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Maine voters are being bombarded by campaign ads featuring long lists of political endorsements. Candidates proudly flaunt rosters of legislators, completely ignoring a stark reality: While public trust in federal politicians was at 70% in the 1970s, it is now at a dismal 28%. Bragging about the backing of an untrustworthy political establishment explains to me why these challengers are failing miserably in the polls.
I think the establishment is panicked because Republican gubernatorial frontrunner Bobby Charles’ polling numbers have been as high as the sum of all six challengers combined. Seemingly unable to compete on policy, opponents have launched desperate, misleading AI attack ads to drag him down.
They’ve also claimed that Bobby cannot win the general election. I think this narrative defies basic math: If Bobby, with an overwhelming lead, supposedly cannot win, how could any of these trailing losers — who cannot even win their own party primary — hope to win a general election?
While opponents lean on political cronies, Bobby Charles aligns himself with engineers — a profession enjoying trust levels over 60%. Engineers are smart, trustworthy, competent, and proven problem solvers. That is exactly what Maine needs to fix our crumbling systems.
To truly turn our state around, we must reject more of the same. I think we need to elect Bobby Charles and pair him with a conservative Legislature. Together, they could likely get an attorney general elected who would aggressively treat fraud as the crime it truly is, and together deploy an engineering team to solve the energy dilemma taking down our state.
James C. LaBrecque
Bangor