To the Editor:
Many ordinary Mainers, everyday working people, got involved for the first time in the 2010 election. They had had enough of being over-taxed, under employed (or working three jobs) and were heartbroken at their children having no choice but to leave Maine to find viable employment.
They donated money they could little afford, put signs in their yard, and spoke to their neighbors and friends about their political views at the risk of being rejected, or worse.
Those Mainers were elated at the election results, which they had helped deliver – feeling a sense of involvement, empowerment, and pride for the first time in 40 years of one-party rule.
Now, many of the legislators elected by those people, and whom the people trusted to carry out their mandate as representatives of the electorate, that of fiscal responsibility, ending excessive taxation, and re-making government to provide a business friendly, job-producing environment, have “morphed” overnight, into “girly men.”
Please excuse the sexist phrase – especially since many of the women elected seem more courageous and steadfast to their mandate than the men.
Those “morphed” legislators seemingly don’t care about the Mainers who sacrificed precious time from their three jobs, treasure from their scanty coffers, and risked relationships, all to help them get elected.
No, these fickle legislators have a new concern, that of seeking “acceptance” by the former majority party legislators, who will never “accept” them, and whose idea of compromise is “my way or the highway” as it was when they were in the majority.
Now the new majority party legislators are acting as if nothing has changed. Believe me, fellas, those who elected you do not think that “nothing has changed” and are extremely disappointed, frustrated and yes, angry, that you are living in the past, after we worked so hard to get you elected.
We feel dismissed, disenfranchised and disrespected, in short, we are not happy about your behavior and actions so far.
These cowardly legislators, and you know who you are, lack the courage and the intestinal fortitude to carry out the mandate, won at such a cost by the people who trusted you to lead.
We sent you to Augusta to represent us, to worry about being “accepted” by us, not by members of the former majority party, who are used to pushing you around and apparently are continuing to do so.
Shame on you for showing such timidity and not doing your job. And just to clarify, I do not use the pronoun “we” lightly. This is the feeling of many of the people who worked to elect you, and who are now wondering just whom did they really elect?
What has happened to Maine’s proud legacy of courage, embodied by the 20th Maine Regiment at Gettysburg, when Joshua Chamberlain exhorted his troops, out of ammunition and facing the fourth charge on Little Round Top with, ‘Follow me boys, bayonets forward’? They did, and turned the charge into a retreat.
What a shame that the proud Maine tradition of courage and independence is now in the hands of “girly men.” Please man-up, take a page from history, and from Paul LePage whose election helped win the majority in both houses. Stop compromising our future; pass the Governor’s budge, intact.
Donna Carlton, Damariscotta
