Hancock County has effectively not had its own sitting probate judge for more than a year, but that will change following the November election contest between two local lawyers.
One of them, Matt Foster, is a former local district attorney who lost reelection in 2022 after he was caught lying during a candidates forum.
Foster, a Republican, is competing against Democrat Brian Thomas, a former archaeologist and current Lamoine land trust lawyer, to fill a seat that’s been largely in limbo since April 2025.
The county’s current probate judge, William B. Blaisdell IV, has been suspended both from his part-time job presiding in probate court and from working as a lawyer after facing a string of contempt orders in neighboring Waldo County for repeated overdue child support payments to his ex-wife. He also admitted to a judge to not paying state or federal income taxes for at least three years, according to court records.
Blaisdell, who turned himself in at Hancock County jail in mid-March after he failed to appear in court, is barred from practicing law for the next three years or from presiding on the bench. He is listed as Hancock County’s elected probate judge on the county’s website, but did not seek to run for re-election.
Thomas decided to run in June as a write-in candidate after learning that no Democrat — or any candidate — was planning to challenge Foster for the seat.
“I didn’t think that was a good approach to finding a judge,” Thomas recently told the Bangor Daily News, adding he didn’t think judges should be partisan elected officials in the first place. “The system is what it is, so we live with that. There is a candidate on the Republican ticket, and I don’t feel like that is somebody I have a lot of confidence in to be handling a position like that.”
Foster was investigated by state officials in 2017 and 2018 — while he was the district attorney for Hancock and Washington counties — for allegedly inappropriately touching a 13-year-old child living with him at the time. He later denied the allegations and was never charged with a crime.
Foster lost his 2022 reelection bid as the two counties’ top prosecutor post after lying during a candidates forum about whether he had ever been investigated by the state attorney general’s office. He lost his re-election bid to current District Attorney Bob Granger.
“What strikes me about that is that this was a person whose first instinct was to lie, and I just don’t think that’s the right temperament for being a judge,” Thomas said of Foster.
Also, in 2020 when he was district attorney, Foster was accused of posting a racist meme on Facebook that mocked looters who pillaged stores during protests over the death of George Floyd, the Ellsworth American reported at the time. Foster denied being responsible for the post and said that his account may have been hacked.
Foster did not respond to multiple interview requests this past week from the BDN.
The former prosecutor, who now runs Downeast Legal Services on State Street in Ellsworth, hung up on a BDN reporter in mid-March after filing to run for the seat. The reporter did not have time to ask about the race before Foster terminated the call.
Thomas received 1,300 votes in the Democratic primary in June, well surpassing the 300 needed to qualify as the Democratic nominee for the November ballot.
Thomas has never served as a judge, but he has had a wide range of jobs in the past. He was a state representative in Georgia for nine years after serving in the U.S. Army, and has spent much of his professional career as an archeologist focused on environmental permitting. He’s also worked as a newspaper copy editor and UPS driver, he said.
“I’ve been in a lot of parts of the economy, and I think I have a much better connection to the range of people that are going to be before the court,” Thomas said. “I didn’t grow up rich — I’ve lived under the poverty line and I’m the first person in my family to ever go to college — so I’ve got a background that will lend itself well to being able to talk to people, evaluate things and make good decisions. I’ll make mistakes, everybody does, but they won’t be mistakes of ego.”
Thomas described Blaisdell’s tenure as a “complete embarrassment” and a “horrible state of affairs,” noting the troubled lawyer hasn’t been able to serve for more than a year and still has refused to resign his position.
During Blasidell’s absence, the county’s probate cases — many of which involve sensitive family matters like estates, guardianships and name changes — have been handled by other probate judges from nearby counties.
“What’s really necessary is somebody to actually show up and do the job — the bar is set so low right now, it’s just sad,” Thomas said. “Presumably, there’s going to be quite a backlog of cases.”