RAYMOND – An advertisement that has run in local newspapers in recent weeks is shaking things up just before June 11’s municipal election in Raymond.

The ad, which states its support for “positive government,” is notable not only because 250 people in the small town were willing to sign it, but also because it is the brainchild of two Raymond residents who are political opposites: the conservative Joe Bruno, who served as House Republican leader during his days in Augusta, and Frank McDermott, a liberal Democrat who describes his and Bruno’s political philosophies as “oil and water.”

The ad is also notable for another reason. It doesn’t mention the target of McDermott and Bruno’s campaigning, namely Selectman Charley Leavitt and Budget Committee member Dana Desjardins, who are seeking the two open seats on the Board of Selectmen. They are running against Teresa Sadak and Michael Reynolds.

Desjardins and Leavitt, who are longtime friends and have served on the Board of Selectmen together and separately in the past – Leavitt is on the board now while Desjardins serves on the budget committee – have long sparred with Bruno. Sometimes the sparring gets heated. After a board meeting last year, when the cameras had stopped rolling, Bruno let loose on Leavitt with a barrage of name-calling. Leavitt usually does his “sniping,” as Bruno calls it, on camera with a calm demeanor. While Desjardins isn’t on the board, he left one meeting several years ago shouting “RINO” – Republican In Name Only – after Bruno lodged a vote with which he disagreed.

Earlier this year, Bruno, tired of what he sees as Leavitt and Desjardins’ negative behavior, told the Lakes Region Weekly that he would do everything he could to defeat Leavitt in the June election. Helping to pay for and contact signers is one method, he said, while lawn signs, in which Sadak’s and Reynolds’ signs appear together on lawns around, the area is another.

Contacted again earlier this week to talk about the ads that prominently display his and Frank McDermott’s names, Bruno said he’s been overwhelmed with feedback from the ads, and that given the support for Sadak and Reynolds, he’d be surprised if Leavitt or Desjardins were elected Tuesday.

“We sat around the table and said, what are we going to do,” Bruno said, referring to McDermott and several others who are working on the campaigns of Sadak and Reynolds. “We wanted to run an effective campaign, and this is our way of doing it.”

Bruno said he is “tired of being personally attacked and I think a lot of people have seen the boorish behavior and they’re tired of it, too. I haven’t done anything wrong. Yet Charley attacks me constantly. And people, I think, are smart enough to know I haven’t done anything to deserve those kinds of attacks.”

Bruno, whom Leavitt has described as the “King of Raymond,” is hoping for a more collegial, civil Board of Selectmen going forward.

“For me it’s all about having a select board which can work in a positive way and make the town of Raymond better, and that’s what we’re trying to do. People in Raymond are tired of this negativity coming out of Charley,” Bruno said. “Now he claims he represents the people of Raymond, blah, blah, blah, whatever he wants to say, but he festers and fosters a negative atmosphere both on the board and at the town office through intimidation and false allegations. And people are tired of it. You know, you don’t get 256 people to put their names in an ad unless they’re tired of it also.”

Both Desjardins and Leavitt declined comment for this story. Leavitt did issue the following statement via email: “The main questions before Raymond voters are ‘Can a McBruno SuperPAC sell happy meals and buy an election?’ ‘How much will it cost?’ and ‘Will Raymond finally become a one boss town?’”

While Desjardins and Leavitt didn’t want to comment on the upcoming race or the ad, Sadak and Reynolds said they don’t want to talk about their competition. Instead, they want to focus on promoting positive government, as their newspaper ad indicates.

Sadak, 49, of 207 Webbs Mills Road, spent three years on the Raymond School Board prior to consolidation with Windham and one year on the Regional School Unit 14 board. She is known to speak her mind during public meetings. She’s never served in municipal government and was motivated to run after watching a February discussion of the selectmen.

“My motivation is to get positive government back in Raymond. It’s too negative. It’s constant negativity. And in this town, there are a lot of volunteers, not a lot of town employees, and when you’re constantly berating them publicly, constantly badgering them, belittling them, it needs to stop,” Sadak said.

Sadak was deliberately careful not to name names, saying that, in itself, would be negative.

“The meetings aren’t getting anything done because certain individuals tie things up,” she said. “I’m going to leave it at that just because I’m trying to run a positive government.”

Sadak says the ad has brought people out of the woodwork who feel as she does.

“It’s bizarre, the overwhelming response we’ve gotten from supporters. People are calling us to be put on the list. People are calling us to put signs on their lawn. They want change,” she said.

Reynolds, 50, of 5 Keilt Drive, has served on the board for three terms, or nine years, much of it with Leavitt or Desjardins seated nearby on the dais.

Reynolds’ motivation for seeking a fourth term is to continue what he describes as providing an “even-keeled approach.”

“I’m proud to live in Raymond and I believe that you should volunteer in your life and this is the way I’ve chosen to volunteer. And if I give something back to something I’m really proud of, then that’s a great motivator,” he said.

He, too, wants to see positive government and is tag-teaming with Sadak to share expenses. Their lawn signs usually are located adjacent to each other, and they are sharing the costs of running the campaign, which is something he’s never done before.

“Teresa and I, we are running together. We’ve decided to hitch our horses together and run as a team, and that makes it a little easier from a fundraising point,” Reynolds said.

The newspaper ads and lawn signs have cost about $2,000, four times the amount he has spent in all three of his previous elections.

He’s also running on the “positive government” platform, and when asked if the notion of positive government might violate the spirit of debate, Reynolds said, “You can have disagreements and 3-2 votes and if everybody is civil about it nobody goes away thinking it was a bad discussion. I do believe some people go away from our discussions thinking it was bad, thinking it was nasty, thinking it was not civil.”

Frank McDermott said many debates in recent years have been nasty and uncivil and bring Raymond’s reputation down. He also said town employees have been harassed and intimidated. Like Bruno, he wants that to change and is trying to convince Raymond voters of the same.

“As you’ve probably noticed, Joe Bruno and I are usually like oil and water. But we see eye to eye on the need for positive government. Government in Raymond for years and years was very positive. Things went very well. And we want to continue seeing that happen,” he said.

McDermott, who ran against Bruno unsuccessfully for a State House seat and is a former school board member, also hopes new leadership will boost morale at town hall and in the public works garage.

“I’m not going to talk about either one of the opponents,” McDermott said. “All you have to do is look at videotapes, whether it’s selectmen’s meetings or budget committee meetings or whatever. We need to have a positive attitude toward what we do here in the town. You’ve got to give people credit for what they do and what they do well. I think we have some of the nicest people working for us in this town. They bend over backwards doing their jobs, never refuse to do anything and they’ve got to be supported.”

In past interviews Desjardins and Leavitt have spoken with the Lakes Region Weekly about what they call abuse of publicly owned vehicles and property. Leavitt has claimed he saw the town manager use a piece of town-owned construction equipment for personal use, and he claims the public works director works on his private vehicle in the public works garage, as do firefighters at the public safety building.

(UPDATE: The Board of Selectmen investigated the claims that Willard used a town-owned backhoe at his home. The investigation cleared Willard of any wrongdoing. Selectmen confirmed Willard had instead hired a contractor to complete the work.)

In interviews several months ago, Public Works Director Nathan White said he provides his own tools for his job and rather than transporting his tools back to his home, he uses them at the public works garage in off-hours. Fire Chief Bruce Tupper confirmed firefighters are allowed to wash their vehicles, saying it was a perk of the job and is done in many towns in the area.

Leavitt counters that he is aiming to work on behalf of the townspeople to improve the town’s policies. While he may appear to be targeting a particular town employee or set of employees, he is hoping to avoid further town liability by trying to convince the board of selectmen to update policies.

When asked about Leavitt’s aim to improve town policies, and how that may be misconstrued by some as backbiting and intimidating, Bruno replied, “Look, there are organizations of varying sizes around the state of Maine, in the corporate world, and people work on different kinds of rules and regulations of how they do things. Raymond’s a small place. We have enough policies to dictate how the town runs. We don’t just give free rein to our employees. We have policies in place that cover most of the issues we have to deal with.

“For Charley, he wants a policy for everything. You can’t do that. No organization does that. Policies are general in nature for a reason, so that someone can’t say you violated a policy because it only specified this, when in reality it was something else. So you have to have broad general terms of operation, and that’s what we have in Raymond. For him it’s not enough.”

Reynolds said the voters will have the decision Tuesday regarding the kind of leadership style they want in the town.

“I do believe everybody on the board believes they’re serving somebody. I do believe they are each committed to Raymond and they all believe what they’re doing is the best thing for Raymond. And I do believe it’s up to the citizens of Raymond to decide whether or not that’s what they want,” he said.