Previous campaigns and elected office(s) held
I served in the Maine Legislature, on the Rockland City Council, Knox County Budget Committee and I have a Master’s of Business Administration with a focus on public policy.
Top three priorities
Stopping the Trump Agenda: Ending the Iran War, healthcare for all and reversing the damage done by the Supreme Court, including their overturning Roe v. Wade.
Why are you running?
I believe in a world where we all belong, yet the tone set by the White House is one of exclusion. The U.S. Senate can’t or won’t stop Trump, and the very existence of our planet and our civilization hangs in the balance. I am fed up with self-serving political interests taking precedence over whether our planet lives or dies or whether our people are fed. It’s time for the people to take back their government and take care of each other.
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?
I’m a single mom, not a political insider. When the going gets rough, I Door Dash. I have about six different jobs I do, but recently, became a realtor so that’s helping. I also run the Maine Aurora Borealis Watch Facebook page, with 77,000 members. People I talk to seem to want someone like them — doing multitudinous jobs and just trying to hold things together with a smile.
What are the highlights of your plan to lower the cost of living for Mainers?
The war with Iran needs to end now. We need to instead invest in our people: resume our investment in education, green energy, jobs and food security.
Would you support term limits for members of Congress? Why or why not?
I absolutely would support term limits. Congress should be a government of the people — like the Maine State Legislature is. I love our Legislature, because it truly is the People’s House. The entrenchment has to end. This is supposed to be a representative government of the people, not corporations and special interests.
Would you support Medicare for All — expanding the current social program to all Americans? Why or why not?
Absolutely. The first thing I did when elected to the Rockland City Council was detail how the city could save millions of dollars by adopting single payer healthcare, should it become a possibility, and then I asked the council to sign a resolve supporting universal healthcare. I also introduced a Marriage Equality resolution the same night.
Would you support eliminating the filibuster? Why or why not?
Yes. I think that the Senate should be in their seats, take up the business that needs to be attended to, vote on it and then be done. Everyone else goes to work, does what they are supposed to do and then leaves. We shouldn’t be held hostage to an accidental consequence of an update to Senate rules over a hundred years ago.
Graham Platner ran on getting money out of politics. If you share this priority, what is your plan to do so?
I don’t have any money, I hoof it around and talk to my neighbors to get petition signatures, and this is what I’ve been doing for the past 40 years. I ran clean in the Legislature. I think that we need to revisit Citizen’s United, and also disclose more clearly who is in all these PACs. I think all candidates should get a set amount of money and be made to walk around and talk to people.
Do you support an end to U.S. military aid in Israel? Is Israel committing a genocide in Gaza? Why or why not?
I support an end to all war. I believe that the White House, more so in recent years with Trump’s proclivity to start wars without a vote in Congress, is more interested in procurement of natural resources or protection of oil resources rather than ideological rhetoric, but sometimes the ideology provides the excuse. The starvation of innocent people in Gaza is inescapable and painful, and the silence from our Congress and President on the matter, deafening.
Should ICE exist in its current form? If so, explain your answer. If not, what should exist instead?
I’m sitting here typing this after the shooting in Biddeford. ICE shouldn’t even exist. These agents receive very little training, no one holds them accountable, and they seemingly have a license to kill and get away with it, because no one in the Senate or the White House or anywhere else holds them accountable.
Give Susan Collins a performance grade. What, if anything, has she done well?
Susan Collins does well with constituent services. She has a very good field office team, and if you have a problem with something administrative, they get it figured out. She’s also good at getting grant money directed toward Maine. But, given her failure to do anything substantive about Trump or the Supreme Court, and in fact essentially lying to us that Roe v. Wade was “settled law,” I’d have to give her an F.
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?
We can’t benefit from her experience if she can’t do anything to stop Trump from continuing to enact policies that destroy the planet and everyone and everything on it. She can get us all the grant money in the world, but if the earth’s climate is spiraling up out of control, what use will it be?