David Costello of Brunswick is a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate.

While many, including most in the press, have declared Maine’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary over, there’s still time for voters to consider whether the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee is the best person to take on Sen. Susan Collins in November. Perceptions of political viability can, and often do, change overnight.

I believe that my personal story, education and government experience contrasts more sharply with that of Sen. Collins than does Graham Platner’s. 

My lived experience is rooted in many of the same challenges working-class Mainers face every day, and my extensive government service is broader, deeper and more hands-on than Sen. Collins’. Moreover, I believe that my experiences equip me with the kind of knowledge and perspective sorely needed in Washington today.

I was born in Bangor and raised in Old Town by my mother and mill-working grandparents. My father, an Army veteran and labor organizer, died at the age of 31 due to hazardous working conditions he faced as a teenager. I know what it’s like to have to hustle to pay bills, compile years of debt and go long periods without health insurance and healthcare. 

Like many in Maine, I began working at an early age and worked my way through the University of Maine, George Washington University and the London School of Economics. And I subsequently served for more than 30 years in senior-level government and non-governmental organization positions, both in the United States and abroad.

These positions included serving as a top aide to Maine’s secretary of state, the mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland; as a deputy and acting secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment; and as a county program manager and regional team leader for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID-OTI). These positions involved implementing and managing, not simply legislating or talking about, complex multimillion-dollar programs and operations. 

These programs and operations included working closely with the U.S. Army, State Department, United Nations and foreign aid organizations overseas — and various state and local government agencies, businesses and non-governmental organizations in Maine, Maryland and elsewhere.

They are programs and operations that resulted in election and motor vehicle safety reforms in Maine; improved schools and family assistance programs in Baltimore; the implementation of ambitious job creation, education, healthcare, crime reduction and environmental protection programs in Maryland; and the completion of more than 3,500 peace and community-building projects in conflict-torn Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia. 

I believe experience matters, but so too does my decades-long commitment to substantially reforming our nation’s governing practices and institutions and eliminating the excessive and corrupting influence that money, wealth and disinformation have over our politics and government.

I am also fully committed to enacting far-reaching legislative and constitutional reforms to not only salvage our democracy, but to also better protect our rights and freedoms and to enable us to finally tackle such pressing challenges as: unaffordable housing and healthcare; insufficient retirement security; economic inequality; gun violence; shoddy infrastructure; and climate change. Because only then are we likely to achieve the more perfect union envisioned by our most thoughtful founders and forebears.

The contrasts between my lived and work experiences and reform agenda and Susan Collins’ couldn’t be starker. Given this, I believe that I am the best qualified of the two remaining Democrats on June’s ballot to challenge and defeat Sen. Susan Collins in November.