Plans to Audit the State Budget, Attack Crime, Cut Taxes, and Bring Down Electricity and Housing Costs

PORTLAND, ME — Republican nominee Bobby Charles won the first debate of the Maine governor’s race Thursday night, forcing the contest onto the issues that decide whether families can stay here: power bills, housing, healthcare closures, failing schools, overdose deaths, and a state government that will not open its books in a corrupt system that protects and enriches Augusta insiders at the expense of hardworking Maine taxpayers.

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Democrat Hannah Pingree, architect of Governor Janet Mills’s climate and children’s agenda, spent the hour defending the record she helped write. Independent Rick Bennett did not offer a break from it. But Bobby Charles did.

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“Maine is not unaffordable by accident. It is unaffordable because of choices made in Augusta, and Hannah Pingree was in the room for those choices,” Charles said. “Tonight was the first time voters got to put that record next to a plan. The plan won.”

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On the issues:

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Ø  Energy -- Charles pressed the admission Augusta spent years avoiding: net energy billing is costing ratepayers about $238 million a year. Residential power in Maine now runs near 30 cents a kilowatt-hour, among the highest in the country. He called for repeal of net energy billing, an end to new renewable-portfolio charges on household bills, withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, protection of existing hydro, and a stop to removal of the four lower Kennebec dams. He renewed his Emergency 207 plan — $207 million from the capped Rainy Day Fund for school heat, a winter gas-tax suspension, doubled LIHEAP aid, and emergency help — so families are not choosing between the oil tank and the grocery bill.

o   “She co-chaired the Climate Council and sold Mainers ‘Maine Won’t Wait.’ Mainers waited. They got the bill,” Charles said. “If every Mainer went back to the Stone Age, the climate would not notice. China emits our entire net total in about an hour. We gave up nursing homes, birthing centers, and the SAPPI mill to pay for a gesture.”

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Ø  Housing -- The Maine Housing Authority dates the rental crisis to 2019 and the ownership crisis to 2020–21 — on Pingree’s watch. The state needs roughly 84,000 units. Her plan, already walked back from $100 million a year to $80 million, builds about 200 units a year at current costs. That is a 420-year solution. Real projects in Waterville are coming in at $430,000 to $635,000 a unit. Charles argued the state cannot spend its way out of a $30 billion shortage, and that Pingree’s manufactured-housing rules — a $10,000-per-lot fee on large investors and a 60-day right of first refusal — drive capital out of the only stock many working families can afford.

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Ø  Healthcare -- Since the Mills expansion of Medicaid, Maine has lost 15 nursing homes and 1,200 beds, 26 assisted-living facilities, more than 75 group homes, 12 birthing centers, and Northern Light Inland Hospital in Waterville. Facility leaders cited state reimbursement, not “profit skimming.” In May 2021, with more than half of COVID deaths among nursing-home residents, Pingree’s office steered $12.5 million of a $2 billion relief package — one half of one percent, about one week of care — to those homes, and millions more to clean-energy partnerships, EV chargers, and equity programs. Charles rejected a state public option from the same government that underpaid the providers and then watched them close.

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Ø  Children and schools -- The Annie E. Casey Kids Count report found Maine had the biggest decline in child well-being in the country since 2019, the years Pingree led the Children’s Cabinet. Children in extreme poverty up 38 percent. Childhood food insecurity up 26 percent, the worst in New England. Child maltreatment more than twice the national rate. Fourth-grade reading rank fell from 16th to 43rd. Charles said pre-K talking points did not keep children alive, fed, or able to read, and that schools were closed for two years on a six-foot rule the federal officials who imposed it later could not defend.

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Ø  Opioids and crime: Pingree led the state’s opioid response for six years. 2020 through 2024 were the five worst overdose years in Maine history, and the death count doubled between 2018 and 2021. The state handed out more than a million needles and recovered about 750,000. Charles said harm-reduction policy without enforcement and treatment is how Maine landed first in New England.

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Ø  Jobs: While SAPPI was investing in the Skowhegan mill, the Mills administration worked to force the sale and removal of the Shawmut Dam the mill needs to operate. Charles put 5,200 associated jobs on the table and said a governor who will not keep a contract will not get the next one. “Capital goes where it is welcome. Augusta has spent eight years announcing that it is not.

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Ø  Taxes and the State Budget: Charles repeated the commitment to cut spending by $1.3 billion a year — about $1,625 back, on average, for Mainers who file — by auditing no-bid contracts, killing vacant positions, and ending the cascade that spends surpluses because it can. On property taxes, he would raise the Homestead Exemption toward $100,000 and lift the state reimbursement to towns from 76 percent to 100 percent, paid for by folding tree-growth and renewable-energy tax breaks into relief for people who actually live in their homes. He noted legislators of both parties had to sue to see DHHS records after more children with department involvement died in five years than in the previous fourteen, and that Pingree, as Children’s Cabinet lead, did not produce them.

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“Hannah offered more spending from the government that already grew the budget by nearly 80 percent and delivered the worst economy in New England,” Charles said. “I offered a cut, an audit, and a power bill people can pay. That is the difference in this race, and it was the difference tonight.”

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Maine’s economy ranks 47th in the nation and last in New England. Personal income has failed to keep pace with inflation. Labor-force participation is down nearly five points. Fewer workers are carrying a larger government. Charles said the next governor’s first job is to make the state a place an employer, a builder, and a young family will bet on again.

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About Bobby Charles

Bobby Charles is the Republican nominee for Governor of Maine. A Maine resident and attorney from Leeds who was raised in Wayne, he served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations, including as Assistant Secretary of State. He is running to cut crime, cut taxes, and end the nonsense in Augusta. Learn more at www.BobbyForMaine.com.

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