Maine boasts the highest voter participation rate of any state in the nation. In 2016, fewer than 3,500 people — about a quarter of 1 percent of the state’s populace — voted on who the Democratic Party would nominate for president. On Tuesday, March 3, many more Democrats will have that opportunity with the less chaotic process of a primary vote.

Maine Democrats should give Sen. Elizabeth Warren a long look as they consider their upcoming choice. She can and will defeat the incumbent in November. She is the only candidate in the field to defeat an incumbent Republican in a statewide race in the past 25 years. She did this as someone who had never previously run for elected office, in a state that had never elected a female senator. She overcame an initial 17-point deficit to defeat the incumbent. She is bold, strong, intelligent, highly prepared, and entirely unafraid of the petulance, hatred, misogyny and outright lies of the Democrats’ opponent.

When the American people put a former public school teacher in office, they will elect someone who understands the great sacrifices that were made by workers standing up for themselves to demand safe working conditions, child labor laws, an eight-hour work day and basic human dignity. They will elect someone who knows that 60% of Americans’ bankruptcies are the result of the exorbitant cost of medical care, because she co-authored such research more than a decade before her political career began.

She will fight as hard for your family as she fights for her own, because she promised to and she means it. Electing her is a wise choice for all sorts of other reasons, but among these is that she will give us more conviction when we tell our daughters that they too could become president someday.

 

Ryan Swanzey

Monmouth

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