Maine voters go to the polls Tuesday to elect all manner of local officials, in addition to other positions from state legislators to president.

But many of those ballots will have blank spaces, revealing the difficulty many Maine communities have in finding people willing to step forward to run municipal government.

The number of people running for elected seats, as well as those applying for jobs in Maine’s local governments, is dwindling. Maine’s local leaders aren’t sure they can reverse the trend.

Roles ranging from code enforcement officers to town selectmen are being vacated and left empty for months, as municipalities across the state see fewer contested races and some with no candidates at all, officials say.

Both elected roles that necessitate a run for office and appointed positions that require an application are facing a shortage of candidates, officials say, fueled by a myriad of factors ranging from social media vitriol to shifting demographics.

While few municipal positions are particularly glamorous, they are often the busiest and most vital level of government, according to Kate Dufour, the Maine Municipal Association’s advocacy and communications director.

“I think municipal government is best described as something you can rely on until it makes you angry,” she said. “You’re never going to make everybody happy. You’re constantly dealing with a loud minority. You don’t hear from that silent majority.”

From tax assessing to snowplowing, officials say vacancies are increasingly putting many local governments’ most crucial roles into question.

‘WE’VE LOST OUR SENSE OF CIVIC SERVICE’

To Lisa Gilliam, the statewide municipal shortage is indicative of something deeper: The loss of civic service as an American value.

Gilliam, now Hallowell’s city clerk, has worked as a municipal clerk for 30 years and administered over two dozen elections in Winslow, Winthrop, Chelsea and Gardiner.

In that time, she’s seen the number of municipal workers and candidates decline while the public’s trust in them eroded and vitriol toward them grew.

“We’re the face of the city. If somebody has a problem, whether it’s with code enforcement or the city manager, I’m the person that greets them at the counter and I’m the person that’s going to get the wrath of whatever the issue is,” Gilliam said. “You get used to it. It’s part of the job. I don’t know that it should be.”

The municipal shortage is affecting towns across the state, big and small.

The simultaneous rise in both political vitriol and apathy has left many angry about politics, with local government, the most accessible level of government, as their closest outlet.

That trend has brought national politics to local governments across Maine, Dufour said, whether it’s relevant or not.

“When you think about municipal government, it’s very far from what state or federal politics is like. You’re running to make your community better,” Dufour said. “I think there’s a misunderstanding of what a council or board does, because it’s not really running on a particular party or platform, it’s really just helping your residents.”

Those misunderstandings leave Maine with fewer competitive races each year, Gilliam said, and an increasing number of elected positions with no one running at all.

“We’ve lost our sense of civic service a little bit,” Gilliam said. “People have to want to be involved. They have to want to make things better in their community. These things don’t just happen.”

‘NEIGHBOR AGAINST NEIGHBOR’

Perhaps the chief reason for that decline, officials across the state say, is political vitriol and division driven through social media.

Through local Facebook groups and the social platform X, discontentment and anger about national politics is being galvanized at the local level.

Much of that anger falls on elected officials at public meetings and municipal workers in their day-to-day jobs, Dufour said.

“The level of criticism is increasing exponentially, and it makes it very unattractive when somebody just wants to give back to their community,” Dufour said. “I don’t think there’s a single local official that wakes up and says to themselves, ‘How am I going to make everybody’s life miserable today?’ People just want to do their jobs.”

Turnover is high among both elected officials and municipal workers, Dufour said, in large part due to political anger and action fanned by both local and national social media influencers.

That sentiment is particularly true in Winslow, where town politics have been swayed heavily in recent years by social media discourse.

Every incumbent candidate in Winslow lost their race last year, ousted by political newcomers who largely organized their campaigns on social media. Three town councilors — including the chairman — and one school board member lost their seats.

One of those elected to the council, Fran Hudson, is the founder and administrator of the “What’s Happening in Winslow, Maine?” Facebook group, which has accumulated nearly 7,000 members since she began it in 2014.

The group is where Hudson and the other winning candidates did much of their campaigning. She and other residents and candidates fanned criticism of sitting councilors over the sudden departure of the town manager, the management style of the public safety director, claims of “secret meetings” by councilors and a sharp spike in property taxes.

In various posts to the group leading up to the election, Hudson called sitting councilors “shameful” and told residents to “point your anger where it belongs!,” though she would later tell members of the group to “refrain from personally attacking fellow community members.”

Hudson did not respond to interview requests for this story and began deleting dozens of her comments and posts to the group after being contacted by a reporter.

Hudson has posted less to the Facebook group since winning election and says she maintains a clear separation between moderating the page and working as a councilor.

Still, posts threatening town administrators, sowing doubt in the integrity of Winslow’s election officials and attacking sitting councilors have been allowed to flourish in “What’s Happening in Winslow, Maine?”

Town Manager Ella Bowman is routinely the target of threats made in the group. She is among the only openly transgender town managers in the country and says she resigned from her previous role as Oakland’s manager due to backlash over her gender transition.

Anti-transgender rhetoric and virulent political arguments from Hudson and others flourish in the Winslow Facebook group.

“Make a trans bathroom and give all the other kids their rights!” Hudson posted in a discussion about Winslow schools’ transgender policy last year. “You feel it’s ok to push this onto other kids without considering how they feel! It’s all lost on your pushing their agenda!”

In September, someone posted Bowman’s home address publicly on another Winslow-related Facebook page. Hours later, Bowman’s house was vandalized.

For Bowman, it was the latest and clearest example of what she describes as “the wrath of public opinion.”

“Given that I’m trans and the town manager, people paid attention to my address,” Bowman said. “That night, my house got egged. A vehicle came by between 1:30 and 2:00 in the morning. I heard the big engine and tires of a big truck come down my dead end street before the ‘Plunk, plunk, plunk’ of a bunch of eggs peppering my house.”

Bowman previously warned about a hostile environment developing in the town office, fueled by social media rhetoric at an August council meeting held about a month after a judge denied Winslow councilor Mike Joseph’s request for a protective order against Bowman for “yell(ing) at me and putting her finger in my face.”

Incidents like that, and rhetoric like Hudson’s, make it harder for municipal administrators to do their jobs, Bowman says, especially those who are part of marginalized communities like she is.

“It was the gender dysphoria that caused me to be who I am,” Bowman says. “But now, people’s opinions are pretty sharp, and they can cut to the bone.”

Winslow is not alone. Towns across Maine are grappling with increasingly vitriolic rhetoric on social media, Dufour says, a trend that is prompting many longtime public servants to resign their posts or decide against running for reelection.

“Local government can pit neighbor against neighbor. Family members against lifelong friends,” said Dufour. “It becomes not just a time burden but a personal issue. Do you really want to subject yourself to that?”

‘WAVES OF RETIREMENT’

Aging populations in shrinking towns are another factor affecting Maine’s rural communities, where many government roles have been taken up by lifelong residents with a vested interest in helping the towns they live in operate, officials say.

In dozens of towns throughout Maine, seats at the heads of departments and on municipal committees are vacant. Some have been empty for weeks, others for years.

The state is the oldest in the country on average. Many residents live in small towns that have seen large declines in population over the last 50 years.

Many smaller and more rural towns are facing particularly acute shortages of municipal workers and candidates. In Jackman, the positions of treasurer and Public Works director are vacant. In Vassalboro, the town’s quasi-municipal sanitary district has had an empty board seat for years, and members joke at meetings that it will never be filled.

“There have been waves of retirement in every management position. The municipal world is very dependent on older workers,” Dufour said. “People got into the profession 20, 30, 40 years ago, and now they’re starting to retire out. We’re seeing a growing difficulty to recruit volunteers for those key positions in many municipalities.”

Many of those small town governments have done their jobs quietly and effectively for decades, which officials say factors heavily into decreasing public interest.

That trend is exemplified in Randolph, a town of about 1,700 with three open seats on the November ballot but no one running for any of them.

Two of those members are declining to run again after their terms run out this year. The other seat has been vacant for years, according to Budget Committee Chairman Peter Coughlan, who has been on the committee for over 30 years. He says the vacancies are nothing new.

To Coughlan, Randolph is a sort of microcosm for the issues plaguing Maine municipalities. He says both the shrinking population and growing apathy have driven down engagement with all aspects of the town’s government.

Because he and other municipal officials have worked at the town for years without much fanfare or controversy, Coughlan said it has been difficult to engage residents with his committee, even during election season.

In recent years, it hasn’t been uncommon for a write-in candidate with only one or two votes to win election in Randolph. Even those appointed to the board seldom stick around for more than a few weeks, he says.

“They get appointed and few ever show up for our meetings,” Coughlan said in an email. “When people are generally happy with town biz — if they are even interested — or their taxes, or the town officials are not in the paper all the time, then people do not get involved.”

The tendency for people to only engage in politics during times of discord is partly why Coughlan says Randolph and many other towns are having trouble finding new municipal officials.

Randolph, like most small municipalities in Maine, has conducted its business quietly, effectively and without much controversy for years, which Coughlan says gives people less reason to engage with town politics.

“When a town is running with some dysfunction or controversial issues, that’s when people want to get involved,” Coughlan said.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Many in local government worry that they cannot reverse the waves of declining participation and increasing vitriol.

Asked what can be done to reverse the decline in municipal service, most officials say more needs to be done to instill values of civic service and local pride. Few have concrete plans about how exactly to do that.

Part of the reason both the shortage of municipal workers and the vitriol toward them have expanded, Dufour said, is because people don’t engage enough with local government to accurately understand what it is they actually do.

“We are nuts and bolts. We focus on roads, on schools. We’re not generally talking about hot-button issues,” Dufour said. “It gets back to where there may be a lack of awareness with respect to what municipal government actually is and what it actually does.”

Much like national politics, vitriol and bickering can create an abrasive environment that drives away people not already invested in local politics, Dufour said.

While local officials have little sway over national ideologues, Gilliam said the next generation gives her hope for civic service as an American value.

Generation Z is more politically engaged than those before them. While young people are generally not taking out paperwork to run for office, youth voter turnout hit record highs in each of the last three elections and is expected to climb again this November.

“We’re starting to see the younger generation getting involved. They have high turnout and are even doing election work in a lot of places,” she said. “I’m very hopeful. I kind of have to be.”

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