Building care infrastructure and economic equity
What are your top policy priorities to address the barriers and challenges facing the care work industry (child care, elder care and health care) and systemically undervalued and underpaid care workers, 80% of whom are women?
“This is one of the primary reasons I am such an advocate for universal childcare, capping it at $10 a day. My vision for this is 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 [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, because creating this childcare system will have freed up so much good labor, people that want to work, and so 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.”
Highlights from our conversation on April 17, 2026
“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.”
Ensuring reproductive and gender-specific healthcare
What are your top policy priorities to address the barriers to accessing consistent, high-quality perinatal care given the rapid closure of birthing units, especially in rural areas?
“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.”
“I don't believe private equity should be able to buy into any part of the care economy.”
Ending gender-based and carceral violence
What policy solutions do you support to address gun violence in our country, and the disproportionate impact on women and gender-minorities?
“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.”
“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.”
Developing equitable & accessible government systems
What policies or approaches would you support to ensure all 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.”
“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.”
Other notable quotes
“Part of my goal for that is I think we need to invest in our communities here in Maine to make them places that we can attract workers. And it's very hard when we have, so many limitations on, particularly for women, on where they're able to give birth, the access to that hospital, getting a young family to move somewhere where they won't be able to have the Medicare or childcare that they need is an impossibility.”
“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.”
“I helped start an organization “End Citizens United” in 2017, after Trump was first elected…it was a recognition that our democracy was eroding, in large part because of the explosion of big money, corporate interests, into our politics because of the Citizens United decision. And that this was expanding into voter suppression efforts, but was really tied to the money. So we built the largest grassroots organization dedicated to electing Democrats that were going to make broader democracy-form voting rights and anti-corruption measures, the top priority in a new Congress. We did that. The “For the People Act” was bill number one, when we took that… the House majority in 2018. It was the following year and the following year, and if it were not for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, we would have had that signed into law.”
Each profile features direct quotes pulled from candidate’s answers to our questions. Full transcripts of each conversation can be found by clicking here.