PORTLAND, Maine — Mayoral candidate Ethan Strimling demurred at a Wednesday debate when asked if he supported a minimum wage of $15 per hour and new zoning rules, two key issues facing city voters on the November ballot.
Mayor Michael Brennan, the man he’s trying to unseat, noted there are only a handful of debates left in their race.
“And at one of those, Ethan will have to answer the question about where he stands on the critical issues facing the city,” he said.
The 2016 race in Maine’s largest city is officially nonpartisan, but Brennan and Strimling are Democrats who have served the liberal stronghold in the Maine Legislature, while Tom MacMillan, the race’s other candidate, chairs the Portland Green Independent Committee.
But Brennan, who in 2011 became the city’s first popularly elected mayor since 1923 after beating Strimling and 14 other candidates, may be an underdog. An August poll from the research arm of the liberal Maine People’s Alliance said the mayor was running nearly 25 percentage points behind Strimling.
Strimling, the CEO of LearningWorks, a local education nonprofit organization, acted like a frontrunner at the debate, which was hosted by University of Southern Maine and partners at the university’s Portland campus.
He took the middle road on policy, but often talked about bringing adversaries together to discuss solutions, saying Portland government has been divided under Brennan. The current mayor disputed that characterization, saying the council has voted 5-4 on 23 issues and unanimously on nearly 1,300 since he took office.
“The mayor is the chair of the board,” Strimling said. “You don’t go into the board meeting looking to have a divided vote. You go into a board meeting saying, ‘How do I bring this group together around a vision?’”
The August poll in the race came after a run of bad publicity for the mayor, coming just days after Strimling announced endorsements from 11 city councilors and school board members. Brennan has faced criticism over his handling of a minimum wage increase passed in July.
City officials didn’t realize that the hike — from the state-set $7.50 per hour to $10.10 by 2016 — would raise the tipped minimum wage from the Maine minimum of $3.75 per hour to $6.35. Strimling, who had not yet entered the race, hit Brennan in a Portland Press Herald column after that was realized and in September, the City Council reset the tipped wage to $3.75.
During the debate, Brennan initially didn’t give a position on Question 1, which eventually would increase the city’s minimum wage to $15, though his campaign manager, Marc Malon, said Brennan is against the increase. The referendum was proposed by the Green committee and MacMillan said he supports it.
Strimling said he was “still listening” to advocates on both sides of the issue. Both he and Brennan said they support a statewide initiative proposed by the Maine People’s Alliance to raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12 by 2020.
Strimling also was mum on his stance on Question 2 on Portland’s ballot, which would create a waterfront protection zone, limiting development at the Portland Co. complex on Fore Street and creating a new task force to evaluate rules for other scenic areas.
Brennan is opposed to Question 2, saying it would hurt the city. MacMillan, who supports it, said without it, developers could alter views for residents and he doesn’t support “taking from the public to give to the private.”
Strimling said that he’s still deciding how he’s going to vote but the mayor should have figured out how to “bring those sides together” to determine a solution.
“The more important question is: How did we get here?” he said. “Where was the vacuum in leadership?”