AUBURN — It’s almost 3 p.m. on a Thursday and Charlie Summers is making his way along a line of workers as they pass by the clock that’s stamping their time cards at the end of their shift at Falcon Performance Footwear.

Summers, Maine’s secretary of state and the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, has just wrapped up a short tour of the factory floor where the best firefighting boots in the world are made. Neil Hanley, one of Falcon’s co-owners and plant managers, is escorting Summers around.

Falcon, with its 55 workers, is exactly the kind of high-tech small business that Summers says needs some help from Congress in the form of a lighter regulatory load.

Hanley also told Summers his company has made several technological advances thanks to help from the University of Maine’s composites lab, the Maine Technology Institute and small federal grants aimed at research and development.

Hanley noted how a grant as small as $1,000 helped the company move toward a $200,000 investment in equipment that will also eventually add two jobs and oh, by the way, make one more part of their product right here in Auburn instead of China.

The company is also on its way to producing a firefighting boot that will meet the highest specifications for U.S. military firefighters. The company is just a thin insole away from being able to say its boots are made — 100 percent — in the U.S.

But there’s another connection for Summers that’s even more personal. On a display in the bootmaker’s waiting area is a beige-tan work boot, the same as those used by the U.S. military and similar to the ones Summers wore during his tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the U.S. Navy.

Support the troops

Earlier in the day Summers spoke with the Sun Journal’s editorial board regarding his experiences in the Navy and his own visceral connection to the issues facing Maine and American veterans.

“I think on the military side of the equation, it is critically important that the next senator is not just somebody who supports the troops,” Summers said. “I think everybody does and should. But it’s a very different thing to have served in both theaters of war of this generation. To have an understanding on a personal level the men and women that are returning.”

Maine’s per capita veteran population is the second largest in the country behind Alaska. Maine’s 138,600 vets make up about 10 percent of the population here.

Summers said veterans’ issues range from higher unemployment rates to traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Those are issues we are going to be dealing with and dealing with for a very, very long time,” Summers said.

Summers’ campaign has been working the Lewiston-Auburn area hard, making multiple stops in the last few weeks as well as participating in a debate before the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce this week.

Last week Summers had a reporter from Bloomberg in tow, making the obligatory stop at Simones’ Hot Dog Stand in downtown Lewiston before taking a look at the operations of Argo Marketing Group in the downtown.

There’s something about the hot dogs at Simones’ that draws the GOP there. Summers has made two stops at the eatery this campaign. It may be that Simones’ serves up red dogs.

This week Summers’ lunch stop was a little more upscale at Fishbones American Grill on Lincoln Street.

But Summers has not been alone in showing L-A a little love in the last few weeks.

Standing up for women

State Sen. Cynthia Dill, the Democratic nominee in the race for the Senate, attended the forum and also met with the newspaper’s editorial board.

She, too, has made multiple trips in recent weeks including a trip to Lewiston to speak with immigrants following a set of controversial remarks by Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald.

Dill also made her own Afghan connections this week when she spoke on the diversity — or lack thereof — in the Senate.

“We have 17 percent of the United States Senate made up of women,” Dill said. “That’s the lowest representation of any developed country, including Rwanda and Afghanistan. If people want to know why poverty rates for women are: 25 percent of women of color live in poverty, 15 percent of women and 10 percent of men, women make 77 cents on the dollar, the list goes on and on and on. “

Dill said she believed conditions for women and minorities would not improve until they have greater representation in Congress.

“Is my entire platform that I’m a woman?” Dill asked. “No, absolutely not, but I do probably make the case that real change is going to involve more women.”

The next day she weighed in on the international tragedy of an attack against a Muslim girl in Pakistan, who was shot in the head because she had blogged against the Taliban’s oppression of women and girls. Malala Yousafzai, 14 was in critical condition this week.

“The outrageous attack on Yousafzai crystallized the brutality of the Taliban and underscored how much hatred this group holds for women and girls,” Dill wrote in a prepared statement. “And it showed to what end the Taliban will go to reverse any and all gains in freedom made for women and for girls.”

Independent candidate and former Maine Gov. Angus King also participated in the chamber’s forum this week.

With Election Day just over three weeks away it’s likely we will see the top contenders in the U.S. Senate race in the Lewiston-Auburn area a few more times asking the state’s second largest metropolitan area for its votes.

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