Note: Elizabeth Cote failed to qualify for the July 25 nominating convention.

Personal/biographical information pertinent to the role

Sixth-generation Mainer raising the seventh. I grew up in Waterville and Bangor. Doctor, mother of two. Served at many levels of government. Ten years treating addiction across rural Maine.

Top three priorities

Affordability: housing, heat and groceries Mainers can actually afford. 

Healthcare: I’ve watched neighbors ration prescriptions they’d already paid for. 

And politics we can be proud of again, with a senator who answers only to neighbors. These aren’t three fights. They’re one. Maine’s wealth is being extracted from under our feet, and the people doing the extracting don’t live here.

Why are you running?

My daughters asked me to. They’re eleven, seventh-generation Mainers, watching this unfold in thirty-second attack ads. You can’t answer an eleven-year-old with more words. You answer by example. These times are not normal, and in extraordinary times Mainers step up for each other. That’s what I’ve done my whole life, from a Baghdad combat hospital to the only doctor’s chair in Presque Isle. I’m stepping up now.

Our recent poll showed that more than half of Maine’s likely voters want Democrats to control Congress, and electability has already been a major issue in this race. Why are you more electable in November than the other candidates?

Every other candidate has already lost a statewide or congressional race. Collins has a file on them. She has none on me. I’m a sixth-generation Mainer who grew up in a trailer park and spent ten years as the doctor in towns campaigns never visit, from York to Aroostook. The disaffected Collins voter isn’t a demographic to me. She is me.  And she’s my patient and neighbor. I’ve already earned her trust, one exam room at a time.

What are the highlights of your plan to lower the cost of living for Mainers?

Housing first. Maine’s median home price rose 111% in a decade while incomes rose 53%. In 2015 an average earner could afford an average home. Not anymore. Build more, and stop letting out-of-state investors treat Maine housing as an asset class. Cap what families pay for prescriptions and heat. Raise wages. And ask the billionaires extracting Maine’s wealth to pay what the rest of us already do.

Would you support term limits for members of Congress? Why or why not?

I’d support them, with clear eyes. Term limits would have spared Maine the last decade. But they also hand power to lobbyists and staff who never leave, so limits alone aren’t reform. Pair them with a ban on members trading stock, a cooling-off period before lobbying and real disclosure. The deeper problem isn’t how long someone serves. It’s who they serve. Fix that and length matters less.

Would you support Medicare for All — expanding the current social program to all Americans? Why or why not?

Yes. I helped build this. In Secretary Sebelius’s office I worked on ACA implementation, in the room deciding which benefits were essential. I was on the calls explaining contraception coverage to the nuns. At the OECD I ran the first study comparing wealthy nations’ health systems: we paid the most and ranked last on everything but cancer survival and wait times. LePage then vetoed expansion five times, defying voters. 70,000 Mainers waited. Medicare works. Lower the age, cut drug prices.

Would you support eliminating the filibuster? Why or why not?

Reform it. We don’t need more ways to obstruct. We need more places where people deliberate, disagree and find common ground. A filibuster can be a brake on power for a minority whose voice is hard to hear, and that’s worth keeping. But make it a talking filibuster: if you want to stop the Senate, hold the floor and tell the country why. Margaret Chase Smith stood up and explained herself. Obstruction should cost you something. Silence shouldn’t be a veto.

Graham Platner ran on getting money out of politics. If you share this priority, what is your plan to do so?

Yes. Nearly a hundred billionaires gave Collins $9.8 million through a super PAC. Not one lives in Maine. Small donors gave $9.6 million to beat her. A dead heat. I take no corporate PAC money and not one dollar from the pharmaceutical industry. I’ve watched Mainers ration prescriptions while pharma lobbyists wrote the rules. I’d overturn Citizens United, ban dark money, and disclose every dollar. Unions aren’t billionaires. A lineman and a hedge fund are not the same thing.

Do you support an end to U.S. military aid in Israel? Is Israel committing a genocide in Gaza? Why or why not?

In Baghdad, an orange strip of duct tape crossed our ward. “DETAINEES.” Our servicemembers on one side, prisoners of war on the other. We crossed it a dozen times a day, bound to treat each as a human. It changed me. I’ve walked the crossings in Israel and Palestine. There are children on both sides. I’d condition military aid on how it’s used. The conduct in Gaza has been indefensible. A court determines genocide, not a candidate. I support a two-state solution honoring both peoples’ dignity.

Should ICE exist in its current form? If so, explain your answer. If not, what should exist instead?

No. ICE named its January raid “Operation Catch of the Day” — a manhunt branded after the industry that has fed Maine for generations. They promised the worst of the worst. Of nearly 200 taken, 11 had a record. Monday, agents killed Johan Sebastian Guerrero in Biddeford: driving to work, not their man, body cameras off. My daughters are scared. What frightens me most is what we cannot see inside detention centers. Replace ICE with enforcement answering to Congress and the courts.

Give Susan Collins a performance grade. What, if anything, has she done well?

Incomplete, and that’s the tragedy. I knew Susan Collins as a neighbor in Little City, Bangor, and a fellow parishioner. During my White House Fellowship I sat with her more than once to talk about Margaret Chase Smith’s Declaration of Conscience. She knew that tradition. She saved the ACA in 2017 when it counted, and I’ll always credit her for it. Then she started answering to the president instead of her neighbors. Maine didn’t leave her. She left us.

Collins is running on her seniority in the Senate, including her position as chair of the appropriations committee. How do you plan to refute her argument that Maine benefits from her experience?

Last month Collins became the first senator ever to cast 10,000 consecutive votes without missing one. Beginning in 1997, when I was 20 years old, I cast one of my first votes for the U.S. Senate for her. I was proud of her for that, until those votes stopped being for Mainers and started being for Trump. When did that streak stop? She chairs Appropriations. Maine women still can’t reach an emergency C-section, a global standard of care the wealthiest nation on earth fails to meet. Rural hospitals are closing. Seniority you won’t spend on us isn’t power. It’s a title.