Party affiliation: Democrat

Date of birth: August 30, 1941

Hometown: South Gardiner

Occupation: Forensic psychologist

Education: Gardiner public schools; bachelor’s, Bowdoin College; Ph.D., University of South Carolina

Community organizations: Mayor, city of Gardiner from 1992 to present; trustee, MaineGeneral Medical Center; chairman, Advisory Council on Health System Development; chairman, Maine Emergency Communications Policy Board.

Personal information (hobbies, etc.): Reading

Family status: Married; three children

Years in the Legislature: None

Clean Election candidate?: Yes

1. Beyond being Gardiner’s mayor, I’ve served on many state bodies and as a long-term hospital trustee, fulfilling my continuing commitment to public service. I have a set of professional, career and personal experiences that might help with problem solving in Augusta. I don’t want simply to shelve them and leave the stage.

2. My efforts will be focused on developing enhanced educational efforts for our high school graduates and working to preserve our environment, which is central to having a viable tourism economy. That all said, I will be a stark rookie and probably struggling for months to learn the rules, while making sure I can find the proverbial bathrooms.

3. The social issues are becoming less relevant with time. Roe v. Wade is still “the law of the land” and until that is changed, we have little choice but to follow it. The discrimination issues will always demand fine tuning, but without fostering mindless “political correctness.”

4. I am adamantly opposed to TABOR. If TABOR is defeated, this will be the third taxation-focused referendum presented to voters by the Legislature. Without some action by this new Legislature, I believe it is inevitable that the people of Maine will eventually impose some system on us all that will ultimately be worse than what we have. The Legislature must act.

5. Dirigo is a continuing experiment. I was central to the creation of its state health plan, which promotes health rather than just health care. We need to change our focus to prevention and to treatment of a half a dozen persistent diseases, which consume disproportionately excessive resources.

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