Ready to challenge the status quo and base national decisions on the needs of local communities.

LEWISTON – Tom Ledue seems like a rational man. The Springvale resident has served as a wilderness guide and been an educator in Maine for more than 25 years. He’s happily married and has four daughters. When he speaks, he’s thoughtful and articulate.

But Ledue has made some decisions recently that would make some people wonder.

He’s taken out a second mortgage on his house, a move that places him more than $20,000 in debt. He’s taken a year off of work. He’s asked family and friends for their time and money.

And he’s done it all to join a U.S. Senate race that is poised to be the most expensive in Maine’s history, thanks to the more than $7 million raised by his more well-known opponents for the seat: Democrat Tom Allen and Republican Susan Collins. A race in which Allen, a sitting congressman with $2.5 million to spend, trails the incumbent Collins by double digits in recent polling.

Ledue, who’s never run for any office before, has harbored dreams of running for the Senate since he was an undergraduate student studying political science at the University of Southern Maine. Thanks to an ever-worsening economy and worries about his daughters’ future, he’s decided now is the time to act.

“Talk about David versus Goliath,” said one potential voter to Ledue after hearing him speak in Lewiston at a campaign stop in May. “Are you getting any help from the national party?”

Ledue, a Democrat, laughed.

“No,” he said shaking his head. “But I look at the trajectory that we’re on and I felt compelled to act.”

So how do you run a congressional campaign on a shoestring budget?

If you’re Tom Ledue, you recruit your best friend to be your campaign manager and get a former student to do your research. And most importantly, you do not turn down free publicity.

Ledue accepted offers from two television stations and one radio program to participate in debates with primary rival Allen, who declined all three invitations.

Despite his long-shot status, Ledue hopes to connect with voters because he’s running for a change that goes deeper than just party affiliation.

“It’s not enough to say we need a super majority of Democrats in the Senate so we need to take Susan Collins’ seat away,” he said. “That’s not enough to convince Mainers. That’s not enough to change things in the Senate.”

He readily acknowledges that he’s voted for Allen in the past. But at this stage, he said Allen’s just not getting the job done.

“When any of us are in a career and an institution for a long time we can forget about what’s possible,” he said. “In a different time, I wouldn’t feel compelled to run against Tom Allen. But it’s common wisdom in Washington to play the middle and, yes, I do see him there. We don’t have time for incremental change right now.”

Ledue, whose last professional post was as an administrator of Noble High School in North Berwick, said he joined this particular race because there was a “poverty of ideas.”

The heart of his campaign lies in a single concept, Ledue said.

“Thinking locally has to become a national strategy,” Ledue said. “Local energy generation, supporting local agriculture and local industry, are absolute essentials in creating the economy that we want for the future. It’s not rocket science, but it has to be talked about.”

Because states like Maine are “fighting for crumbs off the federal table,” Ledue said, many people forget how much money the country has to spend.

Ledue said by emphasizing the role of local economies, not just in Maine but across the country, Congress could address larger issues like the national economy, fair trade and energy independence.

“We’re a wealthy nation, but the mentality is that we’re not,” he said. “We can spend $275 million a day or more in Iraq, we can subsidize big oil and big agri-business and our largest corporations. …We need to reassess where those investments should go.”

It’s one thing to make campaign promises and quite another to get the job done, but Ledue thinks he’s ready for the challenge.

“We need to be slightly impatient and we need to plan ahead,” he said. “If we want to have a strong future, we need to invest in our resources and our people and our communities. If we do that, we can develop a stable and sustainable economy, and it’s hard to argue with that.”