Cutler upbeat during visit to Katahdin region

Where others see a devastated economy and a difficult business environment, Eliot Cutler sees tremendous opportunity and resources other states would kill to have. While he claims his opponents throw mud, Cutler says he criticizes records and achievement much more than people.
And where others might see an also-ran, Cutler sees the next governor in Maine.
With the election six days away, the independent candidate brought his fighting but upbeat message to the Katahdin region Wednesday. He greeted workers at East Millinocket’s Katahdin Paper Co. LLC mill, toured Millinocket’s business districts and was the featured speaker at a Katahdin Area Rotary Club luncheon meeting at Millinocket Regional Hospital.
Cutler exchanged quips and handshakes with Millinocket shoppers and storekeepers, and gave the Rotarians a rundown of goals that was notable, listeners said, for its comprehensiveness and how often he said his plans would require time and much work.
“It is going to be hard. It is going to take effort,” was a regular refrain.
Emboldened by recent polls showing that his campaign had drawn even with Democrat Libby Mitchell and was closing in on Republican Paul LePage, Cutler said he saw the rising tide of his campaign washing away his opponents by Election Day.
“We’ve come a long ways,” he said as he stood at Levasseur’s True Value Hardware & Building Supply store. Customer Linwood Davis agreed.
“There are a lot of people getting false hope from these polls,” Davis said after complimenting Cutler on the strength of his handshake. “They ought not to you.”
Cutler approached a man who had just come through the front door.
“I want to say hello,” he called.
“You’re not a sheriff, are you?” the man answered, eyeing Cutler with mock suspicion.
“We’re all feeling the love,” Cutler said wryly.
To the Rotarians, Cutler had one essential point: Much of Maine is broken, but the repair job is “the greatest opportunity for us to do something great for ourselves, our neighbors and the state.”
“We can turn the state around. We can make it soar. I want you to join me — I can’t do this alone,” he said. “It is broken, and I think I can help fix it, and this [campaign] has been more fun than anything I have ever done in my life.
“Maine can be the comeback state in the next decade.”
Cutler praised the Millinocket School Department plan to create revenue and broaden the community’s culture by recruiting Chinese students to Stearns High School, and said he would, when elected, get Homeland Security officials to allow four-year study visas instead of the one-year permits offered now.
“I have talked to [Millinocket schools Superintendent] Ken Smith about this and introduced him to people I know in China,” he said, adding that he didn’t see Chinese high schoolers as a security risk.
Cutler’s previous job as an attorney with international lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which his opponents have criticized, would be a tremendous asset to Maine, he said, given that in years to come, the U.S. and China likely will account for 50 percent of the world’s gross domestic product.
“We’d better get to know them, and they’d better get to know us,” he said. “There are huge markets there for Maine products. The middle class in China is bigger than the entire population of the U.S.”
He reiterated his plan for a three-member Energy Finance Authority empowered to negotiate low-cost deals with Canadian power producers and work with the private sector to expand Maine’s energy infrastructure. The Legislature could create that authority in one session and thereby would bolster manufacturers such as Maine’s paper mills immediately, given the surplus of electricity the state already produces, and draw new investment to the state.
It’s no accident, Cutler said, that Backyard Farms in Madison, a tomato grower that produces 120,000 pounds of tomatoes a day, is the state’s largest manufacturer and does so at a profit, thanks to Madison’s public utility.
The generation of electricity by windmills in Maine “is a good thing; it’s fine,” he said, if the wind farms are properly sited. Tapping the state’s two large natural gas pipelines and expanding lines up the state’s river corridors would draw investors to towns otherwise not quite large enough to spur industrial investment, he said.
Creating a zero-growth state government budget would be painful, Cutler said, but necessary. It would help re-establish Maine’s fiscal credibility, he added.
Resident Avern Danforth, a former Millinocket Town Council member, praised Cutler for his comprehensive vision, avoidance of negative campaign ads and for not slinging the kinds of wild charges thrown about by some of his opponents.