Alna Republican Leslie T. “Les” Fossel is running against Democrat incumbent Sen. Chris Johnson for Senate District 13, representing Washington, Windsor, and all of Lincoln County except Dresden. This is the second go-round for both candidates; Johnson and Fossel previously faced off to represent the same region in 2012.
Fossel owns and operates an old house restoration and contracting business in Alna, Restoration Resources, in addition to serving on a large number of boards and committees throughout the region.
He served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives, where he was a member of the Health and Human Services Committee and the bipartisan Government Oversight Committee.
In previous years, Fossel was a member of the Alna Board of Selectmen and Alna School Board, chairman of the Lincoln County Republican Committee, and a member of the Lincoln County Budget Advisory Committee.
Fossel currently volunteers with a long list of groups: The Lincoln County Healthcare Performance and Improvement Committee; Lincoln County Dental; Coastal Enterprises Inc.’s Lincoln County Aging Demographics and Economic Development Committee; the Spectrum Generations Advisory Board; Eldercare Network Advisory Board; the DaPonte String Quartet (president); Deck House School (treasurer); Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington Railway Museum (treasurer); Wiscasset Area Chamber of Commerce; Morris Farm (advisory trustee); Maine Preservation (advisory trustee); the Committee for Alna History; the Midcoast Chambers Board; and the Lincoln County Compost Committee. Fossel also teaches courses on early and historic buildings for wide audiences.
Fossel’s campaign website describes him as a fiscally conservative social libertarian and environmentalist who wants to cut health-care costs, “modernize our infrastructure,” and create more jobs and less government.
Fossel was born in New York City, but said he never lived there. His father served in the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II.
The family lived in Washington, D.C., where Fossel’s father worked, often with senators from Connecticut, including Prescott Bush, whom he said his father helped during Bush’s campaign for senate.
Fossel’s father died in 1954 and his mother raised her children on a salary roughly half the amount men were paid at the time to perform the same tasks.
This wage disparity has shrunk, Fossel said, but it still exists today.
“I like to say, you’re not going to solve problems, but you can make it better,” Fossel said. “Are we ever going to eradicate racism? Probably not, but we can deinstitutionalize it.”
Fossel said he distinguishes himself from his Democratic opponents, particularly Johnson, when it comes to effecting change to resolve problems.
“If you want change, you’re going to go incrementally,” he said, likening the American economy to an ocean liner.
“You’ll find it impossible to move an institution radically,” he said. “If you move in degrees, you might not make a difference in the short term, but you will over the long term. I prefer, being a flawed human being, to make incremental change.”
Perspective and seeking the underlying problems are what he feels are needed to steer the Maine economy in the right direction. Democrats and Republicans, he said, are complaining about the wrong problems.
Fossel said he believes in expanding Medicaid, “but only if we can find a way to cut health-care costs.”
Fossel said the Democrats are complaining about how people don’t have access to health care, which he said isn’t true. “Maine’s hospitals operate as nonprofits and have an obligation to provide health care to everybody,” he said. “The problem is that the cost of health care is too high. And that same money can’t be spent on other things.”
Republicans are wrong, he said, in looking at just the cost of MaineCare, welfare, and workers’ compensation. He agreed that “it’s all too high,” but said the reason for these high costs is due to the underlying high cost of health care.
Fossel estimates 25 percent of money spent in the Maine economy goes toward health care, and yet the state is in the bottom third in the United States in terms of per-capita income (around 38th in the nation).
Education is the other large expense Fossel would like to see streamlined. He said Maine is among the top ten states in the country that pay the most for education, yet is among the bottom ten states in terms of teacher salary.
“We don’t use our resources wisely,” Fossel said. “It’s a downward spiral. If we can make our society produce, well, then we serve everybody’s needs.”
To explain how to “modernize our infrastructure,” Fossel said he would like to see the Maine Legislature approve spending on “actual infrastructure,” “non-maintenance things,” such as building new bridges.
Better yet, he said, would be for Maine to invest in communication upgrades, such as expanding Internet service. This, he said, would create more job opportunities for people, particularly for those who live in rural areas.
As a business owner, Fossel said the cost of keeping people employed is more than just salaries; it includes all of the auxiliary costs, such as workers’ compensation insurance.
Fossel said he pays about $8 or $9 out of every $100 toward this insurance, which is higher, he said, than a lot of other states. Fossel said he gets a good rate, because in 40 years he has been in business he has never had to file a claim.
However, a person today wanting to establish a construction company with legitimate workers’ compensation insurance could pay as much as 25 percent of salaries, according to Fossel. “If you make it too expensive for people to obey the law, they won’t,” he said, adding that by reducing these costs Maine could attract more businesses.
Even if he is not elected to serve in the state senate, Fossel will continue to volunteer his time and efforts to the aforementioned boards and committees in the region.
