PORTLAND, Maine — The city’s three mayoral candidates debated Tuesday night with sharper criticisms for each other, taking direct shots at leadership styles, affordable housing approaches and campaign finances one week from Election Day.
Mayor Michael Brennan went on the offensive early against challenger Ethan Strimling, who also faced barbs from candidate Tom MacMillan.
Strimling led polling in August and since announcing his candidacy has rolled out a slew of endorsements ranging from labor unions to former Portland mayors and the regional Chamber of Commerce.
Strimling has said he wants to be the city’s “listener-in-chief,” contrasting his vision for the position with Brennan’s, whom Strimling accuses of tuning out other interests in pursuit of policy objectives.
Brennan shot back at that campaign-long criticism in his opening statement during the Tuesday debate broadcast by CBS 13 and co-hosted by the Bangor Daily News.
“One of my opponents wants to go back to the old way of having a mayor that was only ceremonial and will only speak for the City Council and will not take on the tough issues facing the city of Portland,” Brennan said.
Strimling maintained the campaign was centered on leadership style and who can bring interests together in the city that for its second year faces a bitterly contested referendum over land use.
MacMillan criticized Strimling for taking money for his campaign from developers after criticizing in his opening statement a “power structure of developers, landlords and lobbyists” that he said has too much influence over the city.
“Ordinary residents are shut out,” MacMillan said.
Strimling said those donations are a sign of the breadth of his campaign support.
“We are all coming together to say that we need a new voice for the city,” Strimling said.
On leadership style, candidates disputed who is best suited to work with state government and who could disagree best with Republican Gov. Paul LePage as political leader of the state’s liberal metropolis.
MacMillan, who is registered with the Green-Independent Party, said being outside the “partisan fray” made him best suited to work with the LePage administration.
Brennan — who, like Strimling, is a Democrat and former legislator — stated that LePage’s views on government are “fundamentally different” than the vision of Portland’s City Hall and that the differences were often irreconcilable. He alleged Strimling “naively believes he is going to be able to change that” and pointed out that he was able to work through the Legislature to secure funding for city projects.
Strimling said he regularly bashed LePage in his work as a Democratic political pundit but “will work with whomever I have to work with … and if you don’t want to help, then I have no interest.”
MacMillan differs from both his opponents on the two local referendum questions, supporting both a local $15 minimum wage that would be phased in over the next five years, Question 1, and a new scenic view zoning ordinance, Question 2. That ordinance would create a 13-member board to identify the city’s scenic viewpoints, which then would be subject to new zoning requirements.
Brennan and Strimling said they plan to vote against both local referendums. They both said they will support a statewide referendum next year to raise the state minimum wage to $12 from $7.50.
The candidates clashed on the issue of how to promote more affordable housing in the city, while all stated that addressing rising housing costs would be a priority for their time in office.
The city earlier this month approved an inclusionary zoning ordinance, which sets a requirement that any housing development with more than 10 units must have at least 10 percent of those be affordable to tenants making the area’s median income, or pay $100,000 for each unit built that does not meet that affordability standard.
Brennan said he supported that change and wants to seek out ways to get nonprofit and for-profit developers to build on city-owned land and create zoning policies to accommodate other types of dwellings, such as tiny houses.
Strimling said he would add to that a goal of permitting 2,000 units of housing within five years. MacMillan said he’d triple the inclusionary zoning requirement to 30 percent of newly built units.
All three candidates will be on a ranked-choice ballot Nov. 3.