As someone who’s served with Speaker Sara Gideon in the Maine Legislature for years, I take issue with Gideon’s recent ads, including one published in every major newspaper (Portland Press Herald, July 15, Page A3) that makes the case that she is somehow bipartisan.

In this ad, Gideon claims that she “has shown that she will work with anyone to get things done to help Maine people,” but in my experience, just the opposite is true.

In Augusta, Gideon always put politics first, resulting in partisan bickering and gridlock often associated with Washington. Just three years ago, she chose to shut down the state government for the first time in more than 20 years rather than work with the members of my caucus, whose actions she compared to “terrorism.”

She also, in my opinion, regularly went out of her way to humiliate my colleagues from the podium. Gideon claims that “she has a proven record of fighting for us,” but from my firsthand experience, she has a proven record of fighting with us.

She also continues to claim that Susan Collins is beholden to special interests including Big Pharma, even though as speaker, Gideon raised a lot of money from special interests to support the House Democrats caucus. At her very first fundraiser, in the living room of her oceanfront mansion, Gideon solicited donations from the very same corporations she now claims have a corrupting influence, with the first one coming from: Big Pharma!

Despite what she says in her flashy ads, Sara Gideon isn’t one of us, and she certainly isn’t for us.

Heidi Sampson

Republican state representative

Alfred

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