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Political Brew: School choice, a CD-2 forum preview, and LePage's travels

This week's analysts are former state senator and mayor of Portland Ethan Strimling and former state senator and Yarmouth town councilor Phil Harriman.

MAINE, USA — Republican candidate for governor Paul LePage has released an education plan. It includes a "parents bill of rights," which demands more transparency in how education decisions are made.

He wants a focus on reading, writing, and math and, as he puts it, "teaching our kids how to think, not what to think."

LePage also proposes a voucher program so students can choose to go to a public, private, religious, or charter school and bring state education funds.

"If we want to gut the public school system, then we ought to pass what Paul LePage wants," Ethan Strimling said. "All that ends up happening is the wealthy schools get wealthier, and everybody else ends up getting a worse education."

But Phil Harriman said LePage will get a lot of traction with his plan because LePage said, "we're going to put parents in charge of where their kids get their education, not the system... Give them the power to choose."

On Tuesday, September 27 at 7 p.m., the three candidates for Congress in Maine's second district will meet for a NEWS CENTER Maine' Voice of the Voter' candidate forum — perhaps the only time Democratic incumbent Jared Golden, former Republican congressman Bruce Poliquin, and independent Tiffany Bond will appear on TV together before election day.

As he looked at the task for each candidate, Harriman thinks Poliquin needs to remind voters that when it comes to things like energy policy, immigration, and inflation, "he was in office at a time when things were in better shape." 

He believes Golden needs to reconcile his pledge to control federal spending with his votes for some major Democratic bills. 

As for Bond, Harriman said she needs to explain why she's in the race and how she'll compel voters to say "she's going to represent the second district, but she doesn't live there."

Strimling said Golden needs to stay the course, "which is focusing on his record. He's trying to walk the line, balancing a Trump district with Democratic values."

He felt Poliquin must make a case for "firing" Golden and added, "Bruce needs to actually answer questions — he has a real reputation for avoiding questions."

And he said Bond should choose a left or right lane because "she's doing a little bit maybe too much in trying to take some Democratic, and some Republican voters."

Reporting in the Portland Press Herald revealed that while Paul LePage still had two years remaining in his second term as governor, he wrote letters to President Trump seeking jobs overseeing welfare reform or heading up an international aid agency.

Neither Strimling nor Harriman thinks that's going to be a problem for LePage, but his decision to leave Maine as soon as his term ended and become a Florida resident could be.

"He bailed on Maine," Strimling said, "and decided that Maine was not a place he wanted to live anymore, and he went to another state for very selfish reasons."

Harriman felt that "the changing his residence down to Florida, and then back to Maine, I suspect we may hear a little bit more about that in the campaign, and he's going to have to explain that."

Our analysts also discussed the bipartisan effort led by Sen. Susan Collins to reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the civil lawsuit filed by the attorney general of New York against former President Trump and three of his children, and Rep. Jared Golden's embrace of the Inflation Reduction Act alongside West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin.

Political Brew airs Sunday on NEWS CENTER Maine's The Weekend Morning Report.

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