Why I am Not a Democrat

“I love you!” the man yelled. I’d never met him before, but I’d just told him that I was running for as an Independent for the Maine House District 104 (New Gloucester/part of Gray). I couldn’t even get out the rest of my spiel. That was enough for him. “I love you right back,” I told him.

While most people don’t profess their love upon meeting me, I’ve met many voters who are thrilled to hear about my running as an unenrolled candidate, which is what I mean when I say “Independent.” Like me, they believe legislators ought to work for the people, not the parties.

Voters also like hearing that I chose to be a Clean Elections candidate. This means that the only way I’ve been able to raise money from my campaign is through $5 donations from voters in my district, which the State of Maine then matches. If elected, I’ll owe nothing to anyone- except the voters. It’s a beautiful program and, honestly, we should expect this of all our candidates. [Note: I’ve maxed out my contributions and can’t accept any more, but thanks for the thought!].

Why run as an Independent? My values run closer to the left end of the political spectrum, so why not just be a Democrat?

Fundamentally, I’m naturally independent. Anyone in my family will tell you this; I’ve always made decisions based on what I think needs to happen. Here’s one example; I’ve worked for myself for 29 years. I started my business in 1993; our children were then ages 1 and 3, and I hated driving two hours round trip four days a week to my job at the Maine State Housing Authority. But Maine was emerging from a recession and I found no other job that fit my needs and interests. I cobbled together six months of project work and took the leap of faith. I had never planned to start my own business but discovered almost immediately it was my dream job!

My business, ABG Consulting LLC, helps nonprofits and local and state governments operate programs that help people in need lead stable, successful lives. I started it before the internet and the gig economy- we were faxing documents back and forth! What I was doing was unusual, especially for a woman, and I had to create the market. I loved that I could choose the projects and clients that were the best match for what I could offer, instead of being told what to do by a boss, and I could set a schedule that worked for myself and my family. Often, that meant working late at night after the kids went to bed—sometimes all night if I had pressing deadlines—but I was so happy to be making my own decisions I never regretted the crazy hours. I’ve absolutely loved the work I’ve done in Maine and nationally; one metric of my success is that I’ve written almost $170 million in successful federal grants, with most of that money coming to Maine to help with homelessness, refugee resettlement, programs for disadvantaged youth and much more. I wasn’t trained as a grant writer or in business management, but hey, I’m independent and I figured it out.

Here’s another example. In the late 1990s I began reading through boxes of papers that had belonged to my great-grandmother, which are now housed at the Maine Historical Society. Eventually I discovered she had led Maine’s fight for women’s voting rights (“suffrage”) from 1914–1920, but that she was barely referenced in Maine’s suffrage history. I wasn’t a history major so it wasn’t surprising when a local historian told me I shouldn’t take on this project myself. I knew nothing about suffrage history or how to write a book, but in 2014 I published Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine’s Fight for Woman Suffrage. I’m now considered Maine’s expert on our state’s suffrage history, and have given dozens of talks on this topic. In 2021 I released a second book, this one a historical novel called We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip, based on the true story of an epic cross-country road adventure four women undertook for suffrage in 1915. I’d never written a novel before but hey, I’m independent, so . . .

I’ve applied that same ethic to my volunteer work in Gray, which I view as a 30+ year apprenticeship for my run for State Representative. I’ve volunteered in my kids’ classrooms and directed four full-length children’s plays at Dunn School, served on the school board and on various town committees, done land conservation and trail building on Libby Hill, and most recently was Vice-Chair of the Gray Town Council.

Throughout, I’ve sought to understand how local government works, and have listened to what people want. Low taxes are a given, but beyond that- what sort of town do we want Gray to be? My interests became increasingly focused on Gray’s village center. Ten years ago I started the Gray Bike-Ped Committee to focus on bike and pedestrian safety planning, especially in the village, but I had to do it outside of the town government structure because at that point the Council wasn’t interested. “I don’t believe in sidewalks,” one Councilor told me then. Undeterred, I found some allies and we eventually produced Gray’s first-ever Bike-Ped Plan, which the Council adopted. On the strength of that I wrote a grant to the state’s Recreational Trails Program, and we were awarded around $31,000 for the first segments of the Village Area Loop Trail (VALT), which our plan had envisioned to get people around the Village off-road as much as possible.

We received significant blowback on this project; I was told it would increase the town’s liability, people would be injured, there would be vandalism and crime, it would be abused by ATV riders. None of those things was true. In fact, the VALT has become popular beyond my wildest dreams. Thanks to the efforts of the amazing Mary Sweeney Underwood, every Monday-Wednesday-Friday 30 seniors meet behind Pennell to walk miles on the VALT using Nordic trekking poles to improve their stability and strength. They’ve made new friends and are now helping out the Recreation Department’s short-staffed after school program.

The Council and the people of Gray are now strongly in favor of revitalizing Gray Village, and in the next two to four years we’ll see significant changes toward making it more bike, pedestrian, and business friendly (these things take a long time to plan!).

I could cite many more examples of my independence, but I think you get the drift. One of my heroes is Shirley Chisholm, an African American woman who ran for President in 1972. Her campaign slogan was “Unbought and Unbossed,” which describes my Independent, Clean Elections candidacy exactly. As your State Representative you can depend on me to listen, and to make decisions based on what our towns and people need and want, even if it means going against the parties and doing something that none of us has tried before. That’s independence, and that’s what I love to do.