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Guest Speaker: Our guest speaker was the last in the series of gubernatorial (weird word, sounds like we are electing Gomer Pyle) candidates, Terry Hayes. Conrad got to know Terry in Augusta when she was in the legislature. One day, she apparently felt Conrad was stressed and she invited him in to make a puzzle. The puzzle apparently had 20 large pieces and Conrad was more stressed when he left Terry’s office than when he went in.
Terry Hayes was very engaging and said that the election is like an 18 month job interview and she preferred to handle her presentation to our club like a job interview, so we asked her questions. She is an independent and a clean elections candidate so we paid for her campaign. She has run a very positive campaign with no negative ads.
The following are some of her answers to our questions.
- She does not support question 1. She feels our tax system needs an overhaul with the income tax going down and the sales taxes being broadened to cover more stuff.
- She is running for governor because Maine needs an experienced collaborative leader. She was a guardian ad litem in the court system for years so she knows how to facilitate agreements. She said right now the executive branch is at war with the legislature and that has to stop. We have gridlock now and it is the governor who sets the tone.
- She admitted she had no real qualifications to be Treasurer other than the fact that she got more votes from the House and defeated an incumbent Democrat treasurer.
- She graduated from Catherine McAuley high school and Bowdoin and got her MBA from Thomas College in 2014. She was in the state house for 8 years after losing her first election and winning her second election by 9 votes. She was the assistant majority leader to Emily Cain.
- She would raise the gas tax to fix roads.
- She would scrap the 55% education funding mandate which has never been met and she endorses a state-wide teacher contract which would standardize and raise teacher compensation. She pointed out that a new teacher who is single with two kids qualifies for public assistance given the low starting teacher pay.
- She would support $100,000,000.00 bonds to expand broad band service in Maine with the facilities being state owned but privately run.
- She admitted she does not know enough about the proposal to run a power line through Maine to take a position which was refreshing. She did say that Maine has the cheapest electricity in the northeast (who knew?) She really does not know how the power line corridor would benefit Maine.
As a bit of a political junky I found Terry to be a breath of fresh air. Having said that, I am afraid that she has no chance of being elected because she has been outspent and unfortunately in many instances money wins. While Maine may be pissed off at Governor LePage’s approach, that fact remains that unemployment is incredibly low so things are probably not bad enough to create the ground swell of support needed to “throw the bums out” and elect an independent candidate like Terry. Who knows, she lost in her first shot at the State House, maybe she will take another shot at the Blaine House in 4 years.