tax burden. Third, adopting a more sustainable source of funding for roads, bridges, trails and transit.
Why are you running?
I’m seeking a third term specifically because I have unfinished business with respect to cleaning up toxic chemicals throughout Maine. The foam spill on the base in August of 2024 cannot be allowed to happen anywhere else. I am also running because state governments are the last line of defense against a federal government that has — to put it mildly — lost its way and cares more about taking from its citizens than it cares about serving them.
What is one way Maine is on the right track? What is one way the state is on the wrong track?
Over the last few years, through record funding and innovative policy changes, we are supercharging the growth of Maine’s housing stock and variety. We’re nowhere near done, but the progress is clear. For wrong track, every candidate will say healthcare, taxes, or affordability — all true. But in terms of a policy area I specialize in, too many drivers, bikers and pedestrians are dying in accidents, and we need to adopt best practices from around the country and the world to reverse the trend.
As one of several dozen legislators in your chamber, how would you make a measurable difference for your constituents?
Nobody in the Legislature will fight harder for universal access to clean drinking water than I will, especially if you are among the half of Maine families who depend on well water — the highest percentage in the nation. We must fund testing, filtration, remediation, bottled water and connection to public water. I have a bill for that. Nothing says “measurable difference” like turning on your tap without having to worry about ingesting industrial forever chemicals.
Surveys show the economy is the top concern of voters. What is a specific proposal addressing Maine voters’ economic anxieties that you’d work to make law?
I support making our tax code more progressive- i.e. built around real-life affordability, and there are many ways to do it. But to focus on one item Brunswick residents know all too well: revaluation reform. We need a bipartisan supermajority to ask voters to change the just value clause of the Maine Constitution. It’s why we all got nailed even though revaluations don’t technically change the size of the overall property tax burden.