Maine
The Maine Idea: ‘America the united’ still a distant goal
America was a divided nation going into the election and may be more divided coming out.
Donald Trump never claimed to be a “uniter,” and his stunning win means that new political battle lines are already forming.
Despite that one clear result, a lot remains uncertain, a result of the preference of western states to vote by mail, culminating in California’s new law sending ballots to every registered voter.
Those systems mean it may be weeks before it’s determined who controls the U.S. House of Representatives, where a handful of close races could make Hakeem Jeffries a Democratic speaker or leave the job in the hands of Mike Johnson, who has held it just a year after his Republican predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was deposed by own caucus.
Will the second Trump administration resemble the “trifecta” he held from 2017-19, or the end of his first term, when Democrats retook the House majority and the GOP legislative agenda ground to a halt?
A similar situation could be emerging in Maine, where Democrats have retained control of the state Senate with at least 19 seats, but the House is, as of this writing, a tossup.
In the Senate, Democrats started from a strong position, with 22 seats in the 35-member chamber. They appear to have lost two: District 1 in northern Aroostook County that was held by term-limited Senate President Troy Jackson and the Waterville-area District 16, where Scott Cyrway, though facing a strong challenge from Nathaniel White, looks set to return to the Senate after one term in the House.
Other tight contests include Augusta-area District 15, where two House veterans, Democrat Raegan Larochelle and Republican Dick Bradstreet, faced off. And in District 8, Mike Tipping, a first-term Democrat, held a narrow election-night lead.
For those frustrated by the lack of early results, Maine’s informal system of reporting is responsible. In many small towns, election officials go home after counting ballots, under no obligation to field inquiries until the next day.
The House may take awhile to sort out. A handful of incumbents lost seats but, as usual, it was in open races where most potential changes occurred. We may even have to wait for recounts.
If Republicans do prevail, it would mark a major shift. Since Democrat John Martin was elected speaker in 1974, Democrats have had a House majority the entire half century except for one term, 2010-2012, when Republican Gov. Paul LePage swept in a short-lived majority.
So, it was ironic that Martin, attempting a comeback for what would have been his 28th legislative term — by far a record — lost his bid to return one more time.
Taking the speaker’s gavel could be the free-wheeling Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor, current Republican Leader, a lobsterman who survived the sinking of his boat while pulling traps in the teeth of a hurricane.
Or it could be one of two Democrats: Kristen Cloutier of Lewiston, now assistant majority leader, or Ryan Fecteau of Biddeford, attempting a comeback after serving as speaker from 2020-2022. There are others in the race, though their chances seem slim.
The overarching presence for the Legislature will continue to be Gov. Janet Mills, entering her last two years, who has dominated the Democratic caucus and won’t likely give much ground even to a Republican speaker.
Nationally, Trump will be the only president to serve non-consecutive terms besides Democrat Grover Cleveland, who was elected in 1884, lost in 1888, and won again in 1892, taking the popular vote all three times — not a feat Trump can claim.
The late 19th and early 21st centuries seem vastly different, but there are echoes. Like the present, the post-Reconstruction period was fiercely competitive, with wild swings in control of Congress and one-term presidencies more the rule than the exception.
Cleveland’s second term was not a success; over almost before it started. The Panic of 1893, a severe recession, began even before he took office.
He’d initially been elected in 1884 as a “man of integrity,” contrasting sharply with Republican James G. Blaine, “the continental liar from the State of Maine” — a charge that stuck.
Trump will not carry Cleveland’s reputation into office, but he will have a Senate likely to confirm his appointees and a compliant Supreme Court that’s already conveyed a near-total, extra-constitutional grant of immunity from any lingering criminal charges.
Still, the convulsions of the pandemic, and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, were worldwide shocks few anticipated — and that’s just the last four years.
All we can be sure of is that the next four years are likely again to defy our expectations.
Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He is the author of four books, most recently a biography of U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, and welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.
Dressed in a fuzzy chicken costume, a then-2-year-old girl — accompanied by her parents dressed as farmers — walked around their new neighborhood ringing doorbells and asking for candy. It was July.
That is how the Westbrook community first met and fell in love with Lucy Hanson five years ago.
Everyone in Lucy’s neighborhood is close, Sue Salisbury, her neighbor, said, but it’s particularly hard not to love Lucy. She trick-or-treats year round. She jumps into her neighbors’ piles of leaves as they’re raking. She rides around the neighborhood on a seat on her dad’s bike with a speaker playing music attached in the back.
“She’s got the whole neighborhood wrapped around her finger,” Joe Salisbury, Sue’s husband, said.
So when Lucy was diagnosed with cancer at the end of October, the neighborhood decided to flood her with love as she spends the next nine months, holidays included, in the hospital for chemotherapy treatment.
Friends, neighbors, strangers and even people from other countries have sent Lucy a deluge of holiday cards, donations, gifts and meals.
Lucy’s aunt, Juna Ferguson, shared Lucy’s story on social media and asked for donations and meals to help. She also submitted Lucy’s name to The Angel Card Project, an online charity that requests greeting cards for people in need, so Lucy would feel as much love as possible during the holiday season.
In just a few weeks, Lucy has received hundreds and hundreds of cards, letters and packages, including some from as far as Germany and Australia. On Meal Train — a website that facilitates meal giving to families in hard times — people have donated almost $22,000 for the Hanson family and sent dozens of meals. Lucy’s wish list sold out within five minutes — three separate times.
The Hanson family
In many ways, Lucy is just like any other 7-year-old girl from Westbrook.
She loves Harry Potter (she’s in Gryffindor, of course). She’s reading “Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix,” but it’s a little scary for her. She just became a Brownie in the Girl Scouts. She wants to be a music teacher when she grows up. She loves to draw and sing and dance and do gymnastics and musical theatre. She has a best friend named Mallory who she has known since she was 6 months old. She’ll cry if there’s a snow day and she can’t go to school and see Mallory.
She’s witty and kind and bubbly and fun.
But in other ways, Lucy’s life doesn’t resemble that of other kids.
Last month, she spent more time in the hospital than at home. If she’s in the hospital, she has a robot she can drive around school to participate in her classes. (She dressed up the robot with a jacket, a hat and a sparkly backpack to make it look more like her).
Lucy is much smaller than most girls her age, as a genetic condition slows her growth. And she knows a lot more about cancer than most children.
She’s used to doctors and nurses and hospitals.
A few months after she was born in July 2018, she developed a rash on her face, which eventually spread to other parts of her body. After visiting three dermatologists and ruling out eczema, Lucy ultimately was diagnosed with Rothmund-Thomson syndrome type 2, a rare genetic condition that primarily affects her skin and bones and increases her chances of developing several types of cancer. Lucy is one of about 500 documented cases of RTS in the world.
For six years, Lucy was healthy. But in October, while she was attending a conference for families affected by RTS in Salt Lake City, she started to limp. She seemed to get better after a while, but a week and a half later, she couldn’t put any weight on her foot.
That’s when she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in her right tibia. The doctors said Lucy will need nine months of chemotherapy and a below-the-knee amputation in February of 2026.
“How will we navigate the rest of Lucy’s life?” Staci Hanson, Lucy’s mom, thought.
Even though their lives had flipped upside down, Staci and her husband Jason decided to live as normally as possible.
They make sure Lucy does school work and takes walks. A school teacher checks in with her at the hospital and a child life specialist comes to play with her. Last week, they made slime together.
The nurses and doctors at MaineHealth Barbara Bush Children’s Hospital, where Lucy is receiving her chemotherapy treatments, have made magic in a very nonmagical situation, Staci said. In the hospital, Lucy got to pick out her own Christmas tree and ornaments for her room and even made a gingerbread house.
In the past month, the Hansons have spent just five days at home. Staci and Jason take shifts at the hospital. One night, mom stays with Lucy, the next it’s dad. They only live 15 minutes from the hospital, so it’s not a long drive to come home to get new things or do laundry, Jason said.
“It feels like a long time,” Lucy protested.
Her parents are honest with her about RTS, osteosarcoma and her approaching amputation in February.
“We try to lift her up and tell her, ‘Yeah, your world is going to look a little bit different, but you can still live a super normal life even with a prosthetic,’” Staci said. “So we’ve shown her lots of videos of people doing gymnastics and dance and just living fulfilling lives even though they have a prosthetic.”
Rallying around
Since Lucy met Joe and Sue Salisbury while trick-or-treating in the summer years ago, she has become part of their family.
“It’s like having a grandchild,” Joe said.
Lucy will often randomly call the Salisburys to invite them over for a movie night. No matter what they’re doing, even if they’re in the middle of dinner, they always accept.
“You don’t say no to her,” Sue said.
So they will stop what they’re doing, walk across the road in their slippers, and cuddle up with Lucy on the couch to watch whatever movie she wants.
Now, Sue and Joe hold on to those memories of her until they can resume that tradition.
In the meantime, the community is doing everything it can to help the family. The less the Hansons have to worry about, the more they can focus on Lucy and themselves.
Joe and Sue volunteered to receive the letters for Lucy, since the Hansons are rarely home to check their mail.
“This is Lucy’s fan following,” Joe said, pointing to two packages and a bag stuffed with letters.
The Salisburys collected at least 400 cards for her in three weeks. They go to the hospital about once a week to visit Lucy and give her the letters. They would like to see her more, but the visits are limited due to Lucy’s compromised immune system.
The Salisburys own the Daily Grind, a coffee shop in Westbrook. Customers come through all the time to drop off packages and cards for Lucy and ask about her.
Neighbors pick up the Hansons’ mail and plow their driveway.
Joe isn’t surprised by the response from the community. In Westbrook, people have always helped each other out.
“I think it’s just another example of how great the Westbrook community is that everybody is pulling together for Lucy,” Sue said.
The Hanson family has received so many letters and donations, it’s impossible to write enough thank you cards, Staci said. They are saving most of the cards to give to Lucy later, because she still has many more months in the hospital.
“I don’t know how we’ll ever repay our community for the love that we’ve received,” Staci said.
Lucy’s favorite card so far has a drawing of two ducks sitting in a yellow bowl of tomato soup with some crackers on the side.
“Thought some soup and quackers might make you feel better,” Lucy read from the card.
In another package, Lucy received fake snowballs. So Lucy did what any other kid would do —started a snowball fight in her hospital room with her doctors and nurses.
Those interested in sending gifts and cards or signing up to give a meal can visit mealtrain.com/trains/w4lwd0. The RTS Foundation accepts donations at rtsplace.org/. People can also join “The Lucy League” by buying merchandise at bonfire.com/store/bravelikelucy/. All profits go to the Hanson family.
Now that deer season has wrapped up, hunters across Maine are returning to their usual off-season routine: processing meat, watching football and passionately debating the “right” way to hunt and fish.
Anyone who spends time in the woods knows opinions run deep.
So, what’s your hunting hot take? Is camo really necessary, or do deer not care what you’re wearing? Can they really smell a Swisher Sweet on your clothing? Should hunting licenses be harder to get, or should crossbows be classified as firearms?
It’s not just about laws, either — it’s about ethics, tradition and your personal style.
Your hot take might spark a friendly debate — or a fiery one — but either way, we want to hear it.
Share your thoughts in the comments or email Outdoors editors Susan Bard at sbard@bangordailynews.com.
Portland’s skyline is changing.
First, the iconic B&M Baked Beans brick smokestack came down. Then the 190-foot Casco building went up. And soon, the city will add a sweeping new Roux Institute campus and an “architecturally significant” expansion of the Portland Museum of Art.
But perhaps no change will have as much visual impact as the 30-story, nearly 400-foot tower the planning board approved earlier this month.
The proposal has ruffled feathers, with many bemoaning what they say sticks out like a sore thumb (or middle finger) on the city’s idyllic skyline. They fear if more high-rises pop up across the city, Portland might slowly morph into a northern version of Boston.
So will this project usher in an era of skyscrapers for Maine’s largest city?
Experts say that’s unlikely.
“We’re not expecting a windfall of 30-story buildings,” said Kevin Kraft, the city’s director of planning and urban development.
Under new zoning laws, only a small section of downtown along Temple, Federal and Union streets allow buildings as tall as the tower. That means even if there was an appetite for more high-rises, there simply isn’t much undeveloped space.
Furthermore, much of Portland ‘s peninsula is covered in historic districts, and “contributing buildings” can’t be torn down, Kraft noted.
Chapter 14 Land Use Code – Revised 12-3-2025 (PDF)-Pages by julia
GROWING UP
Vertical development, experts say, is a sustainable way to squeeze more housing into a smaller footprint, something cities have been doing for decades. And Portland needs housing in spades.
Last year, city leaders updated its zoning laws with the goal of allowing growth while preserving character. The overhaul included an increased maximum height for buildings in some of the city’s major corridors, permitting buildings up to 380 feet in a section of downtown.
That part of the city has always allowed the tallest buildings, but until last year’s recode, the maximum height was 250 feet. And that height cap was in place for nearly 30 years before it was even remotely tested when Redfern Properties built the 190-foot Casco in 2023, currently the tallest building in Maine.
The new proposal from Portland developer East Brown Cow Management LLC, tentatively called Old Port Square tower, would be twice that tall. It would include more than 70 residential units, commercial space, an 88-room hotel and a restaurant at the top, and is just one piece of a development project that could fill an entire city block.
Whether any other developers follow suit with similar proposals could depend more on market conditions than Portland’s updating zoning.
“People aren’t going to build speculative high-rises,” Kraft said.
If the building ends up being successful, though, it could be an important “proof of concept” for other developers in the area, said Tim Love, assistant director of the Master in Real Estate Program at Harvard University.
Love is generally supportive of the project, which he said is in a great location.
“A lot of these proposals don’t happen because at the end of the day, the financing doesn’t work or the numbers that were plugged in for rents aren’t supported by the underwriting,” he said. “So I think it would be good for Portland if this project is a success,” because it could lead to additional residential development downtown.”
And more people living downtown is exactly what the city needs, he said.
“I hope this is a model for more residential mixed-use development at densities that can extend the kind of not 24/7 but 18/7 life of the city all the way to the museum,” he said.
If Portland is going to get an influx of high-rises, it won’t be for some time, said Jeff Levine, a former planner for the city of Portland who now divides his time consulting and teaching urban studies and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“I don’t think you get instant results in anything,” he said.
Real estate is complicated. Beyond just zoning changes, there are building regulations, financial restrictions and even simply individual personalities that impact whether a building will go up, Levine said.
FEAR OF CHANGE
Nancy Smith, CEO of GrowSmart Maine, a nonprofit that helps communities grow in sustainable ways, says the Old Port Square tower will certainly be symbolic for the city, but it’s not a “game-changer.”
Game-changers, she said, were the Franklin Arterial and the demolition of Union Station — projects that transformed the city (though arguably not for the better) and made a statement about what Portland wanted to be in the future.
But some feel like the tower could do that, too. It just might take time.
“We’re not (just) trying to capture the current moment, we want to anticipate the growth we could see in the next 15, 20, 30 years,” Kraft said. “We want to accommodate that growth (and) be more proactive than reactionary.”
Cities are constantly changing and evolving, he said. At one point, the Time and Temperature building on Congress Street seemed to dwarf those around it, including the Fidelity Trust building, which was once known as Maine’s “first skyscraper.” Now, they blend in.
Additionally, Smith said, the uses intended for the proposed tower area already commonplace downtown: a hotel, restaurant, apartments and shops.
Still, a big element of early opposition to the tall tower is fear of change, and that’s natural, she said.
“The challenge is moving beyond that deeply personal response to actually consider what you’re looking at,” she said. “This building has a lot of symbolic value. Portland is changing, but stopping the building isn’t going to stop that change.”
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