About the Job

Let’s have a frank conversation about the position you are hiring for. There are three candidates in this race. We all have some degree of likeability, life experience, and a desire to participate in the way government works.

What A Member of the State House of Representative Does

• Reads Draft Laws
  A Representative to the Maine State House’s first and most important job is critically reading, evaluating, editing, creating and voting on proposed legislation. What does that actually mean? Bills are highly technical documents that usually require lots of cross-referencing with existing statutes, various agency policies, state laws and the benefit of constituents. This is a tedious job that requires attention to detail, long hours and mad highlighting skills. This part of the job should never be outsourced (other than to have the staff pull the cross-references or if there is a bill book club to bounce ideas off of each other). You are hiring your representation to make laws on your behalf. This should be the most important skill set.
• Gains Information
  It is not realistic for your Representative to the State House to be an expert on every topic. Internet neutrality, environmental protection, infrastructure development, family law and domestic violence, criminal statutes, healthcare policy and cyber-espionage are not generally related topics. Your Representative will need to make sure they are reaching out to credible, diverse subject matter experts on a variety of topics. This will probably include constituents, lobbyists, scientists, librarians, industry experts, and a host of others. There needs to be a critical eye for bias and accuracy when considering information.
• Explains Things
  Your Representative to the State House should also be able to explain to you why they did or did not vote for each bill and what the bill is about. Our hyper-partisan world has made the process of finding common ground challenging, but the best laws usually come with a healthy dose of perspectives. Your representation needs to be able to balance these perspectives and have a comprehensive understanding of the subject.
• Works in Committees
  Members of State House of Representatives serve on a variety of committees with a wide range of topics. This helps the State House of Representatives divvy up the workload of working on all of the bills at once by topic. Check out the list of committees and what they do.
• Available for Constituents
  We have a part-time state legislature (and the pay certainly is part-time!), so I will have to continue to work as an attorney in order to put food on the table. However, I think it’s very important to be able to connect with representatives. I’ll make sure that we have a town hall, either virtually or in-person at least once per quarter so that I can hear from you and answer your questions.

When you vote, vote for who can do all of these things well. Let’s make 2024 the way politics should be.