Special election scheduled to fill House seat vacated by lawmaker’s resignation

A special election to fill the legislative seat left vacant when Rep. Clinton Collamore Sr. resigned last month will be held June 13.

The winner will serve out the remaining two years left on Collamore’s term. Collamore, D-Waldoboro, resigned Feb. 16 after being indicted on 20 counts including aggravated forgery, 11 counts of unsworn falsification and one count of violating the Maine Clean Election Act.

Gov. Janet Mills scheduled the special June election for House District 45, according to a release from Emily Cook, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office.

Maine political parties will caucus to choose candidates for the vacant seat, which represents Bremen, Friendship, Waldoboro and Washington, as well as the unorganized township of Louds Island. Candidate nominations must be filed with the Secretary of State’s Office by 5 p.m. on March 31.

Unaffiliated candidates must obtain the signatures of 50 to 80 district voters, Cook said, and the signatures must be validated by town offices.

Collamore, who served as a selectman in Waldoboro before his election to the Maine House in November, spoke to reporters after his appearance last month in Lincoln County Superior Court where he pleaded not guilty to the charges. Collamore apologized and chalked up the issues to the mistakes of an inexperienced candidate.

His attorney, Richard Elliott, said Collamore filled in the signatures of donors after he neglected to get them to sign, but he did not intend to defraud the clean elections program. Collamore said he would return the salary he has collected since being sworn into office and reimburse the more than $14,000 in public campaign funding he received.