Daniel O’Connor is aReport for Americacorps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between The Maine Monitor and the Bangor Daily News, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
Five years after running for Congress, former state Rep. Dale Crafts was back in front of a crowd to propose a major change to his town’s form of government.
“Unfortunately … four people on a seven-person town council can decide a majority vote on our destiny,” he said. “Four people!”
Crafts was describing what he sees as the failures of the Lisbon Town Council that he’s now running to join. But he was also describing a strategy that he and three longtime friends are using to try to take over the town council before potentially dismantling it.
The former Republican lawmaker is the face of one of the hottest property tax revolts in Maine. His Androscoggin County town of nearly 10,000 residents weathered a 20% property tax bump that was crafted to fill a multi-million dollar budget hole caused by a clerical error, years of inflation and high spending.
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Town councilors approved that $13.9 million budget in July. Since then, Crafts and other conservatives in the town have focused on opposing the school budget, the only one that residents control. Lisbon has voted the exact same school budget down twice. A slightly slimmed-down version will be on the ballot for a third time alongside the town council race.
This happened in large part due to Crafts. Using his pre-existing political action committee, he purchased mailers arguing for no votes on the school budget. The 66-year-old said he thought he had retired from politics after losing to U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District in 2020, but the tax revolt brought him back in.
“I’ve worked hard all my life and I wasn’t planning on being up here,” he said at a candidate forum at Lisbon Community School on Tuesday. “I’m here to try to make a difference. I feel compelled by God to do this.”
Crafts’ message that longtime Lisbon residents may be priced out of their homes by rising property taxes has resonated. While most of the nine candidates for council expressed an openness to making cuts and looking for ways to reduce property tax increases, Crafts is campaigning most stridently on austerity and riding a wave of anger at the town budget.
His political group has spent $16,000 this year, with much of that going toward the school and municipal elections. He is promoting a trio of longtime friends, Roger Bickford, Greg Garnett and Eric Metivier, with matching lawn signs. With four open council seats, that slate alone could elect the next council chair and control the flow of business.
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Crafts is running against three political newcomers for a two-year term on the council. For the other three open seats, his allies are taking on incumbent Jo-Jean Keller and Charlie Turgeon, another candidate drawn in by the ongoing budget crisis.
Turgeon, a project manager on military projects, is running a more moderate campaign than Crafts, saying he rejected his opponents’ “cut, cut, cut regime.” But he has promised to examine the scope of government and find ways to reduce future budgets by outsourcing and privatizing some services.
Turgeon became involved earlier this year when he organized a petition to require the town to hold referendums on town budgets going forward. That eventually resulted in the town council asking voters whether they want to establish a charter commission, which would be tasked with revising Lisbon’s governing document. In addition to four council seats and the school budget, that question will also be on the November ballot.
If voters approve a charter commission in November, it would kick off a long process of review that could change how Lisbon functions, including possibly reverting to a town meeting form of government in which voters would decide the local budget.
The council would hold no direct power to disband itself, but its members could hold sway with a future commission.
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If elected, it would not be Crafts’ first time on the council. He served on the town’s very first council after its creation by the town’s current charter, made in 2006. He says he’s longed to return to town meeting budgeting since then.
“After I served on the first town council form of government, I said to myself, ‘this isn’t good,’” he told residents last week. “And look where we’re at.”
Daniel O’Connor
Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between The Maine Monitor and Bangor Daily News.
Hailing from a small town in Connecticut, Dan’s interest in government reporting brought him back to rural New England, where he aims to shed light on the government, politics and cultural trends impacting rural communities across Maine. He arrived in Maine after attaining his master’s degree at Columbia Journalism School in New York City. He is based in Augusta.
Contact Daniel via email with questions, concerns or story ideas: gro.r1760969020otino1760969020menia1760969020meht@1760969020leina1760969020d1760969020
After Maine’s first Democratic gubernatorial debate, I commented that the candidates seemed to be vying with each other to be agreeable. Would it last? Back then, I thought I’d be happy with any of them as Maine’s next governor.
Not so now, as I observe the cronyism of Shenna Bellows, Troy Jackson and Hannah Pingree, whose plan to rank each other when they vote provides a blueprint for gaming the ranked-choice voting system in the primary. The political insiders are forming an alliance against the outsiders, Nirav Shah and Angus King III.
Shah’s campaign responded that it would stay focused on winning voters’ support, a more principled approach, in my estimation.
I prefer a governor who listens and learns from his constituents over one experienced at alliances and deal-making. I want integrity and leadership, not manipulation and exclusion.
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I no longer believe that Bellows, Jackson or Pingree would make a good governor.
BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – A Wall Street Journal article reports that Amy Gertner, the wife of Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, told campaign aides she found sexually explicit text messages on Platner’s phone after he launched his bid for office last year.
According to the report, Gertner disclosed the messages while aides were conducting opposition research, and she asked a campaign aide to review what Platner had sent—reportedly to several women—to determine whether it could become a liability for his campaign.
The Wall Street Journal reports Gertner believed she was confiding in someone she considered a friend.
The article also states the couple discussed the messages in marriage counseling.
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In a statement from Gertner provided by the Platner campaign, she wrote that they have gone through counseling and that their marriage today “is stronger than ever before.”
Amy Gertner provided a statement through the Platner campaign.
“I confided deeply personal details about my marriage to someone I considered a friend. In the months since, I have had to watch as she spread malicious gossip to anyone who would take her call. I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives – the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind – and I am deeply hurt by her betrayal and the invasion of our privacy.
“It is no secret that Graham and I have struggled on our fertility journey. We did the hard work that marriage requires. We went to counseling. We were honest with each other in ways that weren’t easy. And we came through it, not in spite of how much we’ve been through, but because of how much we love each other and the life we’ve built. Our marriage today is stronger than ever before.
“I know who Graham is. I know the man I married and the husband he has been to me on the best and the worst days of my life. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t.” – Amy Gertner
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Platner and Gertner married in 2024, according to the report.
