FARMINGTON – Gubernatorial hopeful Pat LaMarche collected signatures for a petition to add her name to the 2006 ballot Thursday at the University of Maine at Farmington.
By about 2 p.m., she had collected about 95 signatures from UMF students and faculty members, and had registered countless others to vote in the upcoming election. She needs 2,000 signatures for her name to be placed on the ballot, and has been collecting them since January. She is a member of the Maine Green Independent Party.
“We probably have the numbers,” she said, but since many names are often struck from petitions while being validated by the Secretary of State, she and her campaign team will continue collecting signatures until the deadline on March 15.
LaMarche has been a big name in Maine’s Green Party for years, garnering 7 percent of the vote in the 2002 gubernatorial race and running as the party’s vice presidential nominee with David Cobb in the 2004 race. She said Thursday, paraphrasing an article by political journalist Sam Smith, she thinks this year “is a wide-open race” – one she means to win. Maine currently has an incumbent governor with a low approval rating, “no clear Republican with a following, and a woman who is going to shake things up.”
A Mainer almost all her life, LaMarche said she thinks Maine people want a governor who understands that what Maine needs above all things is jobs that pay well enough so that young people aren’t faced with the choice of either not being able to “make ends meet on $6 and a quarter an hour, or work three jobs and never see their kids.”
Her campaign includes measures to raise the minimum wage, create universal heath care coverage, extend state financed education to the college level and protect the environment. To do that, she said, she thinks Maine government needs to create a better environment for small businesses, which she said are the backbone of the state’s economy and the best way people can get out of the Vise-Grip of poverty.
“This is the year and Maine is the place” for the Green Party to win the gubernatorial race, she said Thursday. “Mainers are so smart and open, and they tackle tough decisions every day of their lives, and I think they want a governor who knows what that’s like.”
LaMarche is hoping to run as a Clean Election candidate, which means she would receive public financing for her campaign, rather than having to raise money herself from interest groups and others.
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