BLUE HILL, Maine — Madeleine Gay Leach of Castine and Jonathan Walden of Surry are the two candidates seeking the Republican nomination for House District 37.
The district includes the towns of Blue Hill, Brooksville, Castine, Penobscot, Sedgwick and Surry. The seat became vacant when the incumbent Rep. James Schatz chose to run for the Senate.
Leach, 56, holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a master’s degree in English from the University of Maine and a master of science degree in maritime management from Maine Maritime Academy. She also earned a graduate certificate in advanced research from the Muskie School of Public Service.
She is a longtime businesswoman who has started and run a day care and preschool in Castine. With her husband, Tim, and brother-in-law, she has ventured into a tour boat business, a property management business and a Laundromat. She works with her husband and a partner to manage Global Oil Solutions Northeast, a green technology business.
Jobs and the state debt are two issues Leach would tackle if elected. The debt is “out of control,” she said, and needs to be reined in.
Small business is the life blood of the state which fosters job growth, Leach said. Small businesses in Maine are being “choked with high taxes and regulations,” she said. Permitting processes often take so long that businesses give up and go to another state, she said, and often applicants get different demands from different state agencies. “They don’t know who’s in charge,” she said.
Job creation will require the state to reduce taxes and ease regulations, Leach said, but it will require the Legislature to deal with other areas, such as health care, energy costs and the transportation infrastructure to create a business-friendly atmosphere.
Walden, 36, studied business administration at the University of Southern Maine and worked for nine years at the Hannaford Bros. warehouse in South Portland. He is married and is a stay-at-home dad for four children. He has served for three years on the Surry school board.
Jobs, education and transportation infrastructure are key issues for the next Legislature, according to Walden. Overregulation and high taxes are stifling small business in the state, making it difficult for existing businesses to grow and keeping others from coming to the state. He said the state needs to “back off a little” to allow people to start new businesses and help keep existing businesses afloat.
Walden said he was troubled by reports that many Maine children are reading below grade level.
“We have plenty of teachers and plenty of money in our school systems; there’s no excuse for them not being able to read,” he said.
The schools need to focus more on what they are teaching the children, he said.
On the state’s roads and bridges, Walden said he’d like to see an independent review of the Transportation Department to see if it is being run as effectively as possible and to allocate any waste toward building and maintaining the state’s infrastructure.
The winner of the Republican primary will face the Democratic winner in the race between Ralph Chapman of Brooksville and Benjamin Wootten of Blue Hill.