About the Candidate

I am a husband of 25 years with three young adult children. We own a family farm where we sell grass-fed beef, pork and eggs. I am a financial coach for fun, teaching personal finance classes.

Education

B.A. in education from Moody Bible Institute, master’s in business administration from the University of Arizona (online)

Previous campaigns and elected office(s) held

2012 – Paris selectman – lost; 2012 (one month later) Paris selectman – won (finished someone else’s term); 2013 – Paris selectman – won

Why are you running?

I have 3 young adult children that will (hopefully) have children in the coming years. We need to give our young people the same opportunity to thrive that we had growing up. We need to improve education, fix the cost of housing and energy and make Maine affordable again. Having my MBA and having spent the last two decades in business, I am business minded and people focused.

Top three priorities

1. Hold our government accountable, shrink the budget and lower taxes.

2. Improve education!

3. Make Maine family friendly and business friendly, keeping more of our young people in the state when they grow up.

If you could change one thing about how Augusta functions, what would it be and why?

Augusta is out of touch with the reality of everyday Mainers. They are consistently making decisions that are increasing our cost of living — energy, housing, property taxes, other taxes — and then they set up exploratory committees to find out why things are too expensive. Augusta is spending money like it is going out of style and they’re not
thinking through the long-term ramifications of each and every decision they are making.

What is one policy area where you disagree with the consensus of most in your party?

I am a small government guy. I believe that our economy, our businesses and our families will THRIVE when we get our government out of the way. Our government is holding us back by the 100k+ regulations and bureaucratic red tape. History proves that when the government gets out of the way and removes the constraints on their people, the economy takes off.

What is one issue on which you’d be willing to compromise with the other party’s leaders in Augusta?

I believe our path to successfully moving forward will be through a lot of discussion and talking through the viable paths forward. I am a principled person and there are certain ideas and concepts that I won’t compromise on, but I am always willing to listen to ideas and consider alternative solutions. I acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers. The negotiation will be in the details.