If you want to see what’s wrong with Maine, look no further than the gubernatorial race this year.
Maine’s a state that doesn’t know what it wants. We know we’re not in a good place right now, but we don’t know how to move forward. Many of our key industries (forest products, shoes, and more) have moved in large part overseas or to more business-friendly locales in North America. On top of that, we’re an aging state, and many of the people my age leave the state in order to find better jobs in places where the kind of jobs we want are more available.
Now look at this year’s gubernatorial race. The three serious contenders for the office have either worked in politics for decades or, in the case of LePage, help run a business that screams “old Maine.” Compared with the 2008 national election during which two charismatic forty-somethings – relative newcomers in politics – took center stage, the policies raised in Maine’s gubernatorial race make it seem like we’re stuck in the past.
Vision for the future, however, isn’t dependent on youth. Unfortunately, this year’s candidates seem to believe that we can find success by tweaking the Maine of yesteryear. We can shrink government. We can consolidate and reorganize schools. Those proposals don’t encourage students to stay in Maine after they’ve graduated. They don’t encourage businesses to be innovative and try new ways of making money. They’re just a way to console voters by saying, “We know it’s rough. But we’ll change some things, and it’ll be better.”
Our next governor needs to look beyond our past to find the solutions to the state’s problems. We need to encourage and invest in new ways of attracting new kinds of business to Maine. We need to support our wonderful tourism industry and allow people to visit our state easily and frequently. We need to support biotechnology, genetics, wind power engineering, call centers, and telecommuting. We have a beautiful state with a great way of life, and we need to use that to our advantage in every way we can.
Above all else we need to encourage young people to stay in the state after they graduate high school and college. We can reform our government and educational system all we want, but Maine can not keep losing its children. If we don’t encourage youth in our state, it will continue to grow harder to foster innovation and the change we need in Maine.
I’m a 27-year-old lifelong Mainer, and I was very disappointed by the choices in this year’s gubernatorial race. If we’re going to move Maine forward, a change in residency in the Blaine House isn’t going to be enough. We all need to do our part to make Maine better.