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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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2019-01-01 |
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| Name | Ethan Strimling |
| Address | 655 Congress St
Portland, Maine , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
October 19, 1967
(57 years)
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| Contributor | Wishful Thinking |
| Last Modifed | NCdem
May 13, 2024 08:26pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - Married - Straight -
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| Info | In the last few months I have traveled extensively around the First District to listen to what Maine people believe are the major issues facing the state and the nation. What I heard is that the middle class has been neglected and forgotten by Washington. Average wage earners are being hammered while the richest Americans and corporations are given extraordinary tax breaks. Meanwhile the nation is pouring billions into the Iraq War, raising the income tax burden on the middle class and siphoning precious dollars from better wages, better health care, cheaper alternative energy, and college loan programs.
Over and over I heard from Maine people who are struggling to hold on or who are already losing the battle. In Shapleigh, I listened to a retiree who had to go back to work because everything—from taxes to health care—are far more expensive than he had carefully planned for. In Saco, I listened to a father who now has terminal kidney cancer because he did not have health insurance in his hourly job and hadn’t been able to afford physicals. I listened to a Portland couple who are struggling to pay a second mortgage on their house because their two boys are both in college.
My life’s work has been first and foremost about the economic needs of Maine families, and I want to help make it the top priority in Washington. We can make taxes fairer, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, bring our troops home, and increase wages and benefits for working families. Given how much these issues have been neglected or mishandled in recent years, the next U.S. Congress has much work to do. We must really roll up our sleeves, listen to the average citizen, and vow not to stop working until we have forged solutions that will make our middle class stronger and our nation more respected again in the world.
I thank you for reading throughout this website about my experience in addressing these issues, both in the Maine Legislature, where I have served since 2002,and in my ten-plus years as executive director at Portland West, a nonprofit working with at-risk and poor children and families. Fighting for Maine people, trying always to look ahead of the curve, and most importantly, really listening to Maine concerns have all been my mission. With your support and input, and my experience and determination we will make a difference. Join me, write to me, work with me. Together we can change the status quo.
How I Got Here
Role Models and Mentors
I grew up with low to middle class parents who taught me, by example, the importance of speaking truth to power.
My mother, Katherine King, has been involved passionately in social activism all her life. From her I learned about fighting for justice, economic fairness, equal opportunities, and peace. When I was thirteen, I marched with her in the first of many rallies we have attended together. I have been inspired by her and other social activists who work tirelessly to make, not just the nation, but the world, a better place.
My father, Arthur Strimling, also was politically active, but he taught me two other important lessons. One is he insisted that I learn how to create solutions to local and national issues by assigning me to read countless essays and opinion pieces and quizzing me on the writer’s arguments, biases, and recommendations. Two is his insight, as an actor, about how the arts can be used to raise issues and pose solutions, which served me well during my studies at the High School for the Performing Arts and Julliard.
I have used my parents’ lessons of commitment, reasoning, passion, and problem solving throughout my life.
I have been fortunate in that others have continued to help me build on these roots. A summer camp director, Richard, in California, under whom I worked for five summers as a camp advisor, taught me that all children need our collective help in growing up. Jim Remick from Sedgwick, Maine, where I lived for a year, taught me the power of unselfish kindness (and how to rebuild a ’63 Ford Falcon). Maine Congressman Tom Andrews, for whom I worked for a year, opened a new dimension for me on how to affect change through public service as he, Ed Muskie, George Mitchell and other Maine political leaders have done. Maine Senator Dale McCormick, whose congressional campaign I was so fortunate to be a part of, and who’s fighting spirit seems so kindred, reemphasized for me the power of public service. My older brother, Eric, now a carpenter in California, has shown me the power of individual fortitude and responsibility.
I am proud of the many issues I have been able to work on as a Maine citizen thanks to the inspiration of these strong role models who have encouraged me to believe that the actions of individuals do make a difference.
Continued Education and Learning
was fortunate to begin my attempts at using these lessons as a student at UMaine in Orono, where the classes, the teachers, and the atmosphere were so open, accepting and encouraging to a kid who had lived in New York City, California, and finally Maine.
I became involved there in projects that pulled together many strands in my life. I toured well over 50 schools around the state with other UMaine students in the University’s Aspirations Project, performing in skits and holding discussions with school leaders, teachers, and students on how to develop solutions to improve local education.
I also got involved with the Maine People’s Alliance and their work on improving health care for Maine’s poor and underinsured middle class, an interest I have carried through my work as a legislator.
I worked with others on getting UMaine to divest its holdings in South Africa and on airing issues around the first Gulf War, which started my interest in how we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
All the while I had wonderful teachers who helped me obtain a degree in history with an emphasis on Latin America, which I have visited several times.
After getting a master’s in education at Harvard, specializing in at-risk children, and working for a couple years with Tom and Dale, I was blessed in 1997 to get the job of executive director of Portland West where I’ve been for over ten years in the most rewarding experience of my life.
Heading Portland West
Portland West works with Maine children who are trying to move beyond generations of poverty, with children of immigrants trying to make a new and better life, with young people at risk of throwing away their valuable lives.
I am proud of what I have done to re-create and re-organize a vital nonprofit that has reached out to hundreds of children, to make it financially sound again, and to raise the funds needed to support the good work of dozens of employees with fair pay and health benefits.
When we talk about our successes in life, we all tend to point to such measurable things.
But I have learned at Portland West to count as successes those times where good work has provided a safe haven for a kid to implode instead of out on the streets, or given an immigrant child a shoulder to cry on instead of crying alone in bewilderment at night.
These are small measures that, step by step, may not save every child, but give hope to many that there is another path they can choose. We must create more of those small successes for all Mainers and Americans who struggle.
Serving in the Maine Legislature
I am proud to have served the people of Portland as their state Senator since 2002. I feel that the voters, in reelecting me, value my belief that, in fighting hard for solutions to local problems, one can also contribute to solutions statewide and even nationally. There is much common ground in what Portlanders and Mainers and Americans all face.
I am proud of my legislative work with Senator Richard Nass, a Republican, on a bipartisan plan to reduce property taxes with specific, concrete proposals. Fair taxes for the middle class and elderly—whether it is property taxes or income taxes—can be addressed in Maine and the nation if we work together. We need to close the widening gap between the rich and the middle class and the chasm between the rich and the poor. Mainers and all Americans need to be able to afford mortgage payments for their own home, put gas in their car, heat their house, and send their children to college.
I am also proud of sponsoring the resolution passed by the Maine legislature in 2003 opposing the invasion of Iraq long before many in power spoke out about their fears and concerns. Maine became the first legislative body in the country to do so. We need leadership that replaces arrogance with dialogue; that disavows secrecy for the truth of openness, especially when so many young lives and precious national dollars are at stake. Leadership must empower everyone to participate in a discussion of the rightness of the arguments and the rightness of the solutions from day one of important national decisions.
I am proud of sponsoring legislation giving the first ever tax incentives for the creation of alternative energy sources. We must break our dependence on foreign oil and encourage alternatives like wind power. We need leadership on energy and the environment that is not interested in just one viewpoint. All stakeholders should be at the table—from those who create new energy and fuel sources to middle class workers who must buy it with sometimes scarce dollars—from those who want to develop environmentally sensitive areas to those who love the quickly vanishing solitude found in pristine areas. There can be solutions that meld important economic growth, independence, relief for the middle class, and a desire to preserve our natural world.
I am proud to be the Chair of the legislature’s Labor Committee where we have generated legislation to protect the economic gains made by Maine’s hard working middle class. We have increased wages for working Maine families, but we need leadership who will do more at the national level to build on these state efforts by creating fair tax structures and protecting workers rights.
I am also proud to be a part of the work the Maine legislature has done on health care for all Mainers. We have led the nation in our local solution to ensure that all Maine children and adults have access to a doctor or hospital when they are sick or injured. My wonderful wife, Mary, is a nurse in the cardiology unit at Maine Medical, and I learn from her every day that compassion is not enough if the resources aren’t made available to all. We cannot say we are compassionate if we are not willing to perform the acts of kindness and enact the legislative solutions to manifest it.
It is my hope that I have used well the gifts which I have been given by my parents, and which have been nurtured by so many others, to fight for and implement commonsense solutions to pressing issues. As I have toured all around the First District, meeting with people, listening to their concerns, understanding their hopes, and presenting my ideas, I have been encouraged once again to think that my roots and my experience have prepared me well to continue the fight for Maine citizens in Washington. I believe that the fight for what Maine citizens want in life is universal to all American citizens and, indeed, people around the world.
I am proud to be running for the privilege of standing up for Maine people.
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