Building care infrastructure and economic equity
What are your top policy priorities to address the challenges for care workers and the care work industry?
“One of the primary reasons I am such an advocate for universal childcare is that [I believe that] no matter where you move in this country, if you want to start a family, you know that there will be a way for you to have childcare that's kicking in at 6 months, leading into preschool, and then [into the] public education system. We've done this with public education. You can move anywhere in our country, and your kid will go to school. I think that's how we need to be thinking about childcare, and I believe that if we fund this through Congress for even 2 years, for that third year of renewal, the first people in line to get it renewed will be the Chamber of Commerce and business interests. Creating this childcare system will have freed up so much good labor, - - people that want to work, I think, to me, it's something that we can very easily turn into a norm, the way that we do Medicare and public education.”
"[I believe that] no matter where you move in this country, if you want to start a family, you know that there will be a way for you to have childcare that's kicking in at 6 months, leading into preschool, and then [into the] public education system.
Ensuring reproductive and gender-specific healthcare
What do you see as the biggest barriers and challenges facing access to consistent, high-quality perinatal care?
“Medicare for All, right off the bat, would address this, but beyond that, I think what we're dealing with is a problem we are just going to run into on a lot of different fronts, which is it's nearly impossible to make that type of care profitable. So when we mostly limit healthcare to being run by for-profit, private hospitals. I mean, I'm very alarmed by that. I don't believe private equity should be able to buy into any part of the care economy.
You can't have a town and expect people to live in that community if you're going to ask them to travel 2 hours to deliver a child. We can't continue to let them close these centers. We have a 16-month-old daughter, Ella, and we're in the process right now of having our second child. When we moved back to Maine 5 years ago, we moved to Lincoln County, and thank God there was Lincoln County Health Center there in Damariscotta. If we didn't have a hospital that was within 15 to, at most, 30 minutes from our house, we just wouldn't have been able to live there. We would have probably gone where a lot of people moving in-state go, like the Portland area. And I think if we are serious - and I am serious about revitalizing the economies in rural Maine - these are the things that we have to do.”
“You can't have a town and expect people to live in that community if you're going to ask them to travel 2 hours to deliver a child. We can't continue to let them close these [birthing] centers.”
Ending gender-based and carceral violence
What policy solutions do you support to address gun violence in our state?
“For years, I think we've just heard that Maine is a special place because we have such high gun ownership in our state, but we have such low, gun violent crime. And so, therefore, we don't need these gun safety measures that so many other states have implemented. [The] Lewiston [shooting] was a stark realization of that fallacy. And I think that's one reason the success of the red flag law passing was a win. More broadly, I think on the issue of suicide and domestic violence, this is something that would be handled at a state level, but if there are ways for the federal government to provide funding to implementing safe storage I would be all for that. These weapons should not be easily available for children, or for people who the gun is not the registered owner of. I support liability measures, so whoever does own the gun is liable for acts of violence or death that relate from their guns.”
“I think on the issue of suicide and domestic violence, this is something that would be handled at a state level, but if there are ways for the federal government to provide funding to implementing safe storage I would be all for that.”
Developing equitable & accessible government systems
What policies or approaches, if any, would you support to ensure eligible voters can participate in elections, and that people who want to run for office are able to do so?
“I think we need to approach this issue - especially given the threats to our democracy by an authoritarian who does not believe in democracy in power right now - comprehensively. We need to guarantee a right to vote for all eligible citizens as written. You're legally not able to discriminate against someone's ability to vote because of their race, or because of their gender, but there is no standalone right as a citizen to vote, and I think that's a problem we'll continue to run into. We can solve it through Congress. It doesn't need to be a constitutional amendment. We need independent redistricting in all 50 states.”
“We need to guarantee a right to vote for all eligible citizens as written.”
Other notable quotes
“The Child Tax Credit penalizes single mothers in terms of how much of a benefit they're able to get from the child tax credit, even though single mothers actually need a larger child tax credit, as a single income household with young kids. Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee - very old white men - refused to let us make this slight change to the Child Tax Credit so that there would be an equal benefit for single moms, because they said it would incentivize divorce and break up families. I think there's so much of our tax code that has that logic still behind it. We need to aggressively reform our tax system and strip it of the unknown discrimination towards women, especially, but also racial minorities, and create a tax code for the future that is gender and racially unbiased.”