Platform
Origins
I am a Republican, a descriptor which has developed a negative connotation among certain groups. I believe in the strength of the Republic over democratic tyranny. Nowhere in our US Constitution is the word “democracy” mentioned. The founders also did not include the word in the Declaration of Independence. The Democratic party was founded by Andrew Jackson, who was a major slaveholder. It was Democrats that we went to war against in the 1860s, and the schism had to do with more than the right to keep people as slaves.
I am a Republican, but I was not always one. Though my father taught me many things, I listened to my teachers more. When I entered the Army, I considered myself a moderate liberal.
It wasn’t until I had my first child that I really examined where I stood, and around that time (2014), the democratic party was moving rapidly leftward, okaying the burning of cities over isolated incidents and generally becoming something I could no longer identify with.
Looking back, I was never really a Democrat. There’s a saying that goes, “Being a Republican in New England simply means you’re not a communist.” And a communist is the one thing I will never be.
I spent years studying communism. I have read all the major works. I have read the biographies of Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and Ho Chi Minh. I am still fond of the book Living My Life by Emma Goldman, though I view it through a different lens than I did at 14. I have met people from communist countries. I have a friend whose entire second family is half-Chinese, and has spent a good portion of his adult life living in China.
Communists are control freaks. They want to tell you what you can and cannot say. They want to define everything they don’t like as “racism.” They want to indoctrinate the children to believe that the men who built this country were simply evil, racist jerks who don’t deserve to be revered. Communists seek, through culture, to destabilize the American family using things like trans ideology, creating a society in which both parents must work, eroding parental rights, attacking traditional western values and religions, and much more. If you know, you know.
Communism is as much a cultural force as it is a political one, but the one thing to remember about leftists is that they only care about power, not people.
They always take the other side, whatever it may be. As of March, 2026, taking the side of the Islamic fascist regime in Iran appears to be the current leftist trope.
All leftism leads to communism. Period.
Democrats of today are almost indistinguishable from the communists of the 1930s, 50s, and 60s. Many democrats today openly embrace socialism, which leads to communism. The party that cannot answer the question, “What is a woman?” wants to tell you how to live every aspect of your life. There are examples of prenatal communism right here in Maine that I can point to, such as Gubernatorial Candidate Nirav Shah’s plan for “dense housing.” Or the fact that the trans ideology is so near and dear to Governor Janet Mills’ heart, she was more than willing to put billions in federal funding on the line.
Is it really that important that biological males be allowed to compete in female sports, or that biological male criminals be housed with female inmates? Imagine a scenario where your wife or daughter caught an OUI charge and refused to stop driving after suspension, so she is sentenced to 18 months in prison. While there a biological male inmate is housed with her–maybe even her roommate–and decides to do what criminals do best: violate her. Would you still feel like this issue doesn’t matter, or isn’t important? Is it worth taking that risk?
Title IX says nothing about gender. It explicitly refers to sex. The trans cult has spent the last decade+ convincing us that there is a difference between the two, so now it’s time they eat their own dog food: you cannot change your sex, and no amount of surgery will change this. Your DNA will always be male or female, not any of the dozens of genders these people have dreamed up. And biological male criminals will say anything to get an easier time in prison, or to be around women. That the state ever accepted the idea that these people’s human rights should be placed above the dignity of women and girls is an actual human rights violation, and I wish it would be investigated by an even higher authority than the federal government.
Democrats of today have nothing in common with the great democrats like FDR and JFK, who were both weary of communism.
FDR said, “I repudiate the support of any advocate of Communism or of any other alien ‘ism’ which would by fair means or foul change our American democracy.”
JFK said, “The implacable Communist drive for world domination, which now penetrates every continent and every section of the world, takes many forms; and the battle against communism is fought on many fronts. […] In short, freedom has been on the defensive all over the globe and the Communists have made enormous gains without firing a single shot.”
The Democrat party is no longer “center-left.” It’s just left, and America will not make any true progress until we leave it behind.
I believe it is the duty of every American man and woman to be vigilant of the rise of communism. We are the last great country to not fall to it, and to not fall to Islam. We have a duty to seek office, implement pro-freedom agendas, and protect our way of life. For me, as your city councilor, communism and all its trappings will be a no-go.
We can talk all day about the many ways that leftism has infected our great country. But let’s talk about what I want to do for Bangor…
Taxes
Property taxes are already too high for many of us working-class folks here in Bangor. Whether you rent or whether you pay a mortgage, or even if you own your property outright, you’re paying a lot for only a little.
For my part, despite paying a property tax bill of at least $300 per month, I cannot even expect the city to plow my sidewalk so I can safely walk to work in the winter. They plow the opposite side, which is mostly apartments, though. (All sidewalks matter.) I have used the police once in my time in Bangor, and have had them used on me twice. My son Aybel goes to a private, special school which is not funded by the city. I pay a bill for my trash collection and water and a separate bill for my sewer use. And my situation is not even the most ridiculous. I have voters who tell me they’re paying over twice my property taxes, never use the police, and are old enough to not have any kids or even any grandkids in Bangor schools.
The city has expended multiple millions of dollars on the growing homeless problem. But is the homeless problem native to Bangor? How many of these people are even from Bangor? More on that in a bit.
Capehart has a beautiful place for the kids to play, complete with a water park. But if you’re just a regular resident looking for a free water park, you have to drive out to Capehart. When my own son wants to go to a park, we go to one of the schools in the neighborhood. Normally, though, to be honest, he just uses the playset in our backyard.
Sometimes, people take my focus on Capehart and the homeless as jealousy. They leave out the fact that I myself come from poverty and that I spent a couple years homeless. Sure, I wish more help had been offered to my mother and myself when I was getting started in life. That would have been great. But it wasn’t the reality, so we made do with what we had. It built character in me, and I rose above. Now I have to start an unlikely political career to prevent the communists downtown from taking what I fought so hard for, my familiy’s home at 44 Pier St.
As city councilor, I will first seek to freeze property taxes. Then I will look for creative strategies to lower the mill rate from $17.70 to $12.50. I believe this can be done through a variety of tactics, including expanding our tax base (attracting young families, business, and entrepreneurs) and perhaps having a two-tier tax system which also accounts for the income of the taxpayer.
It seems wrong that a retiree who worked her whole life for her home should pay the same amount on a home that a person earning $200,000 a year would pay. Some will call these ideas “progressive,” but I am just dealing with the situation as it stands. I will seek to install real exemptions for retired and disabled veterans, teachers and retired teachers, first responders and retired first responders (police, EMTs, and firemen), and those living on social security retirement alone.
I firmly believe this will attract the right kind of people to our city. People with an understanding of service and commitment. Ideally, these groups would pay a mill rate about $3 lower than the $12.50 I want to see for all Bangor property owners.
Homeless Epidemic
As I’ve stated before, I spent some time as a homeless wanderer after the Army. It’s how I met my first wife, Breanna, at a “Rainbow Gathering” in the Angelina National Forest near Lufkin, Texas. I was more “home-free” than “homeless,” as I had my disability payments from the VA to build on.
Her and I got pregnant quick, so we settled in Grand Junction, Colorado. My life with Bre was racked with instability, a far cry from what I have with my second wife. I never could have bought a house with someone who inherently believed that money was evil and should be spent immediately.
I met a lot of other homeless people during that time, and I can say that many of them belong in prison. Not all, certainly not all. But a good portion of the homeless problem could be solved if police and the courts would simply apply existing laws and arrest them. They are often doing drug deals, possessing drugs, shoplifting, stealing from residents, and otherwise breaking the law.
Another group of them are severely mentally ill. If we are going to build anything for the homeless, a mental institution would be the thing. Mental illness afflicts at least 1 in 6 Americans today. President Trump has said that he is interested in bringing our country’s mental health system back to where it was before Ronald Reagan. I had a few episodes myself while on the streets, being unmedicated for PTSD during that time in my life. In San Francisco, the police would simply take me to the hospital, and from there I actually found some help, eventually. People who need help should be getting the help they need, and if they refuse, their autonomy does not override public safety.
Then there are the homeless who have fallen on hard times, and are not there by any choice or mental defect of their own. These are the people for whom the housing we are building should be reserved, but it should not come in a limitless fashion. I believe that once someone moves into one of these units, they should be given 90 days to find a job.
Yes, we should help them find that job. Yes, we need to create a lot more jobs. 90 days after that, they should be paying at least 50% of the costs of their living arrangements. From there, we give them two years to save for a place of their own. Bringing down rents will help with this.
Why “kick them out” if they don’t comply with these mandates, you ask? Well, because we have to make room for others. It really is that simple. At that point, we suggest to them other cities with more resources who might be willing to help them. The taxpayers’ money does not belong to the city, it belongs to the people, and it should be spent wisely. A properly functioning government does so well with money that it is able to rebate some of it to each taxpayer at the end of the year.
We cannot have an all-you-can-eat free buffet of services and be the only city around doing that, because municipalities around the state will simply ship their homeless problem to us. We are already seeing that with neighboring Brewer, Hampden, and other towns sending their homeless to Bangor with a warning not to return.
To develop my strategy, I will consult a variety of sources, including local homeless advocates and officials in cities where the homeless problem is more under control. I have contacts in, and will develop contacts in more, cities across the country.
Rents
Rents are out of control in Bangor right now. My wife and I were considering selling our house during a particularly bad moment a couple years ago, and not only could we not get in anywhere, the rent prices made no sense.
It’s a combination of things, including greed and high property taxes. I believe the city should incentivize and reward property owners who take into account the human cost of requiring credit checks and $3000 to move into a rundown 1-bedroom apartment. These things are affecting the homeless problem. Imagine a homeless person manages to get a job and save up a bunch of money; now they need a 750 on their credit report to get a place to live. It was not always this way in Bangor, and it was not always this way in America.
It is worth mentioning that one of the reasons the landlords create such a high barrier to entry is that the city makes it difficult to get problem renters out. We must speak to the landlords and see what they think the best solutions are, and at least meet them in the middle. They do pay for a good portion of the city’s budget, after all.
The solution is not just more public housing, that is an easy answer you will get from the left. The solution is many-faceted.
I will consult with developers, rental agencies, real estate firms, and renters to determine the best strategies for lowering rents. After all, simply lowering property tax will not automatically mean the savings are passed onto renters. In truth, it is rare that rent ever goes down.
But at present it costs at least 2-weeks wages for someone earning $20 an hour to rent a 2-bedroom apartment in Bangor, by and large. I don’t care about your niche exception: that is what newcomers to the city are facing, and newcomers aren’t going to stay if they can’t afford it.
Yes, we need to build new affordable/public housing. But we also need to incentivize the people who own everything to charge less for their rentals. We also need to attract jobs that rise to the occasion. I was a bit disgusted when the City of Bangor bragged about the reopening of an Arby’s over by the mall. Like, who cares? Those jobs don’t pay that well. In my day those jobs were reserved for teenagers.
We can do a lot better.
Opportunity
No matter what any communist has to say, America is the land of opportunity, not guaranteed outcomes. When the government tries to dictate outcomes, bad things always happen: someone is always marginalized, someone else is elevated to a position they aren’t competent in, and so forth.
If city government is to play a role in business, it should be in bolstering business and attracting new business. The lowered mill rate I propose will go a long way with business owners in the city, but we have to do more. We have to attract businesses from other cities, other states, and not just big corporations. We need companies that build things, companies that make things, and companies that design things.
This will be my first government position, but I know that I am persuasive enough to develop relationships with our business community and with business elsewhere. We should also look into ways we can help small businesses get started, without spending a lot of money on DEI grants or what have you.
My bottom line with this is that the job is not done until there are more jobs than there people who need jobs. The labor market should be competitive, not “take what you can find on Indeed.”
I know there are a lot of people reading this who have developed a form of disassociation with the whole world, who have given up on the idea that the system can work for them. To those people I say: then what do you have to lose? Voting for me, at least you’re not voting for more of the same.