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Paige Loud is a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

As a social worker in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, I entered this race with an understanding of the realities people here face.

One in five children in our district experiences hunger. About half of this district relies on Medicare or Medicaid. The median household income sits below $70,000 a year while the cost of groceries, rent, heating oil, childcare and healthcare keeps climbing.

As a 29-year-old navigating this America, I’m believing less and less in a future that generations before me have always counted on. One of home ownership, affordable groceries and reliable healthcare.

At the same time, we are watching billionaires and corporations make record profits off our labor, our time and our exhaustion.

Our political system still incentivizes campaigns to spend millions on consultants, television ads, opposition research, data mining and the purchase of personal information harvested from social media and online activity. Candidates are expected to pour money into the same corporate systems that so many Americans already resent and distrust.

I got into this race wanting to do the opposite.

I believe campaigns should spend money making people’s lives better now, not just convincing them to vote every few years. That means campaign offices that double as mutual aid hubs. Spaces where young people can gather safely, where communities can host food shares and clothing drives, and where neighbors can teach each other skills and hobbies. At a time of extreme isolation and division, candidates have a responsibility to reinvest campaign resources directly back into the communities they want to represent.

This year, Mainers are not going to be won over by whoever spends the most money filling up commercial space before November. They are going to support the people they actually see showing up for them. The campaign that wins rural America this year will not be the one with the slickest consultants or the biggest media buy. It will be the campaign helping people survive.

That might look like a free community dinner where a single mom can bring her kids without worrying about cost. It might look like volunteers mowing the lawn for an older couple who can no longer do it themselves. It might look like a skill-sharing platform for young adults to learn practical skills like budgeting, cooking or organizing. These things matter because they rebuild trust, dignity and connection in places that have been politically abandoned for decades.

We are exhausted. We are tired of being bombarded with fundraising texts and attack ads while wages stagnate and tax dollars fund endless war abroad. We are tired of choosing between candidates who seem completely disconnected from what everyday survival actually feels like.

This year, we have an opportunity to do something different.

Paul LePage and establishment politicians will spend millions on attack ads, glossy mailers and staged political events with members of the Epstein class and Sen. Susan Collins to convince Mainers they understand what it means to struggle. But no amount of television advertising can substitute for genuine community investment.

The candidate who wins this race will be the one people see standing beside them, not above them.