Ralph Carmona, Ph.D., of Portland is a retired public affairs executive and has been involved in state and national civil rights, public policies and politics throughout his adult life. He presently is an adjunct professor of political science and sociology at Southern Maine Community College.

The Portland Press Herald profile on Shenna Bellows’ candidacy for governor confirmed my political assessment that there is no one better qualified and prepared to be Maine’s next governor.

The article emphasizes a Hancock childhood on life’s margins with religious roots. That and loving parents provided Bellows an ethos that beckoned her toward the needs of helping struggling lives abroad and at home. It became the foundation for opposing today’s undemocratic inequities and exclusions.

None of the other Democratic candidates have served in both Maine’s legislative and executive branches of government with such depth, as state senator (elected by a Trump-supporting constituency) and now secretary of state.

No candidate matches Bellows’ national attention at challenging President Trump’s illiberal antics aimed at diminishing American democracy. She opposed his 2023 presidential ballot listing based on his orchestrating a January 2021 turned-violent demonstration to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

Bellows is against the president’s efforts to undermine Maine’s constitutional authority in conducting elections. She has acted against his unconstitutional Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions in Maine. No other Democratic candidate comes close to matching the breadth of that leadership against Trump’s authoritarian efforts.

Small wonder why Bellows has found herself in the crosshairs of GOP radicals, right-wing activists and MAGA extremists. 

But baseless partisan attacks undermine what brings people together. Since the 1980s, economic elite-driven efforts have decreased mainstream public policies, diminishing America’s middle class embrace of a civil rights-driven cultural diversity. The result has been tribal wars with both political parties’ knee bending toward an oligarchic form of undemocratic governance.

The consequences are inequities in mainstream needs regarding healthcare, housing, energy,  wages and education. Moderation becomes impossible with divisive-driving distractions from what really matters: affordability and the need for a government to politically clean up elite-driven economic inequities.

Bellows knows this and is laser-focused, not on the exploitations of cultural minorities, but issues of affordability and equity benefiting the vast majority of Mainers in ways that better our democracy. This explains her actions against Trump’s authoritarian gilded efforts. It is a reckoning with the GOP’s unhinged politics that distract Americans from discerning civil and economic rights.

My appraisal of Bellows comes from life’s experiences. I also came from poverty, have a doctorate in political science and have been involved in state and national civil rights, public policies and politics throughout my adult life.

A delegate at three Democratic National Conventions, my admiration of Bellows’ faith-driven personal-as-public engagement emanates a religious activism, like serving on the vestry for one of the nation’s largest Episcopal churches. It is why I speak throughout the country on my personal Alzheimer’s journey and advocate for public legislation in both Maine’s State Capitol and Washington, D.C.

Yet support for Bellows goes beyond an assessment of her faith, political acumen, electability, civil rights activism and support for working Mainers. She possesses an instinctive compassionate sensibility that welcomes others.

A native Californian new to Maine in 2010, I actively sought out established leaders and politicians. This person “from away” often left such exchanges feeling ignored from experiencing too many cold and suspicious reactions. 

When I introduced myself to Shenna, at her then ACLU office, she greeted me like a parish priest and we spent an hour talking. Today, in the elderhood of life, I never forgot Shenna’s kindness that day as something that spoke more loudly to me than anything she ever said.

We never talked after that until I personally contacted her when she announced her candidacy. Shenna remembered me. We talked for awhile. Character matters. Yet another reason Mainers should vote Bellows for governor on June 9.