Anne Gass - Independent: On Women’s Right’s & Equality
Anne’s great-grandmother, Florence Brook Whitehouse, was a Maine suffragette who worked to win women voting rights. Anne has continued the family tradition of fighting for women’s equality with her staunch support of attempts to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the Maine Constitution to prohibit discrimination based on sex. In testimony on behalf of the Maine Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, she (and others) noted how the ERA would “help protect women from discrimination in the workplace, especially around equal pay, as well as in critical areas such as domestic violence and access to health care.” Anne also has an unswerving commitment to women’s equality and abortion rights. She fiercely supports a women’s right to safe, affordable abortion and contraception and will fight to protect those rights at all times.
Amy Arata - Republican: On Women’s Rights & Equality
The vote on the Equal Right’s Amendment (ERA) was twice brought before the Maine legislature in 2019 (L.D. 433) and again in 2022 (L.D. 344). Each time, united Republican opposition meant that the Maine ERA did not get the two-thirds majority needed to advance toward ensuring equality for all Mainers. Amy Arata voted each time in opposition to the ERA Amendment.
Regarding women’s health care rights Amy Arata supported (unsuccessful) attempts by Republicans in 2021 to roll back MaineCare coverage for reproductive care, L.D. 748 and opposed legislation, LD 820, which successfully passed, to prevent discrimination against pregnant women and require private insurers and MaineCare to cover the full range of reproductive healthcare.
Anne Gass - Independent: On Taxes & Livability
Anne has a years-long professional career writing over $168 million in successful grants to state and federal housing and human service agencies to help clients develop affordable housing, address the needs of people who are homeless, low income, refugees or have other special needs.
Anne’s service on the Gray Town Council and has kept the mill rate flat and property taxes affordable. She led a decades long effort to improve pedestrian walkways and bike paths in Gray and also launched the town’s first ever Bike-Ped Committee which led to a successful request for state funds. As a Town Councilor, she spearheaded efforts to update the Bike-Ped plan and develop a Complete Streets Policy. She’s done land conservation on Libby Hill and worked with the G-NG ATV Club to secure state funding to repair ATV trails and continues work to preserve ATV trails.
Anne also knows that seniors in the district are worried about their ability to stay in their homes because there's no public transportation. At the same time, high gas prices squeezing families' incomes, making it much more expensive to get to work and take care of their needs. When she was on the Town Council, Anne supported a nonprofit developer's application to build 27 units of affordable senior housing in the village; the new units will allow more seniors to walk to many of the services they need. She supports higher density housing development in some areas that can allow for the creation of transit hubs and is committed to exploring options such as shuttles that can help seniors get around for local services and shopping.
Amy Arata - Republican: On Taxes & Livability
Amy has consistently voted against senior and family interests, including opposing an act to include grandparents under Maine's family medical leave laws, an act regarding pay equality, and an act to support children's healthy development and school success.
In a recent candidate forum, she opposed the idea of affordable public transportation.
Anne Gass - Independent: On Education & Free Speech
Anne’s extensive list of community service activities includes her term on the SAD 15 School Board. While on the Board, she served on the Facilities Committee and led the effort to revise and rewrite the Gifted and Talented Policy for the District. She was also involved in the negotiations with the Union on the teacher, administrator, and support staff contracts. Her commitment to the children of the community did not stop with the School Board. In order to give elementary school students in the district a children's theater experience she directed four after school plays at the Dunn School, including classics such as Wind in the Willows and Charlotte's Web.
Amy Arata - Republican: On Education & Free Speech
Amy Arata put forward a bill to criminalize the teaching of “obscene material in the classroom.” This would have required teachers to obtain consent from parents before using classroom material with 'sexually explicit content,' overruling the judgement of elected school boards, and despite the fact that parents can already formally challenge a book’s usage with the local school board. This bill was heavily challenged and compared to previous attempts to ban works now considered classics of literature. According to the Press Herald: “As originally written, Arata’s bill proposed that public schools be removed from the list of institutions – such as libraries or museums – that are exempt from the law prohibiting the dissemination of obscene materials to minors. That proposal garnered vociferous pushback from educators and others who recalled the moral policing that once led schools or entire states to ban literary classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men and The Catcher in the Rye. . . . But teachers, librarians and associations representing Maine’s school boards and superintendents urged lawmakers to reject a bill that would make it a criminal offense for teachers to teach literary texts that some perceive as obscene.” The bill did not pass.
Anne Gass - Independent: On the Right to Vote
Anne supports non-partisan strategies such as installing secure ballot boxes, early voting, vote by mail and in-person.