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I believe there are multiple reasons to support Matt Dunlap over Paul LePage in the race for Congress in Maine’s 2nd District. Thus, I was sorry to learn that the Dunlap campaign was stooping to ageist attacks on LePage’s capacity to campaign and hold office when there is so much substantive policy evidence to be critical about.
We have the eight years that LePage was governor to understand how heartless and cruel he can be. Moreover, he is as crude and disrespectful as our current president, even claiming to be Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular.
LePage’s policies as governor caused real pain. He vetoed Medicaid expansion seven times, denying healthcare to nearly 100,000 Mainers. He also failed Maine’s most vulnerable families with children by imposing time limits on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) even when parents (most often single mothers) were unable to secure employment due to lack of jobs, transportation or child care, inadequate education, or their own or a family member’s disability. The consequences of this policy were profound, including an increase in homelessness, family separation and deteriorating health. LePage is hostile to reproductive rights, he favors big data centers, he opposed increases in the minimum wage, and is a climate change skeptic.
Matt Dunlap, on the other hand, supports women’s right to choose, universal healthcare and childcare, affordable housing, and the lifting of senseless tariffs. Whatever their chronological ages are, I am confident that Dunlap will work to support all Mainers and for progressive change and I am certain LePage will not.
Sandy Butler
Orono