Probate Judge Carol Emery and Register of Probate Julie Allen are the sole Republicans who hold seats in Knox County that are elected in a partisan election.
Emery was uncontested for the seat that she has held since 1990. With this election, she became Maine’s senior Probate Judge, and is serving in that capacity longer than any of the other 15 judges across Maine.
Republican Julie Allen of Union serves as Knox County register of probate. Allen has worked for the county for 36 years and was elected register of probate in November 2024 following the retirement of Elaine Hallett. Registers of Probate are elected for four-year terms.
Probate Judges are elected from each of Maine’s 16 counties and also serve four-year terms.
Emery said politics does not come into the judge or register jobs.
“This is really not a political office. We follow state law and state Supreme Court rulings,” she said.
The office oversees matters such as estates, guardianships, and name changes.
She is married to former Congressman David Emery. David Emery served as a Republican state legislator for Rockland, being elected in 1970 and reelected in 1972. He then launched a what seemed to be quixotic race against incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Kyros in 1974.
Emery won a close race (a few hundred votes out of nearly 200,000 cast) and served for 8 years before attempting to win a U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat George Mitchell who had been appointed to the position when Edmund Muskie resigned to be Secretary of State for President Jimmy Carter. Mitchell won that race.
When David Emery entered politics, Knox County was solidly Republican. That changed beginning with the 1970s Watergate scandal, when a young Gary Fowlie of Rockland was elected to the Maine House after David Emery won election to Congress. Attorney Jean Chalmers of Rockland was elected to the state Senate in 1984, being the first Democrat to hold that office since the 1930s.
County commissioner seats were traditionally held by Republicans. Upon Richard Parent’s retirement in 2024, all three seats became held by Democrats.
Today, there are no Republicans other than Carol Emery and Allen who are registered Republicans who hold an office where candidates run under a party label. Republican state Rep. Abden Simmons of Waldoboro did not seek re-election this year and his seat was won by former Democrat and now independent Clinton Collamore.
Judge Emery is a past Secretary and President of the Maine Probate Judges Assembly (MPJA) whose membership includes the probate judges from each of Maine’s 16 counties. She has served as the Maine Probate Judges’ representative on the Committee on Judicial Ethics, appointed by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. That Committee is charged with reviewing and taking appropriate action regarding complaints of incompetency or misconduct within Maine’s judicial system.
She has also served on the Maine Probate Rules and Forms Committee, also appointed by the Supreme Judicial Court, which oversees the Probate Court’s e-filing system. She currently serves as a member of the Civil Legal Services Fund Committee, which reviews the allocation of funding to organizations that provide legal assistance to the poor and elderly.
She and her husband are residents of Tenants Harbor. They have one adult son, Dr. Albert Emery, now practicing medicine in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
This story appears through a media partnership with Midcoast Villager.