(inspiring music) - Hello, I'm Jennifer Rooks and welcome to this "Your Vote 2022" debate between the candidates for Governor of Maine.

We are coming to you live from the beautiful Franco Center in Lewiston.

Maine Public is presenting tonight's debate in partnership with the Portland Press Herald and Lewiston Sun Journal.

Many of the questions for the candidates come from you readers, listeners, and viewers of the newspapers and Maine Public.

Those questions will be asked by Maine Public Chief Political Correspondent, Steve Mistler and Portland Press Herald reporter Penelope Overton.

There are three candidates for governor on the November ballot.

Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, was elected in 2018.

Before being elected Governor, she served as Maine Attorney General and District Attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford Counties.

Former Maine Governor Paul LaPage, a Republican, was first elected in 2010 and served two terms as Governor.

Before being elected governor, he served as the mayor of Waterville and General Manager of Marden's.

Sam Hunkler, an independent, has never served in political office.

He is a family physician and has served in the Peace Corps.

This debate will last approximately an hour and a half.

In the interest of fairness, we will rotate which candidate answers each question first.

We will be addressing the topics that you, the voters, have told us are most important to you.

Each candidate will have one minute to answer the question posed by the reporters.

When the reporters ask a follow-up question, the candidates will then have 30 seconds to answer those.

When a candidate needs to give a rebuttal, we will allow 30 seconds for that.

An important note, this debate was challenging to schedule.

We acknowledge that it falls on an important high holiday on the Jewish calendar.

To the Jewish people in our audience who have just begun observance of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we wish you a belated happy New Year and an easy fast.

Before the debate began, the beginning and ending order was chosen by a random drawing.

Governor Mills will go first, and Steve Mistler will ask the first question.

- Governor, Federal efforts to control inflation have led economists to warn about a recession.

In the event there's a sharp decline in state revenue, what do you plan to do: cut programs, reduce the state workforce, increase taxes?

And please be specific.

And also, if revenue remains high as it is right now, what will you do about that with a surplus?

- Thanks Steve and first let me just say thank you to Maine Public and to you two journalists for this evening's debate, for hosting this.

And it's good to be back in Lewiston where I worked for 15 years and where I met and married my husband up the street at St. Joseph's Church, and where I made many friends.

To answer your question would take a lot longer than a minute, but let me just say, we have, as you know, economists on board and revenue forecasters on board to make sure that we don't overspend, that we don't under budget or over budget.

So in terms of inflation, I know that global inflation is hitting everybody in the pocketbook right now.

And Maine has done a good job, I think, working across the aisle to enact a budget that actually reserves almost $900 million for the rainy day fund.

That's first and foremost, we're saving for the rainy day fund, more than it's ever been, higher than it's ever been.

And we've provided inflation relief checks to 850,000 people in Maine.

That's just the beginning of our approach to inflation.

- [Mistler] Governor LaPage?

- Well, the very first thing I would've done on inflation is instead of giving $850 to all Mainers to buy the election, I would've taken 250 million and gone to oil dealers and gas dealers in Maine and asked them to lower the price of oil and have the state subsidize some of the oil to help 'em out.

Last March, I would've put about 150 million into the hands of livestock growers, vegetable growers and fishermen, and asked them to flood the market, because we are the third highest food costs in America because most of our food comes in by rail, I mean by truck, and so it's very, very costly.

And they go back empty.

And I would've put a holiday on the diesel tax from November until April.

- What, just on the diesel tax?

'Cause initially you'd proposed a gas tax holiday.

- I would look at a gas tax holiday.

But initially, for the food costs, I definitely would go with diesel and not during the summer months during the tourism.

But I would take a look at all taxes and I would suspend all taxes that were put in place since the pandemic and I'd suspend them until we reach an inflation rate of 2%.

- [Mistler] Mr. Hunkler.

- Steve, I believe that I need to give some context to my answers here tonight.

These two need no introduction.

Most people in Maine don't even know that there's a third person on the ballot, let alone knowing who I am.

So in order for me to have any context in my answers, I believe I need to introduce myself a little bit.

I was the eighth of nine children, and I is the seventh of eight boys.

And in my family, I learned to be frugal, welcoming and practical.

I've served people for most of my adult life.

Starting after college, I went to the Peace Corps in Kenya, in East Africa, and I was an English and science teacher.

I met there Kelly Kaneen from South Portland, and the fellow volunteer who became the mother of my children.

Just so happens that today, 37 years ago today, I married her.

And although we only stayed married for 20 years, she's now my best friend, and she's actually here supporting me tonight.

- That's your minute.

Steve, would you like to ask a follow up?

- Yeah, I would like to.

This one's directed to its Governor Mills.

Your administration got behind the idea, as you mentioned earlier, of providing relief checks, direct relief checks to Mainers to deal with inflation.

But some economists have expressed concerns that such payments might contribute to inflation by putting more money in people's pockets at a time when demand for goods is already high.

What do you say to that critique?

- Thanks, first of all, Mr. LaPage has pointed out that we have the third highest food prices in the United States.

That was so under his tenure as well.

Five years ago, we had the third highest food prices.

That's why we've taken some of the federal relief money and put it towards agricultural and aquacultural processing plants to boost the sustainability of our farms and fisheries.

On the $850 checks, let me tell you, this was a wildly bipartisan move.

It was actually proposed by Republicans.

We enhanced it to $850.

If you don't think it's a good idea, talk to the people who've written me.

Every day I get cards and letters, a woman from Newberg the other day, who finally can put snow tires on her car before winter.

People who are paying for their prescription drug copays finally.

People paying the grocery bill now, putting oil in their tank, putting gas in their cars.

People are thankful for those checks.

People know what they need to do individually with that money.

It belongs to the people.

It was right to give it back to them.

- [Rooks] And Steve, you have a follow up for Governor LaPage as well.

- I do, thank you.

Governor LaPage, you initially talked about an income tax cut which is also criticized for potentially worsening inflation, but how would you pay for an income tax cut?

Let's just set aside the inflationary effect.

- First of all, it's an inflationary, putting more money in the heated economy is inflationary.

And I don't know, the governor may have gone to law school, but she certainly didn't go to an economic school.

I will tell you, yes, a tax cut can be done by savings.

One of the savings: when I took over in 2011, we have 14,400 employees, I left at 11,900.

Recently, it's now 13,500, so we're growing government again.

We were running at 12,000 people.

Nobody was complaining.

Actually, our phones were being answered, which they're not today.

- [Mistler] What about paying for the tax cut, sir?

- You pay 'em through the savings.

I'll give you another example.

We have 260,000 public school seats in our public school system of 130,000 students.

Why don't we just take a look at how do we consolidate and give you an example, Millinocket, East Millinocket, two high schools, 51 or 50 graduates combined this year.

There were class A high schools at one time.

Why don't we fix that?

Another thing that we could save money on big time is electricity.

We have gone in January, 2019, we're 11th in the country.

Electricity costs in Maine right now are number four.

- [Rook] Thank you, Governor LaPage.

- [Mills] Can I respond to some of those statements?

- [Rooks] Yes.

- Thank you.

Look, the last income tax cut that it was made under his administration was paid for by increasing the sales tax and increasing the property taxes.

I've spent four years repairing the damage of his administration, rebuilding the infrastructure of Maine, rebuilding the Maine CDC hiring back those public health nurses and properly paying the state share of public education and paying for revenue sharing to fund, fully fund the police and emergency responders and firefighters across our state.

That's how we paid for the last tax cut.

- I will tell you, Governor, you need a Pinocchio tonight.

We did not raise the sales tax when I was governor.

It was five and a half percent and it stayed there.

We did not broaden it.

It was raised under the previous governor, and I removed furlough days when I came in and we gave the first increase to state employees over eight years.

So you need to get your facts straight.

- [Rooks] Okay, we're gonna move on and go to Sam Hunkler.

Go ahead, Steve you have a follow up for Sam Hunkler, correct?

- No, I'm all set.

- [Rooks] Oh, you think you are?

- Yeah.

- [Rooks] Okay.

- [Hunkler] Can I continue to speak?

- Sure, you can have 30 seconds.

Go ahead.

- Okay, so I left the Peace Corps, came back to the states, and I went to medical school at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland.

My first child was born there.

After that, I came to to Maine to live and we bought a house out in Green, Maine.

And I went to my residency program just down the street here at Central Maine Medical Center.

My next two children, Corey and Jake, were born here.

We then went to Alaska and I served in an Indian Health Service for three years in Metlakatla Alaska in the Annette Island Reserve, which is home of Tsimshian Indians.

I then returned back here to Maine and we moved to Beales, Maine, and I have been there ever since.

- Alrighty, we're gonna now discuss Maine's workforce.

Governor LaPage will go first, and Penelope Overton will ask the question.

- Thanks Jennifer.

This question comes to us from Eric in Cape Elizabeth.

Maine is the oldest state in the nation, with an average age of almost 45 years, which contributes to our state's labor shortage.

What would you do to persuade more young Mainers to stay, work and raise their families here in Maine after they finish school?

And how would you attract new young people to come here from out of state?

And we'll start with Governor LaPage.

- The first one, clearly, there are nine states without an income tax right now.

There are 10 states working to remove the income tax.

We need to phase it out for the long haul.

That's one thing.

Number two, in 2019, when I left, work participation in Maine was tied with New Hampshire at 65%.

The national average was 61%.

Today the national average is 62%.

New Hampshire is still 65%.

Maine is under 59%.

We have lost significantly.

So we lose every year.

We lose thousands of people to other states that don't have income tax.

They take their intellectual talents, they take their capital, and shortly thereafter, their kids start moving away to these places.

We need to keep 'em here by lower taxes.

We need to help our students with lower cost education.

And I believe that in technical and vocational should go back to the middle schools.

- All right.

And let me interrupt you.

I'm sorry, Penelope, this time, if you could please answer the question she asked.

Do you need that repeated or do you know what the question is about the workforce?

- [Hunkler] Please repeat the question.

- We're looking to find out how you would persuade more young Mainers to stay here and raise their families after they finish school and attract new young people from out of state.

- Well, the main thing we need to provide are livable wages so that Maine students can stay here.

And in order to do that, we have to build the economy.

And in order to build the economy, we also have to do that in conjunction with our environment.

Environmental stewardship goes hand in hand with the economy of Maine.

Most people, many people come to Maine because of the environment and we need to be stewards of our environment.

But we also need to be able to offer good jobs and good daycare for children and good schools for our children.

So it's a combination of a lot of different things to do that.

- Thank you, Governor Mills?

- Thank you, listen, we've done a number of things to address the workforce issue, which is a national issue.

And in fact, Maine has the seventh highest in migration rate of any state in the country right now.

People are coming here.

At least 16,000 people moved here in recent months, in the last couple years, and for the last four years, we've been working on workforce issues.

Workforce is a problem I inherited.

It was in all the headlines before I took over and then some, and it's not an issue I'm gonna leave to my grandchildren to solve to our grandchildren.

So we're doing a number of things, in partnership with Republicans, Democrats, and independents in the legislature.

We're providing free college tuition to community colleges for two years to recent high school grads.

We expanded the Opportunity Maine tax credit.

Wherever you went to school, whatever you majored in, come to Maine, live here, work here, we will forgive up to 25,000 of your student loan debt.

And people are coming here, young families are coming here.

The labor participation rate is actually about 82% for the working age people, 24 to 54.

They are coming back.

Maine suffered from early retirements like other states more acutely because we are an older state.

- And Penelope, you have a follow up question for all three as well?

- I do, this one comes to us from Muriel in Palermo.

Also starting with Governor LaPage.

"Childcare professionals are grossly underpaid."

This is, again, according to Muriel.

"There are not enough programs in Maine, nor the workers available, to staff the existing programs.

How will you address these needs to help parents rejoin the workforce and ensure a stable Maine economy?"

- Okay, kindergarten through eighth grade, I would have after school care till five o'clock.

I would encourage parents and grandparents who are not working in the workforce and do not want to go or can't go to join that and get paid to do after school care.

The other thing, during the pandemic, we lost significant, significant ground in our education, So I would give stipends to teachers to tutor kids from two to five after school so that we could get the kids well taken care of after school and and allow parents to go into the workforce.

- [Rooks] Thank you.

- [Overton] Mr. Hunkler?

- One thing I would really like to see us consider is putting daycares in our elementary schools and hiring staff to run that.

We used to have Head Start and that was a great program where one of the things we need to do is we need to be able to watch children and monitor children and see what they need at a very young age.

And I think them putting them into the schools where they can interact with other children, I think that's something we need to think about doing.

- [Overton] Thank you, Governor Mills?

- As I travel around the state, people all over are talking about childcare.

A lot of women left the workforce during the pandemic, for a lot of good reasons.

And then they found childcare to be a challenge.

And so we have put a lot of the American Rescue Plan funds from our Maine jobs and recovery program with approval from the legislature towards childcare.

Slots, increasing the number of slots and facilities, increasing training at the CTE's and the community colleges and paying stipends.

We are paying stipends right now for childcare workers.

We're doing all that, and during the pandemic, we did pay for after school care by the Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCAs.

- All right, and I think we have time for one more follow up question on this topic.

- Lois in South Portland will be happy.

She wants to know what you would do as governor, if anything, to make it easier for new Mainers to more rapidly enter the workforce.

- Well that's a great question and I'll tell you, I think that the Governor of the state of Maine should have been parked in Washington, DC, telling the President to let these people go to work.

If you're gonna send them to Maine, we're going to put 'em to work.

And if we need to give 'em a Maine ID, until the federal government catches up, then we will do that.

New Mainers will be put to work as soon as I get in there.

- [Rooks] Sam?

- It's a huge problem because the people who come here, they want to work and they can't work because of the federal laws that say they can't.

But the other problem is once they start working and they get a work permit, when it runs out, they have to stop working until they renew it.

You know, and sometimes our federal government is so slow about doing that, it's a real problem.

And I don't know what we can do about that, but go to Washington and have our federal representatives help us out in that regard.

- [Overton] Governor Mills?

- Yes, look, under the previous President, our immigration policies were completely sidetracked for a lot of reasons, and I know that Mr. LaPage joined the Trump administration's effort to, for instance, ban people of the Muslim faith from coming to states like Maine or to anywhere in this country.

I did not agree with that policy.

He joined the Trump administration in that regard.

I agree with Senator Collins and the rest of the congressional delegation.

We've got to lower the work eligibility.

Those people who are here legally, and I have met personally with many of them.

lower it to 30 days.

They're here to enjoy our freedoms and contribute to our economy.

They should be allowed to do that.

- Thank you.

And did you wanna offer rebuttal?

- Yes.

Janet Mills, you're a liar.

I have not joined and prevented Muslims from going to work ever.

I did not join the Trump administration in any immigration.

I have a son that we brought from Jamaica.

It took 11 years, 11 years to get him a green card.

The immigration policy in the United States is broken and Congress needs to fix it, but they refuse to.

- Mr. LaPage joined the Trump Muslim travel ban.

He was very clear about that as Governor.

I opposed him in that.

- We're gonna turn to another economic question.

This time we're gonna focus on housing.

Sam Hunkler will go first.

Steve Mistler, go ahead.

- This actually is a question from Joseph.

Not quite sure from where.

"Soaring rents and home prices are key issues for Maine voters.

We lack tens of thousands of housing units in Maine.

But few local communities want to build affordable housing in their borders.

What role should the state play, if any, in addressing the housing shortage?

Should it be investing more money in public housing, for example?"

- I think one of the biggest problems is that the housing is being taken up by people who come from out of state and by summer homes, which jacks up the price.

And I would love to see us do something like, for residential homes, I love to see us greatly increase the mill rate on residential property taxes, and at the same time greatly increase homestead exemptions, so that people who have their primary homes, their taxes go down, but the people who come from away, their taxes go up.

We as Mainers, we pay income tax.

The people that come in the summer, they don't.

So we actually support those people, summer people by us paying our income tax, which they don't pay.

So the one way to make up for that is for the people who come to pay more tax in the residential properties.

- Governor Mills.

- Thank you.

Well, he's right.

We should extend the homestead exemption, and we have.

In fact, this legislature and I enacted measures to extend the homestead exemption of $25,000 and extend-increase the property tax fairness credit so people so that people can stay in their homes.

One of the first things I did coming right out of the box as governor was to issue the $15 million senior housing bonds that had already been passed by the people, which had sat on the previous governor's desk for more than two years.

I issued those bonds because seniors need housing.

And then this year, we enacted one of the most generous packages of housing reform ever in the history of Maine with the help of the legislature We reenacted the homestead, the historic tax credit, affordable tax credit.

We put 50 million of that federal money towards housing, 20 million of it towards rural rental housing.

And we're still moving forward on a lot of emergency housing measures in helping people find housing.

- [Mistler] Governor LaPage.

- Yeah, there's no question that we need housing in the state of Maine.

And the governor's absolutely correct.

There was some housing bonds that I did not issue because they were giving the money to developers.

They'd bill housing and then they'd go to market rates and unaffordable.

And so we weren't helping the affordability.

And that's the problem.

We do not have affordable housing.

What we need to do is take a look at our older buildings and schools and convert them into affordable housing and then consolidate our schools to lower the property tax section amongst the property taxes, the school portion.

We lower that, we have affordable housing, and we get these older buildings more productive.

And it's not just, I mentioned Millinocket and East Millinocket, but I could name you dozens of schools that could be converted into affordable housing.

And we did it in Waterville, and it could be done all over the state.

- [Mills] May I?

- [Rooks] Sure.

- That's exactly what we did with the Historic Rehabilitation tax credit.

Take old buildings, and that's what we're doing continuously.

We reenacted that tax credit, which is similar to federal tax credit, and people, yes they are developers who are developing these housing units.

And I've had the pleasure of meeting with dozens of senior citizens who are living in those units, created by that 15 million bond issue passed by the voters and signed, issued by me.

And they are very comfortable in their affordable housing units.

- [Rooks] Governor LaPage.

- Then why is a budget this year gonna hit 259 million in rent assistance?

- I'm talking about the senior housing bond that you did not issue.

- I'm talking about housing.

- We're gonna move on, and I believe Steve you have a follow up for each candidate?

- I do, and it's in the same order.

So Mr. Hunkler, you'll start, and this is a question for all three of you.

The number of people who are homeless in Maine has skyrocketed.

The 2022 point-in-time survey counted more than 4,400 people experiencing homelessness in Maine.

That's double the number in 2021.

How much of a priority is this for you, and what do you plan to do about it?

- That's a good question.

I think it has to be a multiple fork approach.

One of the problems is that a lot of the homeless, obviously they don't have jobs.

They don't have any place to go.

So we have to open up something to help them out.

We can open up old schools or old buildings.

We have to help them.

We have to get them off the street.

And we also have a lot of mental health in those people and we have to treat that as well.

So there needs to be a multi-prong approach to solving that problem, it's huge.

- [Mistler] Governor Mills.

- Thank you, what's why I appointed Greg Payne last year as my senior housing advisor.

He's an expert in the area of housing.

He was a developer with Avesta for many years.

And this is why he's in contact with every town and city across the state to look at the homelessness situation.

There are many reasons people are without housing.

And that's also why the legislature enacted and I signed into law a budget that includes $23 million for emergency housing and $750,000 for wraparound services.

'Cause Sam is right, there are a lot of mental health needs out there that aren't being addressed.

- [Mistler] Governor LaPage.

- Homelessness is a result of drugs.

A major part of the homelessness problem has to do with drugs.

It has to do with mental illness.

And I absolutely agree.

And in fact, we proposed a facility in Wyndham that would've put a hundred beds for detoxing people, a hundred beds for dealing with mental illness, Get 'em stabilized, get 'em back in the workforce and work with them for housing.

This governor got rid of that and we built dining rooms, gyms and libraries.

We have lost this year, we're gonna double the amount of people dying from opioids.

And we have a governor that is providing crack pipes and providing... - That's time, Governor Mills would you like to rebut that?

- You know, I'll let the press fact check everything he says.

I'm happy to have the press do that, because there's so many misstatements coming out of his mouth.

I'll say this, that on the opioid issue, and we can talk about that separately if you wish.

- [Rooks] I Will be coming ip separately.

We're talking about homelessness, yeah.

- And there was no plan on my desk, left on my desk to create a hundred units to incarcerate people with mental illness.

No such plan.

But we have responded to the drug issue by using medication assisted treatment in the prison.

- We'll move on then.

The next topic is reproductive rights, and Governor Mills, you'll go first.

Penelope Overton will ask the question.

- Maine law says that abortion is legal if performed before a fetus is capable of surviving outside of the womb.

And after viability only abortions necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother are permitted.

And a lot of our readers, a lot of our readers wanted to know more about your positions on this issue.

We'll start with Governor Mills and the questions that they had for you were, would you support removing the current viability restriction in Maine's law?

- No.

I support the current Maine law.

It reflects Roe v. Wade, which tragically the US Supreme Court has chosen to overturn.

I believe a woman's right to choose is just that, it's a woman's right, not a politician's, and most certainly not Mr. LaPage's or anybody sitting in public office.

As long as I am governor, the right to reproductive healthcare will never be considered dispensable.

My veto pen will stand in the way of any effort to undermine, rollback or outright eliminate the right to safe and legal abortion in Maine.

I have never wavered in that position, never equivocated, never flip-flopped.

- I'm gonna follow up just on that.

After 28 weeks though, that would mean, that would remain illegal in Maine.

- The current law, I have no plans to change the current law.

- Okay, thank you.

I'm gonna ask those... - I served eight years as the governor of Maine.

Never once did I attempt ever to do, even talk about the abortion bill because I believed in the bill that's in place right now is a good bill.

Governor Mills has been spending millions of dollars telling Maine people that I will change the law.

I believe in protecting the mother's life for rape and incest.

I also believe in the viability.

I, along with Dr. Shaw and Governor Mills, have in medicine, in healthcare.

And therefore I don't know where viability is.

I would leave that up to doctors to decide.

But the law, the way it stands, has been there since 1993.

I have never, ever attempted to change it.

- Our question for you though from readers is a little bit different, which is what would happen if the legislature were to bring you a bill that added additional restrictions, whether it be reducing the waiting time, excuse me, the viability period.

So say like 15 weeks like other states have been doing or requiring parental consent, or requiring let's say burial of fetal tissue after an abortion.

- I support the current law as it is.

- And if they brought those bill bills to you, you would not sign them?

- That is correct.

- [Overton] Thank you.

- [Mills] Would you let it go into law without your signature?

- I don't know.

- [Mills] That's the alternative, Mr. LaPage, you know that.

You were governor, you know what the options are.

Would you let it go into law without your signature?

- Would you allow a baby to take a breath?

Would you allow the baby to take a breath?

- Would you let a restrictive law go into effect without your signature?

Would you block a restriction on abortion?

- Would I block?

I would, this is what I would do.

The law that's in place right now, I have the same exact place you have.

And I would honor the law as it is.

You're talking about hypothetical.

If you're saying we're gonna take the restriction away, make making it illegal for the viability, no, I would not sign that.

I would veto that.

The viability is in law now.

- [Rooks] I don't think that was the question.

- No, the the question is, if there would be additional restrictions that came to you in a bill, would you veto additional restrictions that came to you if it came say from the Republicans?

- Give me an example of what you mean by additional restrictions.

- Say they wanted to have a 15 week limitation on abortion or say they wanted to have requiring parental consent for a minor or say they wanted to require a burial for fetal tissue.

- If it's restrictions, if you're talking about would I veto a bill that would change the viability, I would go to the medical professionals to tell me.

I don't know what you mean by 15 weeks or 28 weeks.

'Cause I don't know.

I'm not sure I understand the question.

- Alright.

- I understand the question.

I would not let such law become effective.

And my veto pen will stand in the way of any restrictions on the right to an abortion.

- Sam Hunkler... - When you say restriction, I'm trying to understand.

- So Governor LaPage, if the legislature came to you and said, "We want to change Maine's law and instead of viability, which currently stands at 28 weeks, now Maine's law is going to say no abortions after 15 weeks, would you veto that?

- Yes.

- Sam Hunkler, do you have a specific question for him?

- Thank you, we just wanted to know if you would make any changes to the law as it stands now?

- Well, abortion is an unfortunate issue in our society.

And it'd be nice if we had a society where it was obsolete.

We didn't need it, but we're far away from that.

And the only thing we do by making abortion illegal is that we put women's lives at risk.

And so I'm not willing to do that.

And I would support and defend the current constitution statute as it is.

If the legislature brought something to me and there were two thirds of the people in the legislature, or if you could find two thirds of the women in the state who wanted something different, I would sign.

- Penelope, do you have a follow up for the candidates?

- [Wells] May I follow up?

- [Rooks] On the issue of reproductive rights?

- Yes, we do.

We're gonna move on to Maine Care funding.

- [Hooks] May I just follow up with one point?

There's only one person on this stage who responded to the right to life questionnaire, and the question was, will you restrict abortion?

And he answered, "Yes."

Only one of us did that, and that was Mr. LaPage.

- The restriction is already there.

I'm honoring, the restriction I'm talking about is the law as it stands, the restriction of viability.

The viability is there.

The restriction is rape, incest, and the health of the mother, absolutely.

- Okay, we're gonna move on to the follow up question.

What has to do with Maine Care.

- Right, this is about whether or not you would, what Maine requires major medical insurers, including Maine Care to cover abortion.

Should this funding continue as is and if not, why?

And we are starting with Governor Wells.

- Yes, it's really important that women have access to affordable, reproductive healthcare.

no matter where they live, no matter what their zip code and private and public insurance is required under the current law.

I would certainly fight to keep that current law in effect.

- [Overton] Thank you.

- I do not support late term abortions.

I do not support taxpayer funded abortions.

That's my position.

- [Overton] Thanks, Mr. Hunkler?

- That is a tough one.

- [Overton] Evidently, yes.

- And right now we do allow for that.

And I think it certainly should continue in terms of when there is a risk to the mother, absolutely.

And I, because this is such a divisive issue, I don't know if I would continue to support all abortion through through Maine Care.

- All right, our next topic is... - [Mills] Just to clarify, when we talk about Maine Care, it's the state funding, not the federal funding.

- Correct.

Our next topic is threats to democracy.

And you'll be interested to learn that this is the question or the topic that the Portland Press Herald received more questions about than any other topic.

Governor LaPage will go first and Steve Mistler will ask the questions.

- The attack on the US capital last year was spurred by false claims that President Joe Biden's win was not legitimate and that there was widespread fraud that affected the outcome.

I'd like to start by asking whether you believe President Biden legitimately won the election, and if not, what evidence do you have to support your position?

- I believe that President Biden won the election.

I'm just not sure who's running the country.

- [Mistler] What do you mean by that?

- He's not obviously not capable of running the country and I don't know who's waving the strings.

- Mr. Hunkler.

- President Biden won the election.

- [Mistler] Are you sure?

- Yes.

- [Mistler] Okay, Governor Mills?

- Yes, President Biden won the popular vote by millions of votes and the electoral college vote as well, despite the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power by Mr. Trump's allies.

- Steve, a follow up?

- I do, and this is for Governor LaPage, and it's from Andrew in Georgetown.

He had this question for you.

"You have made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud over the years, including recently suggesting without evidence that large cities like Portland, Lewiston and Bangor are at higher risk of voter fraud."

Do you still stand by your position?

And if so, can you explain it?

- Well it is very easily explained.

We have 163,000 people that has been told, given to us by the Secretary of State who when you cross reference up an ID or license, they don't have them, so that's a concern.

That is a concern, period.

And the context that I made that comment was in small towns like Edgecomb for instance, the town clerk knows everybody.

It's much, much harder to defraud the election, the ballots than it is in in larger cities.

That's really the context in which I meant.

Now, and let me go on with that.

I don't understand why it's such an issue to give an ID, a voter ID.

Just give everybody a voter ID at the expense of the state and the problem's solved.

- Okay Steve, the other candidates, questions for them?

- Yeah, this is actually for all three candidates, if you will.

Again, beginning with Mr. LaPage, Lisa from Harpswell wants to know are you confident enough in Maine elections that you are prepared to accept the results of the upcoming election, the one that you're in, regardless of whether you win or lose.

- Absolutely.

I mean, that's it, absolutely.

I mean, I've never rejected any election, including the 2020 Presidential election.

And I think that's an absurd question, quite frankly.

That is, I will tell you one thing I'm concerned about.

You talk about democracy, but one thing you did not mention is censorship from the left.

When the FBI go into Facebook and tell them to censor people, you haven't mentioned that.

And I think that's a bigger threat to democracy than voting in Maine where we use paper ballot.

- Okay, Mr. Hunkler?

- I absolutely trust the integrity of our election system in Maine.

- [Mistler] And so you would accept whatever happens in November?

- Absolutely.

- [Mistler] Governor Mills.

- Absolutely, we have a really good system and we preserved it even during the pandemic.

We had about an 80% turnout in the one of the most controversial presidential election years in recent history with about 60% of the people voting absentee or casting an early ballot.

And they did so safely.

I don't understand the objections that Mr. LaPage has made before about small towns versus cities.

The city of Lewiston itself, the council last week unanimously voted to support the integrity and confirm their faith in their clerk Kathy Montejo.

- We're gonna move on to... - [LaPage] Could I just rebut one?

- A few second please.

- Why are you against voter ID?

- We don't need it here in Maine.

We don't need it.

We have integrity in our elections.

We have a huge turnout, which validates our democracy.

I think the right to vote is so fundamental, why would you question it?

Why would you impose another level of, you know, paperwork on voters?

Why inhibit them from voting?

I believe it's at the foundation of our democracy, and I take seriously our responsibility to ensure that every Maine person has the opportunity to vote.

- We are gonna move on, because we're running, running a little behind now.

We're gonna talk about the environment.

Sam Hunkler will go first with this question.

Penelope Overton, go ahead.

- So we've all been following the news of the hurricanes that have hit Florida's West Coast and Atlantic Canada in the last month, washing away homes and businesses, leaving millions in the dark and killing, I believe at last count, at least a hundred people.

And scientists are telling us that warming oceans and rising sea levels will make our hurricanes more severe.

They'll have higher wind speeds, they'll be wetter and travel more slowly, causing more damage.

So we'd like to know what steps would you take to ensure that Maine is prepared for this kind of extreme weather, and how would you pay for that resilience?

- I would ask the experts about what we need to do and how we need to go about that.

I mean, we just saw that Nova Scotia had one of the worst storms ever, and that was probably cause the whole idea of climate change.

We have, you know, fortunately a lot of our coast is higher up, it's on a bit of elevation, but we do have a lot of low lying land.

We need to figure out how to mitigate that.

As to how we do that, I don't know.

That's for the experts, that's for the engineers to figure out.

But we do need to look at it.

We need to put money into it.

We need to figure out how to do it.

But that is something that, again, it's gonna take a concerted effort from many different departments to figure out how to do that.

And I don't know the answer to that.

- Okay, thank you, Governor Mills.

- Thanks, look clean air and clean water are fundamental to who we are as a state and how we live and how people stay healthy.

I was pleased to be in Lewiston last week to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act nationally, which Ed Muskey drafted and got enacted.

So we are here to protect our clean water and clean air and our environment.

That's one reason why I have fully supported the Land for Maine's future and how we funded it with general appropriation funds this year in a bipartisan budget, $40 million for the Land for Maine's Future to preserve working waterfronts, working farms, working forests and dewintering yards.

We've invested in community infrastructure, with the infrastructure adaptation fund, $20 million to help communities be resilient.

This morning in the paper, there was a story about the town of Langstone and Maine School of Math and Science joining forces to engage in solar power, to track solar power and make steps towards keeping our environment safe and healthy and going to alternative energy as well.

- I just have to ask, how would that help us prepare for extreme weather?

- The storms.

Look, one of the first things I did was to create the Climate Action Council and they created the climate plan, and that has a lot to do with community resilience.

Community resilience is helping fund communities to look at whether they need more rip wrap along the water's edge, whether they need to fish in a different way or diversify what they're doing to prepare for climate change, because it's real, I believe in climate change and for the last four years we've been making up for lost time on climate change.

And using all of our resources to do that.

- Thanks, Governor LaPage.

- Yeah, I'd like to make one correction.

The governor, she said she had a bipartisan budget.

She passed a majority budget.

It was a majority budget.

One party, no Republicans involved.

When it comes to climate change, there's no question.

It is changing.

The climate is changing.

We have a problem that we have to deal with.

The problem I'm having right now is penalizing Maine people for actions of other countries and other states.

We are one of the cleaner states, but however we are punishing our citizens with high energy costs.

We've gone from 11th to fourth highest energy costs in the country.

We are now losing our logging industry and our forest industry, and matter of fact, another decade or so, we're gonna be having major forest fires 'cause we're not cutting the annual growth of our forest.

That's really important.

We have to pay attention to the entire environment.

- Can I just respond on the one point?

- [Rooks] Well I wanna, you wanted to ask, I could tell you wanted to follow up with the same question you followed up with Governor Mills.

- Maybe it's 'cause I've watched too much hurricane coverage, but let's go back to the storms for a minute.

How would that help us prepare for the storms that the scientists tell us are coming?

- Well, if you manage forests in particular, Maine has got 18 million acres and forest is carbon neutral.

So it actually helps the environment if you manage it properly, and right now we're not.

And that's, I believe that helped.

That goes a long way at helping the climate.

And also I think that we have to preserve our farms.

Right now we're taking a lot of our farms off the grid, off the growing and we're making into solar arrays.

And that's gonna be dangerous because the disposal of those in 20 years, we're gonna be facing this same problem that Los Angeles is facing right now of no place to put 'em.

- Okay, and Governor Mills, you want, very quickly.

- Just quickly, for more than 20 years.

we've had a sustainable Forestry Practices Act that is in effect, our loggers, our wood, our forest products industry are employing that, doing it safely, harvesting sustainably.

With respect to the Land for Maine's Future, that was part of the budget this year, which was a unanimous report of the appropriations committee funding $40 million to preserve farmland, preserve working waterfronts and preserve forestry.

- Okay, I wanna move on to the opioid epidemic.

And Steve Mistler will begin.

The first question for Governor Mills.

- Correct, there were a record 626 overdose deaths in Maine last year.

Another grim reminder that we are still in the grips of a brutal opioid epidemic, and according to the latest state statistics, we are on pace to break last year's record.

Governor Mills, you've embraced harm reduction and medication assisted treatment as necessary tools in fighting this crisis, but in 2020, the second year of your first term, Maine had the ninth highest drug death rate in the country.

If Maine is following the gold standard in treating this problem, then why is the problem seem to be getting worse?

- Thanks, listen, my heart grows out to every family member, every family who's lost a family member to a drug overdose.

We did have a high number.

We are having a high number of fatal overdoses, and that is really because of the kind of drugs that are out there, the fentanyl that we're trying to get off the streets.

My department of public safety has seized more, almost 82 pounds of fentanyl in the last couple of years.

Pounds.

This is so highly fatal and it's in everything.

And beyond that though, we've got NARCAN out out there, hundreds of thousands of doses of NARCAN, for every person who has a fatal overdose, there are are dozen or so who overdosed who didn't die.

And we have helped turn their lives around by increasing resident treatment centers, by increasing detox centers, by increasing recovery coaches to help turn people's lives around.

That's so important to help people be productive once again.

- Governor LaPage, sorry for the confusion, I actually have a specific question for you.

I think you're going to get into this, but you've called Governor Mills's approach a failure, but Maine's death rate per 100,000 residents was eighth highest in 2017 and 10th highest in 2016 while you were Governor and pursued a law enforcement centric approach.

Do you still think that's the solution?

- I think it's all of the above, and in 2016, I signed LD 1447, a $150 million bond that was going to put a forensic unit in Bangor and remove some of the forensic patients at Riverview to allow for more mental health.

And I'm just, unlike what the governor said, 1447 was gonna build a facility in Windham for a hundred beds for detoxing and a hundred beds of mental illness.

She said she never saw it.

I don't know where she was, because we have all kinds of data and information about it.

But this is the other thing that really bothers me about her approach.

She is now giving crack pipes.

- [Mills] Oh... - Through a federal program, and then she also allowed a bill that allows 2000 lethal doses of drugs no longer be a charge, of fentanyl, by the way, of fentanyl, which she just said is the most deadly, to be no longer trafficking, it's only personal possession.

That is outrageous.

- Let me just check you on the crack pipes thing.

That was, that's part of a federal program.

And that federal program does not specifically fund crack pipes.

It's a safe drug kit program, but neither pipes are included in those kits.

Now I'm just... - I think you need to do your homework cause they are.

- But I did.

- [LaPage] We have some of the crack pipes.

We have some reporters who have gotten some of the kits.

- Right, and in that report that you referenced and referenced a week ago in Portland, the reporter acknowledges that those pipes that he got from a couple of facilities, one facility in Lewiston undone in Sanford, in that story, they acknowledge, those facilities acknowledge, that those are not part of that federal program.

But let me just follow up on NARCAN, because you had something to say about that too.

You have repeatedly criticized expanding access of the overdose reversal drug NARCAN because you see it as quote "a method of sustaining life and extending life," end quote, and not a way to quote "fix the problem."

The sole purpose of NARCAN is to save somebody's life.

- [LaPage] Until the next overdose.

- Right, and I guess I'm trying to figure what... - Until the next overdose.

- Understood, but can you explain how that doesn't work with your plan?

- Because it does work with the plan if we had the detox center, it would work perfectly.

But detox, NARCAN, if you'll keep giving NARCAN to the same people over and over again, you're eventually gonna miss.

And my point is, if you get into a detox center and you work with them, my whole program was simply to get 'em into detox.

Once they detox, then you get 'em back into society, in a workplace, and if they stay sober for a year, you expunge their record because that's the most critical.

That's when if you expunge the record, you give them a second chance at life.

And the problem with NARCAN now, and the problem with drug addiction right now, is many of these people never get off the drug because they cannot, they don't have that second chance.

They can't get a good career job.

And they're always on the lower end of spectrum and that's what ends up killing them.

- We're gonna give Sam Hunkler a chance to answer a follow up question about the opioid epidemic.

And you have a specific question for him?

- Yeah, I just have a brief question about NARCAN.

What do you believe?

Should it be as available as it is right now?

Or do you have other alternative ideas about how we should be approaching the opioid epidemic?

- Well, first of all, we treat addiction with addiction.

We give people methadone and buprenorphine, which are very addictive substances.

So we keep people addicted to drugs through pharmaceuticals.

The problem is then those people become dependent on the system to go and get these drugs, and as far as I can see, there's no real, there's no real emphasis to get them off.

And the only way you're going to get them off is that they have to go through recovery.

They have to start dealing with the underlying problems that are causing an addiction in the first place.

I've treated a lot of addicts in my life as a physician and what I see happening, it's not going to change unless we change the way we treat.

I would turn one of our prisons into a rehabilitation center, a detox and rehabilitation center, if not one prison, two.

Because if you think about it, half the people incarcerated are there for drug related problems.

And we need a way to get these people off the streets.

We need to stabilize their lives.

And we need to help get them back in the community while they're in rehabilitation, and we need to help them change their lives.

And the pharmaceutical drugs are not doing that.

And there's no incentive to get them off them, because the people stay in the system.

It just fosters dependency.

- Okay, we're gonna move on.

- [Mills] Can I respond to one thing though?

- If you can do it in a five or 10 seconds.

- Last Saturday morning, we made the national news about what's happening in our prisons, our state prisons with the counseling and the medication assisted treatment that is going on for more than 2000 people who've been through the prison system and are in the prison system.

Now I'm proud of Randy Liberty and our Department of Corrections for addressing addiction and substance use disorder in a progressive manner.

- Our next topic is tribal relations.

Can you go quickly, Sam Hunkler?

- Yes.

No, go ahead.

- Okay, our next topic's tribal relations.

Governor LaPage will go first, and Penelope Overton from the Press Herald will ask that question.

- Thanks, Means Wabanaki Nations want to revisit the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act, a 1980 law in which the tribes waived their claims to two-thirds of the state in exchange for 81 million.

At issue are provisions stipulating that federal Indian laws past and future did not apply to Maine's tribes if the state feels they undermine its powers and that the tribes are in effect municipalities subject to state laws rather than sovereign nations operating under federal jurisdiction, as is the case for the other 570 federally recognized tribes in the United States.

So my first question is to, just to make sure I got this right?

- [Rooks] I'm sorry, to Governor LaPage.

- Okay, we have a specific question for each one of the candidates.

I wanted to make sure I had the order right.

You have criticized the attempts to change the 1980 agreement, which you said was quote "a done deal."

And in August you said the Settlement Act was negotiated fairly in that the tribes only want to reopen the terms of the deal now because they want more money.

Are you open to renegotiating any aspects of the 1980 agreement and if not, why?

- I am absolutely willing to sit down with the tribes and to discuss what their needs are and where they want to go.

But I don't know of any specifics.

I don't know the specifics 'cause I have not been involved in the government in the last four years.

At the time that we were there, there were two or three things they wanted and we were working on 'em.

I mean, they wanted a bottling plant, they wanted maple syrup program.

I was all open to work with that and I don't know what happened to it cause my time ran out and now that I understand that there's some talks about it, I'm willing to sit down and talk about it and negotiate, yes.

- Okay.

- [Rooks] You have a specific question for Sam Hunkler as well?

- Yes, I do, thanks.

- Washington County, where you live, is home to the Passamaquoddy Tribe.

Based on your experience and what you see in your county, are there specific changes to the 1980 agreement that you would support?

- I don't really know the 1980 agreement that well, so I can't specifically speak to that, but I do support sovereignty for the Wabanakis, all the tribes in Maine.

And I would do whatever I need to do to make that happen.

- Thank you.

- [Rooks] And you have a specific question for Governor Mills as well?

- I do.

Thanks.

You successfully opposed the tribal sovereignty bill passed by the state legislature this year because you said it would create more uncertainty and legal challenges and this is also an area where you were a bit out of touch or out of step, excuse me, out of step, pardon me, with your party in some areas.

- [Wells] That happens.

- It does.

Governor, why should Maine's Wabanaki not have the same powers and benefits as tribal nations in other parts of the country?

- Oh, thanks.

Listen, I am committed to healing the divisions of the past and to forging new tribal-state relationships based on mutual trust and respect.

I think the Wabanaki people and the Maine state, Maine people all breathe the same air, we drink the same water, we share the same lands.

We've had disagreements over policy.

This is one bill that I've had disagreements over in its current form, I filed testimony about it.

That testimony hasn't been responded to.

And the issue is what happens to the Forest Practices Act?

What happens to the environmental laws?

What happens to the fish and wildlife laws if the tribes acquire additional lands that are exempted from state laws and regulations?

And so we're talking about those things.

And we also talked about this year things we have in common.

And we created a bill that addresses gambling, addresses collaboration, addresses some income tax issues relating to the tribes.

We've made great progress with the tribes on sustenance fishing waters, some of the highest water quality standards in the nation, and addressing the Pleasant Point water quality issues among many other things.

- Thank you.

We are going to take a quick break.

When we return, we will ask about education and hopefully other issues as well, and of course, each candidate will present a closing statement.

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- And welcome back to our "Your Vote 2022" debate between the candidates for Governor in Maine.

Our next topic is education.

Sam Hunkler will go first for this question.

And Maine Public Steve Mistler will ask that first question.

- Mr. Hunkler, this is sort of a general question for you about public education and your views of it, especially considering how politicized it's become in this particular campaign.

Do you have any concerns over what's being taught in schools?

Do you have any concerns with the quality of the education?

Do you support the idea of the 55% of funding local education costs?

Does that work?

It's a lot of questions to answer there, but if you... - Yeah, a lot there.

First of all, I think the education system is failing our children.

I was just at the Youth Summit in Fairfield this past weekend, and I talked to one student in particular, and he said, "You know what's really, it's not good for me to sit and listen to people lecture to me seven hours a day."

And so I mean, and we have this focus on testing now where we do math and science testing or whatever.

And I think that that's okay, but we need to broaden our idea of education.

There's some kids who are going to go into college.

Some people are going to be fishermen.

And I think that we need to give much more local control to our schools.

I think we may need to give some guidelines from state, but I think we need to give the control of education back to communities, because those communities know what their children need more than people at the top.

What we need in Beales is very different than what what's needed in Portland or here in Lewiston.

So I think we need to look more to the individual schools and see what they need in terms of the education.

- Okay.

Governor Mills, this question is for you.

During this campaign, voters are seeing a lot of messaging from the main Republican party.

outside groups and Governor LaPage himself, that public schools are indoctrinating kids in so-called woke teachings about race and LGBTQ issues.

We haven't heard from you directly about this, about these allegations.

I guess now is as good a time as any to hear what you have to say about it.

- Thanks.

You know, I think that whole effort is sort of an attempt to deflect from his record on education and the eight years that we lost in progress and education.

In my record on education, which includes finally for the first time fully funding the state's share of public education.

It includes giving teachers a raise, it includes funding equipment for the CTEs, it includes being on the road, the path to universal Pre-K because that's what parents have asked for.

That's what businesses and parents and citizens have asked for.

We have a system of local control when it comes to the curriculum of Maine schools and many parents serve on our school boards.

Parents have rights in Maine, and I urge them, encourage them to take part in the process.

Run for school board, express your views to the school board.

if there's a piece of the curriculum you disagree with, speak up and have a say.

- Let me just follow up on the 55%, which it took 20 years to get to that point, and there's a reason for that.

It's costly, but can you continue to do that when state coffers are not as flush as they are right now?

Like I mentioned at the very top of this debate, you know, there's a possibility of a recession.

Can you meet that threshold if there's a downturn?

- Sure, and Steve that's why the legislature bipartisan budget this year put aside some I think $30 million for an education reserve as well.

But we are fully funding our state share of education.

What that does is not only fund education, but bring the burden down off of the property taxpayers, which I'm very much in support of as well.

Yes, we aim to continue at this pace, continue complying with our obligation to fund public education at 55% without any gimmicks or tricks up our sleeves.

- Governor LaPage, your Parents Bill of Rights propose, ostensibly gives parents more say in public education by beefing up rights that they have at the local level.

You know, videotaping meetings and having them archived, that sort of thing, but other Republicans enacting these laws have used them to set new baselines for curricula that better reflects their conservative values.

We're seeing this in other states.

You hadn't talked about that, but how is that not an infringement of local control?

Is that any different from what your campaign has accused the Mills administration of doing?

- No, what I believe is that parents should have a right to opt in or out of certain curriculas.

That's really what the parents bill of right is in my mind.

I honestly and truthfully believe that we should be going back to reading, writing, math, civics, and we should not be, we should teach our children how to think independently and critically, not what to think.

And if anybody in this audience believes that our schools right now are not being indoctrinated, I'm sorry, I've been to and I've listened to and so what I'm saying is we need, if we have school choice, we have a parent's bill of rights, we have transparency in curriculum.

Parents should have a right to opt in or opt out if they don't like it.

I think we need to have vocational education and technical education in all of our schools so that we correct this imbalance of 60% of our college and universities are women, 40% are men, but our population is closer to 50/50.

- Quick follow-up if I might relate it also to your Parents Bill of Rights, one of its main components is this voucher program, expanding Maine's voucher program to all students so that they can attend schools outside of the districts in which they reside.

There are critics of this policy and they contend that this drains resources for public education and benefits mostly parents who can afford the difference between the subsidy that they receive, I think under your plan it's a state subsidy and the actual cost of tuition to, say, a private school.

What do you say to that?

- I say that the money should follow the kids and the students.

And I also will be critical of the 55%.

Who establishes the 55%?

- Voters.

- Who establishes on a year to year budget?

Who establishes the 55%?

The state has no say in it.

It's established by superintendents.

And so the bricks and mortar and in the state of Maine, if you take a look at administering our schools, we're very high in administration and we're very high in bricks and mortar, and we're very low on how much money gets into the classroom.

I want to get more money into the classroom.

- All right, well, speaking of bricks and mortar, the next education question will be asked by Penelope Overton and Janet Mills will be the first person to answer that question.

- Well, first comes free meals, then comes bricks and mortar.

So the question is, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government began offering free breakfast and lunch to all students, regardless of their family income.

And last year, Maine became one of the first states to announce it would pay to continue that program even when the federal pandemic waivers end.

As governor, will you continue to fund this program?

- We do, we will, we have, and that was part of a bipartisan budget that was passed this April to include universal free food in the Maine schools.

- Great, Governor LaPage.

- Well, I gotta make another correction here.

The latest budget that was passed was a majority budget, the first time since 2005.

It was a majority budget and it was not bipartisan.

So with that, I do believe in kids in school being fed properly, I absolutely agree with that.

And I think that that's one of the foundations of going to school is making sure you don't go to school hungry and come home hungry.

So I'm all in for feeding our children.

- And the state should pick up the tab for the difference between?

- [LaPage] What the feds?

Yes.

- Okay, thank you.

- Can I just, in April of this year, we enacted a fully bipartisan budget that included two years free tuition to community colleges, universal free food at the schools and the inflation relief program and so many other things.

- [LaPage] Was it a majority budget?

- It was a bipartisan, it was a unanimous committee report and an overwhelmingly bipartisan... - So we know what to hear from both of you in your closing statements will probably be about this, which would be great.

Mr. Hunkler, what about you?

- Yes, I'd like to see that funding continue and to continue to feed children in schools.

But I would also like to add that we try to feed them with Maine produce, our farms.

I would love to see us use that and really make good food, good nutritious food, but use as much as we can by our own farms.

And I would also actually also like to invite at least one lunch every week, I would like to invite everybody over 65 for a free lunch with those kids.

It would be great to start getting children and elderly together.

Everything I would do as governor, it would be through the lens of children and their future.

If it's not good for children and their future, we shouldn't be doing it.

And so I think that starting with feeding them, getting them square meals, but again, good nutritious meals is a good place to start.

- All right, very quickly, we'll do a follow up if we could answer this quickly.

Thank you.

- Yes, many Maine school buildings are in dire need of replacement or extensive renovation.

More than 100 Maine schools are on the waiting list for state funding for capital improvement, yet the state only funds a handful of projects every few years, the needs in the hundreds, if not billions of dollars.

What do you plan to do about this crisis?

- [Mills] Is that for me?

- Yeah, you start off.

- Okay, thank you.

We did replenish the school renovation fund this year.

I believe it's in the budget this year.

And that will go out to the schools on the list.

As you know, there are priority lists that the State Board of Education looks at.

I'm sure there are even greater needs.

As the budget allows, we will fund them.

- [Overton] Okay, Governor LaPage?

- Yeah, I believe that we have a housing shortage and we have a lot of bricks and mortar.

I think we can take a hard look at our bricks and mortar, our schools and see those areas in which we can consolidate and get new schools and turn some of the schools, current schools into affordable housing, I think is a program that we can do.

And yes, it will be expensive, but I think it's an infrastructure investment that the state needs to make.

- Mr. Hunkler - I'd like to have us begin to have a commission on education that is ongoing all the time to keep looking at education, because we need to do something about it and nobody has the answers, but we need to bring people together to do that.

In terms of the brick and mortar, we need to get more vocational schools and kids interested in vocational schools, and that needs to start when they're in junior high, at a much younger age.

And I'd like to see us get kids much more out in the community to work with people and elders out, you know, workers out in the community.

So I think we need to rethink how we do education, not just the brick and mortar part of that.

Yes, we need to do that, but I think we need, that needs to be part of a much bigger vision of how we're gonna educate our children.

- All right, and our final question of this debate will be that voters wanna know about your leadership style, and Paul LaPage will answer this question first and Steve Mistler will ask it.

- Governor LaPage, before launching your bid for another term last year, you often embraced your relationship with President Trump and described your governing style as sort of a prototype for his as President.

That conduct has been described as divisive and chaotic and counterproductive to governing.

Why should Maine voters believe it'll be any different if you secure a third non-consecutive term?

- Well, I'll tell you, it's very simple, I think to be very honest with you, and to be honest with media, I think you've been a little bit unfair in how you've treated me over the last eight years.

But that aside, life is a journey and you learn.

Every day, you grow and you learn and you have to muddle your way through life.

It's a pilgrimage of life and along the way you learn, and I have learned an awful lot.

My style is a far more laid back than you realize.

If you talk to my commissioners and people that worked for me as governor, I'm talking about how I manage the state.

It's far different than you could ever imagine.

Now was was I combative with the media?

Yeah.

I give what I get.

- Sorry, I lost... - [Rooks] For Sam Hunkler?

- Oh yeah, sorry.

It's been a long debate.

Your campaign has been anchored in the idea that all one person has to do to solve problems is bring people together.

And I guess I'm wondering how that's different than what happens now in the legislative process?

Do you believe leaders can lead without holding policy views of their own?

- Well, I can tell you what I believe and I can give you my opinion, I can give my you my policy ideas, but I'm one of 1.3 million people and so I would really like to bring people together.

I've been out on the streets for the past year and I hear all kinds of ideas that I never would've come up with on my own.

And so I know that no one, none, not one of us have the answers to everything.

And we do need to have input from people.

I would like to have, instead of having a commissioner, I would like to have a commission running a department so that you could have more ideas come in.

I would like to be leading that and orchestrating that.

I would like to have a council of of advisors around me all the time because I don't, again, I have ideas, but I also know that we all have ideas and whenever I go to, if I were to go to, let's say appoint a commissioner of agriculture, I would know the farmers and I would say, you know, get 50 of you and give me five names and let's rank choice them and see who comes out as the top.

I don't have any political parties.

I will have no political appointments.

- [Rooks] Okay.

- Governor Mills, a significant part of your reelection message is your willingness to collaborate with those who might disagree with you.

Many Republican lawmakers have a decidedly different view of your leadership, especially when it came to the pandemic.

What's your response to complaints that you didn't involve them in a lot of the decisions that you made?

- Well, we did, and we had a lot of Zoom meetings and telephone conferences with all kinds of stakeholders, including legislators.

More importantly, I have a cabinet that is given free reign to talk to legislators, to talk to the public, to talk to the media, like Randy Liberty did on national TV Sunday morning about our treatment programs in the prison.

They are free to voice their opinions and they're some of the best and brightest people I could ever imagine being with me during one of the most tumultuous times in recent history.

My leadership style is to sit down and listen to people and that's what we have done in the last four years, whether it was worker's comp reform, paid leave bills, yellow flag bills, school safety measures, or the budget this year, including inflation relief measures and community college tuition and all these things, we did it by working across the aisle.

I didn't issue 642 vetoes.

I issued a small number of vetoes, carefully worded to inform people what my positions were.

- That is our last question.

We're gonna turn to closing statements now.

Each of you will have two minutes to give a closing statement and speak directly to the voters.

This is decided before the debate by random drawing.

The order will be Sam Hunkler, than Pau LaPage, then Janet Mills.

Sam Hunkler, go ahead.

- The fact that I'm sitting here, or rather standing here, means that you can do this too.

I stand here not because of fame or money or a political party or any other reason other than I was able to go out and get 4,000 signatures from the people of Maine from 363 towns in all counties.

I stand here because I spent the last year on the streets talking to people, and I spent 30 years as a family doctor speaking to them and as a community member and a citizen of this state.

I will bring your voices with me to the governorship.

We now have a government of political parties, by politicians for special interest, and those special interests are corrupting our whole political system with the influence of money.

Most of us want something different, but we don't really know what that looks like.

I'm standing for a different way of governing, based on finding common ground for the common good with common sense.

In order to heal the divide in our society and to find common ground, we must learn to listen to one another and to be open to new ideas and ways of governing.

You may not have heard of me before tonight, because I'm standing on a very grassroots, word of mouth campaign.

I'm accepting no donations and I'm limiting my own personal money to $5,000 for the whole campaign.

This frees me from being beholden to anyone, to any organization, to any special interest, to any political party, to any lobbyist.

My allegiance is to the people of Maine.

We have a choice.

I'm offering you something to vote for, rather than something to vote against.

So I'm asking you for you to vote for me, but more importantly, I'm asking you to stand with me with strength and integrity to form a government of the people by the people and for the people of Maine.

You can learn more about me and my campaign at StandWithSam2022.com.

You will not be asked for a donation.

- Thank you Sam Hunkler.

We'll move now to Paul LaPage.

- On November 8th, Maine people are gonna have a choice.

We are coming off record number of deaths over the last two years, record number of overdoses in the last two years, suicide between is the number two killer, not only in Maine but around the country, for 10 to 30 year olds, Maine is facing challenges, as our country is facing some challenges.

Our economy is broken, our federal government is broken, and we as people need to find a way to start working together, because Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided cannot stand."

We need to find a way to start working together and meet each other more in the middle.

I never had a majority budget and I think a majority budget is a bad budget.

We did, however, in 2012, have a supplemental that was majority because we really were pressed for getting some policies done.

Janet Mill's only solution over the last four years is to throw money at at a problem.

What do we do when the money's gone?

Remember one thing.

A lot of money hides a lot of sins.

Ask yourself, are you better today than you were four years ago?

Is your grocery bill lower today than it was four years ago?

Is your electricity bill lower today than it was four years ago?

(speaking French) My record is very clear.

I have an eight year record.

I took the state when it was a very very, the biggest recession in the history of our country and I turned the state around and I can do it again.

- Thank you Governor LaPage, Governor Mills?

- Sure that's why we were 49th in the nation in economic recovery in 2016.

Listen, we've been through some tough times together these last few years, especially you and me, and we've braved them together.

Now I'm looking at the future.

I was born and raised in Western Maine.

My parents worked full time while raising five children.

We had paper routes as kids and I waited tables in high school to make money for college.

When I met and married my husband Stan here in Lewiston, he was a widower with five daughters.

We raised them together while working full time, both of us.

They had a good education in the Maine public schools.

Stan is gone, and the girls are all grown up, but I have five grandchildren now here in Maine.

I love nothing better than to spend time with the two little grandgirls, granddaughters to hear what's on their minds.

"Nana, will my tooth come back in?

Nana, look, I can tie my shoe now.

Nana, see the picture I drew for you."

I know what's on their minds, but what's on my mind is what opportunity will they have 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now?

Will they have the same rights I have enjoyed for the last 49 years?

As long as I am governor, they will.

Will they be able to get a good education right here in Maine?

Will they breathe clean air and drink clean water here in Maine?

Will they have affordable healthcare?

Will they have a good paying job and a rewarding career and be able to raise their own children in a safe and welcoming state right here in Maine?

In other words, their future and your children's future.

That's what's on my mind every day and that's why I'm running for one more term as governor, to make sure that every boy and girl in Maine gets to go to a good school and enjoy a great natural resources and have the career they choose in a state I love so much and know that this will always be their home.

We've made great progress these last few years through the toughest times in history and we won't go back.

I'm privileged to be your governor.

I would be honored to have your vote.

Thank you.

- Thank you Governor Mills, and thanks to all three candidates here tonight.

Thank you to the Franco Center here in Lewiston for hosting the debate.

And thank you for joining us, for this "Your Vote 2022" gubernatorial debate.

Election day is November 8th.

For Steve and Penelope and all of us at Maine Public, the Portland Press Herald and Lewiston Sun Journal, goodnight.

(inspiring music)