Rep. Mattie Daughtry Photo Courtesy of Mattie Daughtry
BRUNSWICK — Brunswick House Rep. Mattie Daughtry defeated political newcomer Brad Pattershall on Tuesday, securing the seat for Maine Senate District 24.
Daughtry had about two-thirds of the vote, with 18,044 votes to Pattershall’s 9,301.
The District 24 seat was most recently filled by Democrat Brownie Carson, who announced his retirement in December after serving two terms. District 24 comprises Brunswick, Freeport, Harpswell, North Yarmouth and Pownal.
Support for Daughtry was particularly strong in her hometown of Brunswick, where she took home roughly 72% of the vote.
Daughtry has represented Brunswick’s District 49 for the past eight years in the Maine House of Representatives and is the co-owner of Brunswick’s Moderation Brewing.
“I am just over the moon and really really grateful,” Daughtry said Wednesday. “It is an incredible opportunity and it has been an incredible race.”
Her campaign was not a normal knock-on-doors, shake hands effort due to the coronavirus, but instead focused on phone calls, social media and “old-fashioned” letters and postcards. But no matter how she reached her constituents, “the stories I’ve heard have fired me up,” Daughtry said. “We have a lot of work ahead of us and it’s not going to be easy.”
Education, climate and workforce development, her goals when she announced her decision to run in January, remain major political focuses, but the lens has naturally turned toward the pandemic and how it changes those issues as well as others in the state and country.
Legislators need to make sure the state has “as many resources as we need to make sure the state can handle” the next phase, she said, citing a tough winter ahead and the “very real recession we’re facing.”
From a small quiet town like Pownal to the larger, more bustling Brunswick, Daughtry said across the board, there is a “concern about navigating the future.”
“What brings us together is much larger than what divides us,” she said, and the work will have to be centered on getting Maine through the pandemic “stronger than where we started.”
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