BANGOR, Maine — The stage is set for an election race that pits a political newcomer, seasoned officeholders and maturing leaders against one another in a bid to fill three of the nine seats on Bangor’s City Council.
Five candidates are running for a trio of seats. Terms are expiring for Council Chairman Ben Sprague and councilors Joe Baldacci and James Gallant. Sprague and Baldacci are running to retain their spots for another three years, while Gallant has decided to forego a re-election bid.
Baldacci is a Bangor-based lawyer who was elected to the council in 1996 and again in 1999, serving as City Council chairman in 1998. He was elected again in 2011.
During a recent interview, Baldacci said he was running for re-election because he wants to “continue working on some of the issues [he’s] been working on for three years.” He said he’d like to work with officials in Augusta to ensure state revenue sharing is restored so the city can halt the trend of layoffs and tax hikes aimed at stabilizing the budget.
Sprague, a Bangor High School and Harvard University graduate, has served as council chairman for the past year. After the next members of the council are elected and sworn in, the full council will decide who should take the chairmanship for 2015.
The financial adviser said that if elected he’d focus on continuing the city’s economic growth, improving neighborhoods and maintaining quality schools. He said he spent a lot of time in Augusta over the past year, lobbying on Bangor’s behalf.
Also vying to rejoin the council is Gerry Palmer, a former five-term councilor who served as council chairman in 2008. He decided not to run for re-election in 2011. Since then, he has remained active in Bangor’s Chinese community, recently taking a trip to Harbin, China, to promote and build on the sister-city relationship between the two cities.
Palmer said work needs to be done to improve the Waterfront Concerts venue so that asset can be maintained for the city, and that officials should strive to bring high-speed fiber-optic Internet access to Bangor as a driver for new businesses.
Hopeful new candidates for the council are Sean Faircloth and Justin Freeman.
Faircloth’s name will be familiar to many. The five-term state legislator was selected to serve as majority whip in his final term in 2008. In 2009, the former lawmaker left the state to become executive director of the Secular Coalition for America in Washington, D.C.
In 2012, he published a book titled “Attack of the Theocrats! How the Religious Right Harms Us All – and What We Can Do About It,” and has been traveling the country and globe, including Australia and Turkey, discussing the importance of separation of church and state.
Faircloth, who spearheaded the effort to open Maine Discovery Museum in downtown Bangor in 2001, said he’s returning to the city to contribute and fulfill a desire to be involved in public service again, and to be closer to his children. He said that while Bangor has made great strides in growing as a city, he feels more could be done to diversify the types of business and industry offered here.
Freeman, a Winslow native who moved to Bangor in 2009 to study at the University of Maine, said during a recent interview that he is concerned with the rising costs facing Bangor taxpayers.
As a certified public accountant, he said he believes he can bring his financial knowledge to the table and help the city manage its budget or come up with new ideas that could help keep taxes down while continuing to maintain and grow the city’s services and offerings.
Bangor residents have shown in recent years that they’re willing to elect young political newcomers, including Cary Weston in 2009, Charlie Longo in 2010, Gallant and Sprague in 2011 and Josh Plourde and Gibran Graham in 2012.
This is the second consecutive election in which no woman has run for Bangor City Council. Currently, there are two women — Pauline Civiello and Pat Blanchette — on the nine-member council. Their three-year terms expire in 2015, as does Councilor David Nealley’s.
The deadline for submitting paperwork to appear on the November ballot was Sept. 5.
All five council candidates expect to participate in an hour-long forum moderated by election official Mike Gleason on Thursday, Oct. 30. It is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m. in council chambers on the third floor of Bangor City Hall.
That forum will be preceded by another featuring three school committee candidates — Marlene Susi, Susan Sorg and incumbent Warren Caruso. That is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. There are three seats opening on that committee, so the candidates effectively are running uncontested.
Election Day is Nov. 4. The deadline for requesting an absentee ballot to vote before the election is Oct. 30.
Follow Nick McCrea on Twitter @nmccrea213.