The Local News asked candidates in three house and two senate races for the Maine Legislature to answer six questions in order to help voters make an informed choice.
Candidates were given up to 200 words per answer. We have not edited the candidates’ answers for substance, argument or viewpoint. We only lightly edited for length, obvious typos or formatting consistency. We did not fact-check or add commentary to candidates’ answers. Candidates’ answers in each race appear in alphabetical order.
Questionnaires will appear in this order:
House District 134: Allen Daggett (I), Traci Gere (D) — Tuesday (read it here)
House District 135: Scott Craig (I), Lisa Joy Pratt (D) — Wednesday (read it here)
House District 140: Wayne Perry (R), Kirstan Watson (D) — Thursday (read it here)
Senate District 32: Henry Ingwersen (D), Jason Litalien (I) — Friday
Senate District 34: Jonathan Fallon (R), Dan Sayre (D) — Saturday
Senate District 32 (Arundel, Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, Lyman, partially):
Henry Ingwersen (Democrat)
1. What specific issue facing your town or district led you to run for this seat? How would you bring this to the attention of other legislators in Augusta?
What is leading me to run for re-election is the Trump Administration’s disastrous policies and executive orders: the Big Beautiful Bill, the failed tariffs, an endless war that almost nobody wants, and the incursion of ICE into our communities. These failed policies have begun to take a terrible toll on my constituents: sky-high gas and heating oil prices, high health care costs leading to loss of affordable health care for many families, and increased food insecurity and hunger due to high grocery prices and loss of SNAP benefits. The presence of ICE in our communities has led to an unnecessary death and increased fear in our diverse district.
Even though these are federal mistakes, I will do what I have always done as a state senator: I will take what I glean from listening to the concerns of constituents in my district and work with my fellow lawmakers, our new governor, and public interest groups to create sensible legislation. As a sitting senator I have already started this work. It takes experience, listening, hard work, and working with folks to find common ground. Folks in my district need someone who is willing to fight for them — that’s what I do.
2. What would be your top three priorities in your first term?
Making healthcare affordable and accessible to those that need it will be one of my top priorities. As Chair of the Health and Human Services Committee, I believe health care is a right for all Mainers, not a privilege for a few. Housing, including low-income and workforce housing, as well as eviction prevention and emergency shelters, is another priority.
Food Insecurity: Twenty percent of Maine children are food insecure, the highest child hunger rate in New England. That was before the federal SNAP changes caused an additional 18,000 Mainers, including 5,000 more children, to no longer receive SNAP benefits. If we add the ever-increasing cost of groceries we have a worsening food insecurity problem in Maine. We should not rest until we have a hunger-free Maine.
3. What state-level policies would you support to address Maine’s housing shortage and rising cost of housing? How could you help to implement increased housing in your district?
I will support broad spectrum housing policies that we have put forward successfully in the previous legislature. I would extend the Affordable Housing Tax Credit, a program that has incentivized the development of almost 1,000 affordable housing units. I would continue support for the Affordable Homeownership Program to lower the cost of building starter homes. I would continue funding the Middle-Income Housing Support Program, which lowers the cost of housing construction for working Mainers. I would expand opportunities for working families to build and maintain small rental housing in rural areas with the Rural Affordable Rental Housing Program. I will support the Emergency Housing Relief Fund, which provides rental assistance, rehousing support and homelessness prevention services to Maine families facing a housing crisis. I will continue funding for the Eviction Prevention Program, which provides rental support to landlords on behalf of Mainers at risk of losing their homes. Finally, I will continue to support mobile home community residents by strengthening state policies to keep them in their homes and working with municipalities like Arundel, where we successfully won a fight to create a new town ordinance to protect Shady Oaks Mobile Home Park from price-gouging by out-of-state corporations.
4. What would you do to improve health care access and affordability in Maine, including the future of MaineCare funding? Would you support supplemental funding of MaineCare into the future? If not, why not?
I believe that healthcare is a right and not just a privilege for those that can pay. To that end, I would support the creation of a state-backed public health insurance option designed to lower costs through state negotiation and remove corporate profit motives.
I will continue to fully fund the state’s commitment to MaineCare. Since the majority of MaineCare costs are federal funds, I will work with our federal delegation to ensure that we get full funding for MaineCare. We also need to get federal health insurance subsidies taken away in the federal bill returned to those Mainers who rely on the private insurance market for their health care.
I support lower out-of-pocket prescription drug costs by expanding bulk and multi-state purchasing, increasing pricing transparency, and leveraging the purchasing power of state employees to cap prices based on Medicare negotiation rates.
I will continue to support bills that control skyrocketing hospital costs, which have helped create medical debt for 40% of Mainers. I support a bill I voted for last session that bans medical debt collectors from charging interest, taking wages, or placing a lien on a home.
I will continue to invest in Maine’s family planning network.
5. In terms of energy, Maine is highly impacted by the volatility of the oil market, a primary source of heating fuel for many here. Do you see any “out of the box” solutions to this dilemma? Should the state be more focused and create more incentives for heat pumps, solar power, and wind? If not, why not?
Maine is suing the federal government over the cancellation of the Gulf of Maine wind leases and the steering of those lease payments towards natural gas and fossil fuel projects. I believe we must win this battle so we can get back to our Maine offshore wind plans. Those projects will create long-term, good-paying jobs, create home-grown clean Maine energy, and help Maine meet its climate goals. We must also continue to fund Efficiency Maine’s rebate programs for heat pumps and electric vehicles to help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. These programs have been enormously successful and I will fight to continue them. I also believe we must partner with the federal government in renewing federal tax credits for electric vehicles and charging infrastructure.
6. What statewide policies would you support or initiate to help manage growing climate change effects such as power outages, flooding, and the need to adapt our infrastructure?
Maine has several funds and grant programs dedicated to mitigating the effects of climate change. These climate programs that I would continue to support include the Maine Infrastructure Adaptation Fund, which provides direct funding to municipalities, tribal governments, and state agencies to upgrade vital local infrastructure to withstand extreme storms and rising sea levels. I also support the Climate Resilience Conservation Fund administered by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust that finances land conservation projects that protect coastal areas and natural habitats against storm impacts. In addition, I support the Community Resilience Partnership that provides direct community action grants to help local and tribal governments cut carbon emissions and build climate resilience. Recent grants awarded in my district were given to Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, and Lyman. I also support the Maine Public Working Waterfront Infrastructure Fund that partners with other state and federal initiatives to help our working waterfronts adapt to sea rise and coastal flooding. We also need to look hard at the Maine Farmer Drought Resilience Grant Program to see if it is sufficiently helping Maine farmers, blueberry growers, potato growers, and other agricultural producers to overcome the effect of adverse drought conditions.
Jason Litalien (Independent)
1. What specific issue facing your town or district led you to run for this seat? How would you bring this to the attention of other legislators in Augusta?
Families in Biddeford, Dayton, Hollis, Lyman, and Arundel are paying more while schools underperform and Augusta keeps passing last-minute tax and spending bills. I watched seniors squeezed by property taxes, TIF deals that help developers more than the tax base, and a Senate that votes yes on every increase while DHHS — an agency that needs real oversight — stays a mess. That is why I am running as an Independent. I will not bring it to Augusta as a party talking point. I will bring the bills, the mill rates, the school results, and the DHHS failures to the floor and to committee with names attached: what it costs a household on Elm Street or a small business on Main Street. Other legislators respond to numbers and to constituents who show up. I will do both — open books, no backroom last-minute packages, and a simple test: does this lower the burden on District 32 or dump another cost on towns that already cannot keep up?
2. What would be your top three priorities in your first term?
Lower the tax burden by stopping last-minute spending bills, auditing waste, and putting savings toward relief for families and small businesses — especially property-tax pressure.
Second, stronger schools without spending more for the same results: reading, writing, math, less paperwork on teachers, and career and technical education tied to real jobs.
Third, real DHHS oversight. Tax dollars should serve families, not fraud, delay, and programs nobody measures. Check the books before Augusta raises the bill.
3. What state-level policies would you support to address Maine’s housing shortage and rising cost of housing? How could you help to implement increased housing in your district?
Prices have outrun paychecks because we have not built enough homes where infrastructure already exists, and because taxes, energy, and red tape add cost to every unit. I will support more supply in places that already have roads, water, sewer, and schools — not sprawl towns we have to subsidize. Major developments should include workforce housing so teachers, tradespeople, and young families are not priced out. Expand property-tax relief for working households. Reform TIF deals so they do not inflate land costs and shift the burden onto people who are not at the table.
In District 32 that means growth that follows existing capacity in Biddeford and the surrounding towns, not last-minute Augusta deals that dump housing mandates without the pipes, classrooms, or tax base to match. Affordable housing is more homes in the right places and less waste on the monthly bill — not slogans.
4. What would you do to improve health care access and affordability in Maine, including the future of MaineCare funding? Would you support supplemental funding of MaineCare into the future? If not, why not?
Access and cost both matter. Families cannot use a card they cannot get, and the state cannot keep writing blank checks for a system that loses money to waste and delay. I will push DHHS to clear backlogs, measure outcomes, and stop fraud so MaineCare dollars reach patients and providers instead of disappearing. Support rural and community providers so people in our towns are not driving hours for basic care. Lower the cost of living — taxes, housing, energy — because a medical program does not fix a household that is already broke.
On supplemental MaineCare funding: I will not rubber-stamp last-minute supplements as a habit. If the need is real, show the books, the enrollment, and where the last dollar went. If the hole is waste, eligibility errors, or poor management, fix that first. I will fund care that works. I will not vote for every increase put in front of me because the department failed to oversee itself.
5. In terms of energy, Maine is highly impacted by the volatility of the oil market, a primary source of heating fuel for many here. Do you see any “out of the box” solutions to this dilemma? Should the state be more focused and create more incentives for heat pumps, solar power, and wind? If not, why not?
Maine heats with oil because winters are real. Volatility hurts seniors and small businesses first. The answer is more supply and lower delivered cost — not one fashionable technology and a surcharge on the bill. I support a mix: keep oil and other reliable fuels available while we add options that actually cut what people pay. Heat pumps, solar, and weatherization can help many homes. They are not a religion. Incentives should go to projects that lower rates and heating bills, not to developers and mandates that raise them. Wind and solar belong in the mix if they are sited honestly, pay their grid costs, and do not industrialize the landscape for a press release. Out-of-the-box here is plain: efficiency that pays back, generation that runs when we need it, large new loads paying their own way, and no last-minute energy deals that shift costs onto households still filling the oil tank.
6. What statewide policies would you support or initiate to help manage growing climate change effects such as power outages, flooding, and the need to adapt our infrastructure?
Storms, floods, and outages are not abstract. They hit roads, culverts, power lines, and working waterfronts in our towns. Statewide, I will support infrastructure that keeps up: stronger local roads and drainage, grid repairs that get power back on, and coastal and river work that protects homes and businesses — not studies that never pour concrete. Growth should not be approved if the pipes, schools, and flood control are not there. Protect forests, farmland, and clean water so we are not paying twice — once for careless development and again for the damage. I will not use “climate” as a blank check for higher taxes and last-minute spending. Adaptation is culverts, poles, working waterfronts, and honest planning. If a policy raises rates and property taxes without hardening the grid or the road, it is not resilient. It is another bill.
