Autobiography of a Republican-Turned-New-Gloucester-Liberal
I was raised in Aroostook County during the fifties in a ‘dyed in the wool’ Republican family. Family lore told me the story of my brother, who on the day it was announced that FDR had died ran through the neighborhood yelling, “Hooray, Roosevelt’s dead!” Even my parents were aghast at the embarrassment this cost them.
When I turned eighteen I, thanks to the encouragement of said brother, went off to college in Orono. I was the first girl in my family to go to college and was thrilled to be living on campus. My brother introduced me to a fraternity brother of his who had grown up in the small town of New Gloucester. His grandfather had been the Chief Justice of the Maine Supreme Court and the family legacy had been being a “Rock-ribbed Republican.” While Guy and I were in college we became members of the Young Republican Club at the University of Maine. This was about the time that the John Birch Society and Barry Goldwater were rising in importance in the Party and McCarthy was searching out communists in the arts and in government. It was also the era of Margaret Chase Smith, who I had come to admire for her courageous stands.
After we graduated and had started our little family, we decided to move to New Gloucester so our children could grow up in a town that had fostered the Sturgis family every since Dr. John Sturgis, then Judge Sturgis, and Elliott Sturgis, who ran the little gas station/grocery store that is now Link’s Variety. We found a little house that suited out needs and moved in shortly before our son Matt was born in ’68. Once we settled into our cozy little Cape on Route 100 we joined the Republican Party here in town and rose to be co-chairs of the Party quite quickly.
At the same time we were becoming politically active we also started attending the Congregational Church on a regular basis. I moved more deeply into my religious journey and began to question what my political party was doing.
It was when Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House with his Contract with America that I began to see the hypocrisy of the men in Congress. Here was the Speaker of the House who was carrying on an affair going after the President for the same thing.
The Southern Strategy was developed during the Nixon era and seemed to be quite successful for the Republicans. It continued with Reagan ads that dropped criticisms on the ‘Welfare Queens’ and Bush and his Willy Horton ads.
Then there was Reagan, Oliver North, and the mess in South America. I began to seriously question the integrity of my party and started paying more attention to comparing the Rs and the Ds. What I observed of the Republican Party’s economic agenda and its trickle-down economics policy was really a transfer of money from the middle class to the top 1% of our population.
My religious journey is what led me to become a Democrat. I did a lot of thinking as I heard one party claim to be the party of “family values” but when I saw their legislation and the behavior of the crook that they helped put into the White House I began to question what their values really were. His behavior was not following what I was taught about Christianity.
So when I hear people say that New Gloucester is not liberal, and that “we” are “not New Gloucester,” it makes me a little peeved.
This is a very small list of what Democrats have given our country:
Social security
Unemployment insurance
Medicare
Labor laws
There is a banner which hangs at the front of my church. It has a list of the behaviors that are important for us to do. These are the behaviors that we should be trying to do:
Be the church:
Protect the environment
Care for the poor
Forgive often
Reject racism
Fight for the powerless
Share earthly and spiritual resources
Embrace diversity
Love God
Enjoy this life
Those are the behaviors and a few of the actions that we New Gloucester liberals also think are important. I am proud to be a liberal, just like I am proud to be a resident of New Gloucester. I am proud to have raised two members of a fifth generation New Gloucester town family. The beauty of New Gloucester is that there are plenty of things to accomplish in our little village by the Royal River that can use both liberal and conservative cooperation to accomplish.
This blog is commentary from the author. All thoughts are their own.
