Daxland Focuses on Cost of Living, Education in Bid for House District 46

Mary Lou J. Daxland, R-Newcastle, said she wants to fight to reduce the cost of living and change education should she be elected to represent House District 46.

Daxland is running against two-term incumbent Rep. Lydia V. Crafts, D-Newcastle, for House District 46, which consists of Bristol, Damariscotta, Monhegan, Newcastle, and Nobleboro.

A self-described “Connecticut Yankee,” Daxland was born in Hartford, Conn. and lived much of her life in Massachusetts before moving to her current home in Sheepscot Village in Newcastle. She said she has owned property in the area for over 30 years, but decided to move full time to the area in 2020 because the cost of living in Westport, Mass. was too high for her.

Daxland graduated from Anna Maria College in Massachusetts with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certificate in history. Her first job out of college was as a teaching assistant. Although she taught in several schools in New York and Massachusetts, she spent the bulk of the 1970s and 1980s working as a goods buyer for various department stores.

While living in Westport, Mass., Daxland served as the Westport Republican Town Committee chair from 2008-2015, when she was elected to the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, the governing body of the state party. She was a member of the state committee until 2016.

She was also on a town committee dedicated to historic preservation, land conservation, and affordable housing in Westport, Mass. from 2012-2013.

Daxland said she was proud of her accomplishments working as a member of the Republican Party and in local government, where she tried to be fiscally responsible with taxpayer money.

“We were working to take everybody’s taxes down in the town and things like that.” Daxland said. “We were really pushing to do that, which is a good thing because, as we know, government spends a lot of money on some things that it really shouldn’t be spent on.”

Daxland founded the Maine Republican Assembly in 2022 and currently serves as its vice president. The organization is the state branch of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, which promotes the interests of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, according to its website. Daxland serves on the national organization’s executive board as well.

The cost of living in Maine is the greatest challenge facing voters, Daxland said. It has grown significantly since she moved from Massachusetts.

Daxland said reevaluating the amount of money going to schools and bringing down energy costs will help.

She suggested prioritizing state funding for vocational programs in the trades and a return to an “academics-first” focus for schools, citing a decline in testing scores for English, math, and reading in recent years.

Over time, according to Daxland, schools have become too focused on trying to categorize students’ special needs, like learning disabilities in specific subjects, which she recalled seeing when she left the profession in the 1980s.

“They were pigeon holing every single child. I think ‘Is there any normal kids?’” she said.

Schools also have a problem with overpaying administrators, Daxland said.

“When you have a school with less than 200 students in it, you don’t need a vice principal, and that’s a big budget buster for a vice principal,” Daxland said. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Her lack of children has led her to direct her focus to helping others’ children, Daxland said.

“I think it’s the reason that I need to get elected to the Legislature, so I can help a lot of the parents and children that are being left behind in some way or shape or form,” she said.

Daxland attributed rising electricity bills to the state’s increasing reliance on solar and wind projects, which require an overhead cost to build and do not produce power when there is no sun or wind. State regulations mandate that 80% of its electricity be gathered from renewable sources by 2030.

She said she would support a moratorium on new wind turbines in the state, and state funds would be better used funding new hydroelectric and nuclear power plants.

“Hydro is probably the easiest way to link into the grid, and it’s clean, there’s no issues,” she said. “You cannot turn a windmill without oil.”

Daxland said wind turbines can also cause environmental damage when they break, like when a blade from a turbine in the Vineyard Wind offshore wind farm project broke 15 miles off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. in July.

Affordable housing is also a challenge for Mainers, especially veterans and older people on fixed incomes, Daxland said. The Legislature should focus more on providing funds for new housing projects for those demographics rather than on projects like the 60-unit apartment complex for asylum seekers in Brunswick, she said. The state housing authority, MaineHousing, allocated $6 million for the project.

“My spin on that – on affordable housing – is that it’s got to go to Mainers first,” Daxland said.

Daxland received an A-plus rating from the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine and is endorsed by the Christian Civic League of Maine.

She enjoys kayaking, boating, mowing her lawn, and spending time with her husband, Karl, and Maine coon cat, Chester. She contributes to and helps distribute the Boston Broadside, a conservative newspaper distributed in the New England area.

The general election is Tuesday, Nov. 5.

(Editor’s note: The article “Daxland focuses on cost of living, education in bid for House District 46” on pages 1 and 12 in the Oct. 17 edition of The Lincoln County News mischaracterized the context of some comments Mary Lou Daxland, R-Newcastle, made in regard to education budgets.

In the original article, the reporter paraphrased her remarks regarding two separate issues as the following: “Over time, schools have become too focused on trying to categorize students’ special needs, like learning disabilities in specific subjects, which leads to the hiring of additional unnecessary staff to address those needs.”

“I never said it led to hiring unnecessary staff,” Daxland said. “I would not want anyone to think I was against special needs teachers.”

The text has been corrected above, and a corrected version of the article will appear in the Oct. 31 edition of The Lincoln County News alongside all other candidate profiles.

The Lincoln County News regrets the error.)