My Yard Has a Republican Sign & Maine is in Wonderland #mepolitics

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:06]This is Keep Up. I'm your host Cynthia Dill. It's Friday, May 15th, 2026. I'm in my Cape Elizabeth studio.

[00:00:13]It's been a while.

[00:00:14]And it's good to be back. Uh I've been busy with um well, with life and with work.

[00:00:22]And it's exciting times. Voting has started here in Maine, the Pine Tree State, and anyone paying attention knows that it's big primary season.

[00:00:32]And uh I think the news here for today's show is that I, for the first time in my life, uh have a sign out front for a Republican candidate for governor.

[00:00:45]Uh Jonathan Bush, which is kind of interesting cuz I'm not even sure I'm going to vote for him yet, but he's definitely going to be either my number one or my number two in May in Maine's ranked-choice voting.

[00:00:57]And that I mean, I've come a long way, or politics is out of whack, and I think it might be both.

[00:01:06]But what's interesting to me is, if you think about the Democratic primary here in Maine, we have a second congressional seat open, and the Republican frontrunner is eight- year, you know, two-term Republican governor Paul LePage. And it it seems like it's it's going red.

[00:01:27]Um he is very popular. He won two statewide elections, as I just mentioned. And he's got the full backing of the Trump administration. In fact, Vice President J.D. Vance was just in Bangor yesterday.

[00:01:41]Uh you know, obviously, um campaigning for for Republicans and the and the Trump administration, but they're really to get Paul LePage on the stage, and um just send a message that he's he's their guy.

[00:01:56]Uh so in the second congressional district running against Paula Page is um, Matt Dunlap and also Joe Baldacci.

[00:02:06]Those are the two Democrats in the primary. And Matt Dunlap and I go back because in 2012 he and I were both running for US Senate here in Maine uh, in a primary. It was the year that Olympia Snow resigned. When we got into the race, Olympia Snow was the Republican who we expected to run against and lose. And so the Democratic primary was just sort of a fun thing for any, you know, Democrat who was kind of bored and had aspirations to engage in because it gave you a chance to be on the national stage, to, you know, sharpen your debate skills, but no one really expected to beat Olympia Snow. And then she dropped out. And Angus King ran as an independent, you know, because he was going to bridge the divide between Republicans and Democrats. Well, look how good that turned out.

[00:02:56]But in the Democratic primary, I beat Matt Dunlap in the primary as the most, I guess, progressive candidate. Yes, I was still from Cape Elizabeth, still a white woman uh, and and won a Democratic primary.

[00:03:09]Fast forward now to today, May 15th, 2026, and I have a sign out front for Jonathan Bush, who's a Republican, one of eight running in a primary. And um, and all of the eight Republican candidates, with the exception of I think Wessels is a good guy, but he in my view he doesn't have what it takes to be governor. And David Jones also is a very good guy, but I'm not sure he But for the most part, every Republican candidate is is quite impressive.

[00:03:40]There's nobody offensive. There's no fringe element up there. It's not a MAGA, uh, you know, beauty pageant in any sense of the word.

[00:03:50]On the Democratic side, there's basically a cast of characters that we've seen around Maine politics for a really long time. Good people. My number one would be Hannah Pingree. She's the daughter of Shelly Pingree. She served in the House of Representatives when I was in the house, she was the speaker of the house. She also helped me as a candidate early on.

[00:04:08]Helped recruit me and then provided help, you know, to get me into the house. So, I not only I'm not saying I'm repaying her, this isn't sort of a payback, but I have a lot of I just have a lot of and I think she's great. She knows so many people. She's very, very smart and just she's a nice, decent person. You just like being around her because she's funny and kind-hearted and just brings people together. So, she has that going for her, but what she has going against her as far as I'm concerned is she's just too tied to the political the machine here in Maine and you know, I just I'm so like scared about the state, frankly. I mean, just paying attention to state and local politics, it's almost like we're in Alice in Wonderland. Because for a while, the state of Maine was just like kind of crashing and burning and there was some hope on the horizon nationally when Trump was first elected. I mean, everything kind of took off, right? They We came back from COVID and came back from you know, the some of the Biden administration policies.

[00:05:19]That was very short-lived.

[00:05:21]So, people like me in Maine you know, looking for who to vote for, it's like there's no party that really addresses our concerns. The the The Republicans in Washington are totally blowing it.

[00:05:35]They're not fiscally conservative. We have a debt that's just going, you know, out just just so far out of space that we can't even get it. Even, you know, the Hail Mary project would have a hard time uh, getting so far out to get this debt under control.

[00:05:51]Uh, the war in Iran, I mean, so the Strait of Hormuz is as far as I, you know, there's not a lot of traffic going in and out of there. Who would have thought that the United States military couldn't quickly take care of Iran? Well, we're seeing in front of our very eyes, uh, that it can't. And suddenly now the United States is the highest exporter of oil. And we're on the cusp of maybe running out of some of these massive reserves. So, what's going to do to policy here in the United States? I'm sure we're going to probably end up drilling. Inflation, we're almost I think I read that inflation is almost 4%. Interest rates are going up. I mean, Trump's approval rating is in the toilet on the economy.

[00:06:37]You know, the one thing that the Republicans run on is their ability to manage the economy.

[00:06:43]And that's not happening at the national level. I mean, the tariffs are wreaking havoc. Sure, if you have money in the stock market, you know, hopefully the acceleration on these investments, you know, it seems a little bit like a bubble in AI space and, um, you know, the latest version of Bitco- Bitcoin, whatever it is, Zcash, you know, the newest fake money, internet money that people are making a gazillion dollars on blockchain, you know, uh, the latest thing is is taking off. Um, people who worked for OpenAI and like anthropology and some of these other AI companies are becoming billionaires just in a very short amount of time.

[00:07:29]So, there's a certain sector that's doing really, really well nationally, but otherwise the economy stinks. Here in Maine, under the Democrats, it's even worse.

[00:07:38]It's even worse. So, here in the state, we actually have a field of Republicans who are attracted because of their business you know acumen and also just executive functioning. And the reason why Jonathan Bush is on my list of of top you know my top favorites going into rank choice voting is because he's really the only candidate that has the kind of business experience in the healthcare space. He was a starter a co-founder of a health care business. It it morphed from one thing into another but it ended up being a large success that created I forget the number he boasts about is it 1,500 jobs, 8,000 jobs? I forget the number but it's a large number of jobs up in Belfast in the mid-coast.

[00:08:22]And he had to deal with the market which you know a lot of people don't realize how much we are dependent on people on Wall Street and you know obviously they're at home now in the Hamptons doing their Wall Street business remotely but you know that uh the market and these um gigantic investments and the securitization and and the just the you know finance baby it So Jonathan Bush is really the only candidate that was in a healthcare business that had to interface with the government and interface with the markets and he was successful in creating jobs and managing a budget. And uh healthcare is the biggest driver in Maine's economy, right? Healthcare is the biggest cost for most of Maine's families. Healthcare is like everything for a lot of businesses because it's make or break and now we have a lot just so many benefits that are mandated you know mandated under the Democrats.

[00:09:19]So the economy in Maine has not been managed well. We've like doubled the state budget. I mean I it's hard to believe that we went from I think like six or seven billion and then in eight years now it's up to 12 billion dollar state budget. So it's basically turned into a jobs program, right? For Democrats. It's all about protecting teachers' jobs, it's about protecting state employee jobs, it's about creating more and more and more bureaucratic jobs that go nowhere. And there's been so much fraud uncovered.

[00:09:49]Right? Everybody thought, oh, Medicaid, it sounds like such a simple and obvious solution, expand Medicaid. We're going to get all this money from the federal government, so where could things go wrong? Well, things go wrong when all this money comes in and it's not accounted for and handed out like candy to nonprofits who that have, you know, obviously with very little due diligence.

[00:10:10]And we're getting taken for a ride. And if you're a family like mine, you know, it's May 15th. Well, just a month ago, you paid taxes again. You know, you just paid your taxes and you're paying your quarterly taxes again and you're writing these checks and you're thinking, what am I getting in return for this investment? And that's what we hear from Democrats in the state. Oh, they've made so much investment in education, they've invested so much in housing. You know what that sounds like to me?

[00:10:35]That sounds like you've wasted a lot of money. That's like saying, you know, like you invested with um I don't know, what are some of these scandals on Wall Street? Um Bernie Madoff? Like, oh, he was he invested a lot of people's money, too.

[00:10:48]You know, and they got like zero. And that's what we're getting here in our on our return.

[00:10:54]55% of education is being paid for by the state. Oh, isn't that great?

[00:10:59]That's like more per student than ever before and yet test scores are worse than ever. We're at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to our students who can't read or add, but they know that you could be born in the wrong body and they know all about trans because that's the agenda of the Democrats.

[00:11:20]You know, so yeah, we invested a lot in housing, like what, a gazillion dollars?

[00:11:26]Uh you know, an audit of the housing agency, I'm sure, is going to be the housing authority. I mean, I thought it was a like a I thought it was a stunt when Bruce Poliquin became the treasurer for the state of Maine and audited Maine Housing. I thought it was just his way of being sort of like doged like. But, right now I would be fully on board because they talk I don't know where this money is going, but you know, we we don't we have not solved our housing crisis.

[00:11:52]And there's no opportunity for families to get in the housing market even though the market is like going out of control.

[00:11:57]Every opportunity to get in the housing market has been provided by Democrats to rich people and developers who get these projects, get these tax breaks, and and for what? They build these cement blocks essentially that are very small, you know, without garage space, one or two bedrooms. So, like that's not the American family that we want populating our towns and our schools, right? We want families to move here that can comfortably house a couple of kids. Maybe, you know, two parents and a couple of kids. Is that too much to ask?

[00:12:30]But, that's not the housing we get. We get these box structures, for-profit Section 8 low-income housing because it's all about providing benefits. So, that investment, zero return.

[00:12:42]You know, investing in democracy, right?

[00:12:45]We spend all this money creating all these bureaucracies to have clean elections, right? So, we can have public funding of campaigns. And the the goal was that that the sales pitch was that well, if we invest in this clean election system, if we take the tax dollars, those checks that I just wrote, if we take that money and we pay somebody up in Augusta to uh you know, scan reports and hand out checks to candidates, um then we won't have dark money. Well, you know, the dark money has exploded in the state. Every campaign is financed by out of state millionaires and billionaires. And it's not just the Republicans. Okay, the Democrats are fully equipped with, you know, well-paid, well-heeled lobbyists for every issue that's on their agenda, whether it's the alphabet club, whether it's the climate, you know, mafia. I mean, all it's all well-paid for. And because of PACs. So, we have clean elections, this huge bureaucracy that costs like millions of dollars of the state budget funding people's campaigns so they aren't influenced by dark money, but then allowing them to start leadership PACs so they can fundraise. So, crazy.

[00:13:59]And rank choice voting?

[00:14:02]Supposedly, rank choice voting is going to like help eliminate tribalism, right? Wasn't that one of the pitches? Is that somehow with rank choice voting, there won't be these bitter bitterly fought uh political races because everybody will have to sort of, you know, um trade shells and collaborate and figure out a scheme on how they're going to rig the system to get ahead in rank choice voting. And it hasn't It hasn't worked.

[00:14:29]We see tribalism more than ever. We have all the Democrats who debate one another and listen to one another and are all the algorithms to feed their messages to Democrats. And we have all the Republicans in their own media bubble, uh you know, with their own candidate debates. And the two never cross paths.

[00:14:48]So, if you're somebody like myself who had been a lifelong Democrat who's now unenrolled, and you have some favorites. My favorites on the Republican side, like I said, are Jonathan Bush and Ben Midgley.

[00:15:00]Those are my two. I don't know who's one and who's two, but those are the top two. And And the Ben Midgley is, I think, probably more electable in the second congressional district because his story is very compelling and he's not like a traditional Republican. Uh Bush, of course, is connected with directly with the Bush, you know, dynasty in in American politics. He means direct lines to President H.W. and cousin George uh you know, W. So, he's um you know, he's part of that clan, but he he he definitely marches to the beat of his own drum. He is not he's not W, that's for sure.

[00:15:45]And uh he's very sharp, but I don't know that his um somewhat preppy uh pedigree is going to play well in the second congressional district. It might, I don't know, cuz he does have this jobs very uh respectful like, you know, hard evidence of being an executive, creating jobs, interfacing with government, managing a budget, but we'll see. Um we'll see.

[00:16:11]Midgley, I think, is a little bit more his story is from rags to riches is is impressive and he has no political baggage, no real skeletons in the closet as far as we can tell.

[00:16:23]And on the Democratic side, I like Hannah Pingree, as I mentioned, uh but I think the answer is not to have for me to have to pick between going into a Republican primary or or not going into the primary, but getting the ballot of the Republican candidates in the primary or getting the ballot of the Democrats in the primary. It should be a jungle primary. That's my point.

[00:16:48]Talk about burying the lead. Uh if we had a jungle primary, which is that all of the candidates who meet the eligibility requirements would appear on one ballot and then you'd rank them.

[00:17:00]So, I could I could include in my list of preferred candidates my three top I mean, on my top three.

[00:17:09]Uh Bush, Jonathan Bush, Ben Midgley, and Hannah Pingree. Whereas right now I have to pick one or the other. And so that's I think that's I think that's the direction that the state should go in and I think Republicans really I I hope get elected um but I haven't heard from a lot of Republicans campaigning. And I'm one of the unenrolled people who are active primary voters.

[00:17:37]So it concerns me a little bit because the Republicans can't beat the Democrats without the help of independents. It's just the way the numbers are. So um I don't know. I hope there's a strong enough campaign to win because we need something new in Maine. It's the it's not working. The economy's not working.

[00:17:58]Um our education system is failing. Um we've gone way overboard on this uh green initiative. I mean in Cape Elizabeth our landfill had been uh it's been covered over now for decades and it's was just this beautiful green space in the middle of our town uh kind of public space where we have the transfer station, we have the swap shop, we have an ice skating rink and then we have this big green space that was the landfill but it was pretty and it was just green and and nice. And it was mowed.

[00:18:28]Well now it has just all this It's not just the solar panels, it's all the other infrastructure around it. You know, they have to it just created this gigantic construction site. It's such an eyesore.

[00:18:44]It it's I don't know. It's nothing It solves no problems. Like nobody in Cape Elizabeth is better off because we have this little experiment out you know, on our public land. It's It's virtue signaling and that's what we've been just getting so much of out of Augusta. And you know, people think oh, I've been beating this drum on the trans issue. Like the everything is always somehow circles back to trans, you know, this poor um marginalized community that is made up of people like Tim Sara McBride and Caitlyn Jenner.

[00:19:21]Well, just today I want to finish up the podcast with a tribute to Sall Grover.

[00:19:27]Anyone who follows the issue of women's rights being really erased as a result of the gender identity mania that has swept the world with any real conversation about its impact on women's rights. So, Sall Grover, she's been fighting the the gender ideology battle in Australia. Sall Grover about 5 years ago started an all-girls app called um Giggle Girls.

[00:19:59]And it was a place, a digital place for women and girls to connect about all kinds of things. Important things like business, jobs, and fun things like trips, and and cooking, and makeup, and dating, medical issues, just a hangout for girls.

[00:20:20]Well, a man who calls himself Roxane Tickle joined the app and then got kicked out because he's a man.

[00:20:29]So, this man, Roxane Tickle, sued Giggle Girls for discrimination.

[00:20:36]So, like it seems like a cosmic irony of some sort that the case is called Tickle v. Giggle because Roxane Tickle, the man, sued Giggle Girls for discrimination because he identified as a woman and was excluded in an all-women's club. And it's been now 5 years. Sall Grover is the founder of the company and she's held firm. And throughout the process, she has been like uh the courts insisted that she refer to Roxane Tickle as he and she and Saw Grover refused and ultimately the Human Rights Commission level found Saw Grover guilty of discrimination, fined her $10,000. She appealed. The appeal has been going on for years. Since then, Saw Grover has given birth to a child, a girl, who's now like almost 4 years old and just this week just today earlier No, yeah, earlier today in England Australian time a three-panel federal court upheld the finding that she discriminated against this man, Roxane Tickle, on the basis of his gender identity as a woman. So, you think that that can't happen? It can happen. So, men who identify as women in Australia have more rights than women.

[00:21:59]So, even though tomorrow when we wake up, he is still going to be a man. He he's still going to have XY chromosomes.

[00:22:09]He's still going to have all the attributes of a man.

[00:22:14]Except that he's won his case for discrimination and um and it and it it could happen here because people are indoctrinated with this gender ideology. They have been taught it in the schools. They have been fed it by the Democratic Party. It's been you know, from on high, the the the rock stars of the movement for uh equality, marriage equality, have embraced this issue in large part because of the fundraising and keeping the movement alive. They've put their rock stars out front. Mary Bonauto, the lawyer who won the marriage equality case, is now the front the face of the so-called trans campaign here in Maine.

[00:22:59]And it's all really deep down, it's really just about discriminating against women. And So we we have to keep fighting this battle and Republicans have to be elected because part of their plan platform here in the state part of their campaign is to repeal gender identity laws which is the only thing that is going to rid our state of this rot that allows for I mean we see so it's cute you know and tickle the giggle it seems kind of cute like oh this trans guy if you see him though he's up um he's no um he's no cutie pie let me put it that way he wow um oh gosh just thinking about him made me lose my train of thought oh it's cute because the name and it's a minor $20,000 fine but and $100,000 in attorney's fees is what Sal Grover had to pay but that's a lot but it's not you know but here in the state of Maine the extremes of these laws right the ex-carrying out this gender identity to its extreme okay okay you so Roxanne uh tickle you you're allowed to go on the girls you know giggle girls app now okay you won you get to be that guy who invades women's spaces and probably ruins the business so good for you okay that's a little different than though it's application here in the state of Maine where because a guy like Roxanne tickle could identify as a woman and then have access in prison to the women's facility so that men who are like in my case that I've talked about on the show involving the Maine Correctional Center there's a man 310 pound man who was convicted of murdering his parents and killing his dog who gets to be housed with locked in with have to share a bathroom and shower and bunk with women who are like less than half his weight in there for possessing drugs.

[00:25:01]That's that's the extreme. And guess what?

[00:25:05]This guy who murdered his parents and now identifies as a woman just so he can have access to girls.

[00:25:11]And and he he knows that this is a system that can be rigged and he he he's got it figured out, right? He's It's like a It's like a shark in a tank full of minnows.

[00:25:23]You know, it's a playground for a predator.

[00:25:25]And he's got it figured out and um and he's got the law about gender identity to protect him.

[00:25:32]And it's the Republicans who want to repeal that law and it's the Democrats who still stand firm behind it. They think that somehow gender identity is something they should carry to the grave. Even though, like I said, when gender identity was added to the main statutes like way back in 2019 for the first time really under the cover of darkness in a kind of political deal, you know, the don't make it don't don't make any waves. We're just going to say that this is a clarification of the main Human Rights Act and slip it in as a protected status and then just chip away chip away chip away and permeate every nook and cranny of the law with gender identity and that's what we have and it's It's criminal.

[00:26:26]It's criminal the results. Girls are being discriminated against. They're being robbed of athletic opportunities, robbed of medals, being shamed into having to change and share private spaces with boys. Women are being discriminated against, silenced, harassed and in the case of prisons forced to be with violent predators because of this bending the knee to gender ideology and it's the Democrats who are beholden to these special interest groups who just march to, you know, whatever orders, marching orders come out from glad law or, you know, ACLU uh the Human Rights Campaign. They're all complicit in this campaign to just um indoctrinate our youth about gender ideology that's has as a premise a false premise that sex can change, right?

[00:27:22]That's that's the thing.

[00:27:25]That's where the separation is between being gay, lesbian, bi and being trans is that um you know being gay and and having same-sex attraction is about your feelings about loving another person. Gay marriage was about saying that the state has to bless contracts between two loving people regardless of their sex because it's it's about you know, um about love and a commitment to one another, caring one another and the state is not in the business of picking and choosing who can contract uh to take care of one another and for life, right? Until death do them part or ill and in ill sickness and in health. I mean, that's an important commitment we want to encourage society to make regardless of sex. Trans is not that.

[00:28:19]Okay, trans is not that at all. Trans is like you have to believe that sex can change and that's a false belief.

[00:28:27]So, in order to support this kids could be born in the wrong body or trans women are women, you have to have a belief that sex is irrelevant, that biological sex is irrelevant, that sex can change that it's mutable and that just by sheer will one can change their sex.

[00:28:50]And that's that's an ideology and that's the ideology that has been taught by organizations like Planned Parent who contract with public schools here in Maine. That's the ideology that is taught in all the schools by all the teachers who went through college and were taught in their health and gender studies class that yeah, this is the way it is. This is the next marginalized community that needs rescuing by the left. is these trans kids and these trans identified men. And it really just mostly boils down to though that it's about the men.

[00:29:27]It's about men who just um insist on invading women's spaces and expecting society to place their feelings, their subjective beliefs about their identity above the reality, the rights, the privacy, the safety of women. And it's just something that is so dangerous.

[00:29:48]It's so dangerous. It's more extreme than any Okay, you talk about um you know, Islam extremists when it comes to gender some you know, they have to wear the the burqa and all that and some people think that's like just so extreme um genital uh mutilation, right? That was a big concern that was raised by Democrats when I was in the legislature that you know, we Well, this trans thing is is is just as extreme. It's so extreme. It's a cult.

[00:30:18]And and people are finally waking up and we have people who are de-transitioning and realizing that they were sold a bill of goods.

[00:30:26]And that we have medical professionals coming forth that's saying that wow, this is bad. But in Maine the damage is like largely done. We have gender affirming care as as a right. Uh it's covered by Medicare, made it you know, our Maine's version of Medicaid.

[00:30:42]Uh you can't sue the providers of gender-affirming care care have legal immunity under Maine law. I mean, it's just crazy. They've elevated gender-affirming care to to abortion.

[00:30:54]So, now we're because they pushed this narrative that, you know, these men who claim to be women are just the same as women and and their needs to have their their surgery and their hormones or maybe not um are the same as as a as a woman who has a pregnancy with a a you know, uh that needs to be terminated for for very very challenging and difficult reasons. It's It's absurd.

[00:31:27]So, um interesting political times here in Maine. I've got a sign out front for Jonathan Bush, a Republican I used to be the Senate candidate. Uh I also have a sign for Valerie Adams who's running as a Democrat in a primary against Jackie Sartoris.

[00:31:43]And the only reason why I have Valerie Adams sign out front is because Stephanie Anderson, the Republican district attorney for 28 years, is going to run against Jackie Sartoris if Jackie wins the primary. So, Stephanie is working to help Valerie win the Dem- Democrat primary.

[00:32:04]But if Valerie doesn't, then Stephanie, the former Republican now independent, is going to run for district attorney and I am going to be her treasurer. So, it's it's a small world. Um but I'm glad my Bush sign is out front because it is a small world and when it comes down to it, it's about community and I did have the great pleasure of meeting Mrs. Jonathan Bush, uh Faye, and uh she's lovely, very very impressive also and also connected at a high level with health care space and business and and they have two little kids who ride the bus occasionally right past my house to go to school so I want the kids to see that you know their dad's supported here in town. So cuz that's what we do here in Maine. We take care of one another Republican or Democrat I think I mean there's really the job for everyone in every political party is to fight the extremes within.

[00:33:04]So for me I have no ability to influence the Democratic Party. That is perfectly clear. They don't want my vote. They're not interested in my perspective and I when I say I I mean people like me you know and that they're going to characterize me as a Karen because they put everyone in boxes and it I don't care.

[00:33:29]I'm done. I'm done with the Democrats and I think I might have a better chance at influencing you know people who are open to to ideas.

[00:33:41]And whether it be Republican or Democrat. So Jonathan Bush Ben Meiklejohn those are my top two.

[00:33:47]Uh but I'm you know I'm helping a Democrat in a primary too.

[00:33:54]Purple I guess purple's the state.

[00:33:56]Purple's in and that's it. This is Cynthia Dill.