Dear Editor:

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a kaffee klatsch for two Maine legislature candidates, Holly Stover (House 89) and Laura Fortman (Senate 13). Two more effective women in government I cannot imagine.

Both women’s credentials show they have a strong focus on the real world that Maine’s poor and lower middle class inhabit, the perennial struggle to keep up with rising costs of living and increasing scarcities of essential services, to wit: health, housing, hiring, education. Both have worked in Maine administrations. Ms. Stover, as DHHS’ regional director for mental health, mental disabilities and substance abuse services for nine counties including Lincoln; her administrative concerns included minorities, multicultural affairs, domestic violence, sexual assault. Ms. Fortman, a former Maine Commissioner of Labor, at the federal level, as deputy administrator in President Obama’s Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, was going to bat for workers who are owed wages by their employers.

Ms. Stover’s work with the BRCRC’s Addiction Outreach Program has taken her to local police forces and fire departments as well as hospitals and health services. Maine’s issues, she points out, are connected: the lacks of affordable housing, decent-paying jobs, health care and education, “You can’t separate these things.” Ms. Fortman, who has worked with veterans, immigrants, marginalized people of all kinds, echoes the recognition of “how labor and women’s’ issues are interconnected to the economy.” At my party, we all agreed, Maine is a jigsaw puzzle that has been kicked to pieces. We all, citizens and legislators, must put it together again.

I urge you all to vote for both these candidates when you go to the polls Tuesday, Nov. 6. And you are going to the polls, aren’t you?

Jo Cameron

Edgecomb