Angus King

Environment / Energy Combine our natural resource advantages with innovation, to grow high-wage jobs in fiber, the ocean, life sciences, and clean energy. Healthcare Let’s work to keep people out of the ER (Maine has twice the admissions per person as other states) by providing better preventative care and screenings. Education We’re short on teachers, yet we make it overly difficult for them to enter and stay in the professions. Let’s reduce the certification pain, reinstate conditional licenses, and institute a “Cooper Flagg Rule” – someone with great talent should be able to teach. Education We need to provide earlier and broader access to career-connected learning, so that every child graduates with a job, a training plan, an apprenticeship or a college plan. Maine currently has over 30,000 open jobs, and we’re not teaching our kids enough about them today. It is critical that we also prepare them for an AI future, wielding it like a powerful tool. We’re already behind, and need to have some urgency. Let’s be known as the best trained, best prepared, most powerful workforce in America. Healthcare We’ll support innovations that lower drug prices and allow doctors to focus on patient health not paperwork, as well as better rural health solutions. These exist today – let’s put them to work. Housing Build 10,000 homes per year by end of first-term—with the data to prove it— across all income levels, which will lower housing costs and property taxes for all Mainers. Environment / Energy We must modernize and streamline our regulatory and permitting processes and programs to reduce the cost of new clean energy, while still protecting our natural resources. Maine ratepayers can no longer be forced to bear the cost of endless delays from a system that simply isn’t working efficiently enough. Environment / Energy Maine energy policy needs to be updated and tied together so that policies match our system and the needs of families, while protecting our communities and climate. For example, we’re letting a special rate for heat pumps go away in 2026 while we still use oil for too much of our electricity needs. Energy policy must be a consistent priority for Maine’s next governor so Mainers can trust that they have an advocate for lower costs, better reliability, and cleaner energy on their side. Education We need to be smarter in how we invest in maintaining and utilizing our schools. Our current system is like a lottery, with big winners and many losers, and there’s difficult work ahead on how we use and maintain the spaces we have. At a minimum, let’s figure out how to use schools all day and all year for community needs and consider year-round CTE. Housing Prevent chronic homelessness through getting people into housing quickly, then assessing and addressing needs. If we don’t get people into housing, outcomes are worse for them and costs are higher for all of us: shelters are twice as expensive, jails are four times the cost, and hospitals are over 20 times more expensive. Let’s break down silos and do what’s best for our most vulnerable and for us. Environment / Energy Maine has to negotiate better energy deals for our people. Net Energy Billing was unnecessarily expensive for Maine ratepayers and we must be smarter going forward. Solar and wind here can benefit New England, but they should benefit Maine first and foremost. We have the cheapest potential new renewable energy (northern Maine wind) in New England – let’s not give it away and use it instead to lower energy rates for our communities. Education No cell phones in classrooms. No social media during school hours. Today, kids spend less time outdoors than prisoners do, and in Maine, they spend fewer hours in school than most other states—let’s change both. And let’s support their mental health needs while we’re at it, which in turn supports teachers, parents and fellow students. Education All Hands on Deck: Every Maine student reading by the end of 3rd grade using the science of reading – a responsibility of parents, communities, businesses, teachers and kids all working together, starting early and making sure kids get to school in the first place. In addition, let’s not be afraid of technology tools that give teachers superpowers in a classroom. Time is short—we can’t stay behind, and while some people are focused on banning books, I just want to make sure they can read. Government Reform Let’s cut outdated red tape, and find more ways to get to yes on housing. We’ll implement a top to bottom review of building codes and zoning laws—Maine ranks among the worst in the nation for complexity in a time when we need common sense. There are innovations and improvements being used across the country and around the world that we should deploy here, and quickly. Housing We can improve the process so it isn’t more expensive to build affordable housing than it is to build market rate housing. Our state agencies aren’t aligned today and so projects get hung up in any number of places, without any coordination. A common goal with a real target and accountability will get the state focused on getting to yes rather than getting mired in process, and get more projects moving. Time always adds costs, and we need to help. Housing We have some of the oldest housing stock in the country, and with a shortage of new homes or nursing homes, we need to support weatherization and renovation to lower costs and help aging in place, improving quality of life for Mainers Economy Let’s treat our small businesses and their employees like customers who we want to attract, delight, and retain, so that more of them can thrive and grow. Strong small businesses create high paying jobs, helping Maine families stay here and thrive.