I am running for the Maine State House because I believe that our city and community is best served when we have leaders who have spent time in community building relationships, listening to many different voices and actively working to develop policy and actions that reflect our values.

I am not going to the State House with a specific agenda, but having served Portland for two terms on council I do have some ideas and areas of interest that I hope to pursue. But what I have also learned is that this work is not done in isolation or for the benefit of one person, so I will also need community engagement to best understand what is important to Portlanders and use that engagement to inform my work.

I am proud to call Portland home. We have an incredibly diverse, talented, beautiful and challenging community. We are also collectively living through incredibly difficult political and economic realities. And that navigating those realities is hard. Building policy to address those realities is hard. Building coalitions and support in a very polarizing landscape is hard.  I am ready to face these challenges and bring my unique skills to work for our city in Augusta.

One thing that my culture has taught me is that all things are related and we have to work collectively to support our human relatives, our animal relatives, our plant relatives and our land. When we work on behalf of the many instead of the few we will see everyone thrive instead of the wealthiest and most privileged. And we are not just working on behalf of this generation, but also using the wisdom of those generations that came before us and for the generations who will come after us. This is why my work is always looking at how we’re connected and how we can be inclusive.

Ahe’hee (Thank You) for your support and I look forward to hearing from you about what your ideas and hopes are for our city.