PORTLAND, Maine — A crowd of about 80 Greens, Democrats and Republicans attended the campaign kickoff Tuesday for Spencer Thibodeau, a 27-year-old attorney who’s running for Portland City Council. The seat he’s running for is currently occupied by Councilor David Marshall.
The crowd gathered at the Little Tap House, and snacked on complimentary hors d’oeuvres before listening to a welcome speech and official endorsement of Thibodeau by incumbent District 2 At-large Councilor Jon Hinck. Hinck told the laughing and enthusiastic crowd that Thibodeau is an “ENTJ” type on the Myers-Briggs personality test, meaning he’s a natural born leader.
“Spencer is frank, decisive, assumes leadership readily and quickly sees illogical and ineffective features and policies. You get why I like him,” said Hinck during his endorsement. “He enjoys long-term planning and goal setting. He’s well informed and well read. He’s forceful in presenting his ideas. That sounds like the perfect city councilor.”
Thibodeau’s been having conversations all around District 2 about his future vision of Portland, and aims to talk to every voter in the district. District 2 stretches from the West End to High Street, and north along the Univerity of Southern Maine campus. He said that apart from working as hard as humanly possible to ask voters for their time and support, he’s going to make sure he has fun doing it.
“There’s a lot of things that we need to do,” said Thibodeau. “Portland is a city with so many opportunities.”
Some of the things that Thibodeau said he would focus on as a city councilor are access concerns for Metro bus users, pedestrians and cyclists.
“We need to prioritize Portland as a walkable city, and we need more protected bike lanes,” said Thibodeau. “Are we going to be a young vibrant city of the 21st century?”
According to Thibodeau, while the conversations happening in City Hall are important, “we’ve kind of “gotten away from the basics of government,” and need to ensure that basic city services are being delivered efficiently.He cited the practices of Portland, Oregon, as a likely model for balancing growth with maintaining a sense of community.
“Portland [Maine] has a 20th century infrastructure right now and the people are asking for more,” said Thibodeau. “People should be able to get from downtown to the airport in less than 40 minutes.”
Ian Jacob, president of the West End Neighborhood Association, agreed with Thibodeau’s points about transportation and accessibility. He came to the event to learn more about Thibodeau’s background and vision after receiving a personal invitation.
“We do need to focus on better funding for our public transportation,” said Jacob. “We’ve got limited space on this peninsula and there’s better options than cars for getting around.
Thibodeau also stressed that he’s aware that he’s running during a time where city services are constrained by tight budgets.
“Of course it will cost money, but I think that District 2 needs a seat at the table when making those hard choices,” said Thibodeau.
Apart from making city services more efficient and public transportation more accessible, Thibodeau also wants to strengthen links between the city’s schools and universities. He mentioned the University of Southern Maine as a school whose students are assets and that Portland needs to embrace their wealth of knowledge. One way of doing so, he said, would be to foster internships in which USM students gain experience in ways that benefit the city.
“My hope is that we can use those students, to provide new solutions to the way the city does things,” said Thibodeau.
Melissa LaChance, election administrator at the city clerk’s office, said that there are no official candidates running for any seat at this time. Her office won’t be accepting nomination papers until Aug. 11. Potential candidates are required to register if they intend to begin any fundraising efforts and besides Thibodeau, Matthew Coffey and Brandon Mazer have done so.