NEWS: Bruce Poliquin: Sound financial management for Maine

As published in the Bangor Daily News:

AUGUSTA, Maine — Bruce Poliquin greeted every person through the door, offering a warm handshake, a broad smile and a lot of questions.

“Where are you from? What do you do for a living? Do you know so-and-so? Why did you come tonight?”

Poliquin, one of seven people vying for the Republican Party’s nomination to run for governor in the June 8 primary, sought to make a personal connection with everyone who attended a recent “Town Hall” campaign stop in Augusta.

One of the attendees was an outfielder for St. Dominic Regional High School in Auburn.

“You’re an outfielder? OK, so you’ve got some legs,” said Poliquin, an avid baseball enthusiast who has coached numerous Maine high school and college baseball and softball teams. “The toughest thing to coach is the outfield. The most difficult thing is what to do when there’s a fly ball directly over the fielder’s head.”

One of the next attendees through the door was a Bath Iron Works employee. “Well, you must know Jeff Geiger,” said Poliquin, referring to BIW’s president. “He’s been a big supporter of mine.”

A woman, having witnessed Poliquin’s conversations with the others, clapped one hand over her name tag as she shook his hand with the other.

“I thought you could read minds,” she said.

“No, I don’t read minds,” said Poliquin, embracing the woman’s hand with both of his. “I read name tags.”

Nearly two hours later, though, after the event’s 14 attendees were gone, their names were still fresh in Poliquin’s mind. Asked how many he could remember, Poliquin named them all. The ability to make a personal connection with voters and to discuss the issue in-depth has proven to be a central campaign strategy for Poliquin. The private businessman from the coastal town of Georgetown has skipped numerous forums attended by the other Republicans in favor of his self-designed Town Halls.

“We have the belief that we need to go directly to the people of Maine,” said Poliquin, who said he doesn’t think tightly-scripted forums and meet-and-greet events are the right way to communicate his ideas. “It’s important that I hear directly from the people what they want. The people are searching for a real choice for the best person to manage our state government.”

Poliquin lists his management skills at the top of his qualifications to be the state’s chief executive. After an academic career at Phillips Academy followed by an economics degree from Harvard University, Poliquin helped build a New York City-based asset management firm called Avatar Investors Associates Corp., which han-dled $5 billion in worker pension funds for Bath Iron Works and International Paper, among others, according to the campaign’s website.

Poliquin left the firm in 1991, two years after the sudden death of his wife, Jane Carpenter. In addition to raising a son, Poliquin has been involved in several small businesses, including an “environmentally sensitive” housing development in Phippsburg, according to campaign literature.

Poliquin, like the other Republicans, is running on a pro-business platform that includes reducing taxes by cutting government spending and streamlining the regulatory environment. Poliquin said he would start his governorship by ordering a sweeping audit of government programs to identify savings through efficiencies and the elimination of unneeded programs. While other candidates claim they already know how to cut spending, Poliquin favors an audit because it’s the tool most used by corporations.

“We can accomplish that very quickly,” said Poliquin after being asked if he’d have time to find wasteful spending and incorporate it in his first biennial budget proposal just a couple months after being elected. “It happens all the time in the corporate world.”

Like other candidates, Poliquin favors reducing eligibility for social service programs to the national average and imposing a lifetime limit on welfare benefits.

“We have no choice,” he said. “That could save us a tremendous amount of money. I think voters of Maine can handle the truth.”

Poliquin also favors purchasing energy from Canada, reducing the cost of health care insurance by opening new markets, but the core of his focus as governor would be instilling a new pro-business attitude across the state.