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Michael Jennings of Birch Harbor is a retired financial consultant. His company provided innovative computer lease financing for Fortune 500 clients for two decades after his graduation from Harvard Business School.
I have spent my entire professional life in finance, where numbers tell the truth whether we want them to or not. Balance sheets do not bend to wishful thinking, and budgets do not care about political talking points. You either manage resources responsibly or you pay the price.
For years I have worried that Maine’s government is heading toward the latter. I have been looking for a leader with both the discipline and the lived experience to steady the ship. Over the past several months, I have come to believe that leader is Owen McCarthy.
I should say up front that I did not know Owen well before this campaign. We had mutual friends, crossed paths occasionally, and I knew him only by reputation. A smart engineer. A successful entrepreneur. A kid from Patten who co-founded a fast growing company in the healthcare technology space.
But seeing someone’s resume and seeing how they operate up close are two different things. Since spending more time with him on the trail and hearing him speak to people all over the state, I have become convinced that he is exactly the kind of governor Maine needs.
Owen’s background is not the polished biography we usually get from candidates. He grew up in a trailer on his grandfather’s land as the son of a third-generation logger and a second-generation lunch lady. He was the first in his family to go to college and went on to build a nationally recognized business that created good jobs right here in Maine. Owen has every credential to sit in a boardroom, yet he carries himself with the grounded ease of someone who has never forgotten where he came from. That matters in a state like ours.
A few months back, I introduced Owen to a lobsterman I know personally. Lobstermen work brutal hours in difficult conditions and do not impress easily. They can smell arrogance a mile away. Within minutes, it was clear that Owen spoke his language. Not with poll-tested platitudes, but with genuine curiosity and respect. He listened. He asked smart questions. And he made it clear that he sees them as the beating heart of the Maine economy.
Later that week, I watched him turn around and have an equally comfortable conversation with business executives in Portland about balancing the state budget, cutting red tape, and aligning education with the jobs of the future. That ability to move between worlds, without changing who he is, is not something you can fake. It is something you either have or you do not.
As someone who has reviewed more budgets than I can count, I can tell you that Maine desperately needs a leader who understands financial discipline. Families live within their means. Businesses live within their means. Government should too. Owen gets this instinctively.
I have heard him say more than once that when you grow up counting every dollar, and when you start a business where payroll depends on smart choices, you learn to make priorities. You learn to stretch resources. You learn to ask what is working and what is not. Those instincts are missing in Augusta today.
But fiscal discipline alone is not enough. Maine also needs a strategy to spread opportunity to every region of the state. Owen talks about this constantly. He wants to make sure kids from Millinocket, Patten, or Fort Kent have the same chance to thrive as kids from greater Portland. He wants to revive our mill towns with innovation and rebuild a housing market that working families can afford. And he wants to make sure that no one who works hard is priced out of the state they love.
I believe Owen McCarthy has the rare combination of business sense, lived experience, and human decency that Maine needs right now. I hope more people give him the chance I did to see it up close.