“Wake Up Republicans!” You Too Are Impacted by The Issues  that Certified MAGA Member  Senator  Collins Supports. .

While many, including most in the press, have essentially declared Maine’s Democratic US Senate primary over, there’s still time for voters to consider whether the democratic Party’s presumptive nominee is the best person to take on Senator Susan Collins in November.  Preceptions of political viability can and often do, change overnight.

I believe that my personal story, education and government experience contrasts more sharply with that of Senator Collins than does Graham Platner’s.  My lived experience is rooted in many of the same challenges working-class Mainers face every day and my extensive government service is broader, deeper and more hands on than Senator Collins.  Moreover, I believe that my experiences equip me with the kind of knowledge and perspective sorely needed in Washington today.

I was born in Bangor and raised in Old Town by my mother and mill-working grandparents.  My father, an Army veteran and labor organizer, died at the age of 31 due to hazardous working conditions he faced as a teenager.  I know what it’s like to have to hustle to pay bills, compile years of debt and go long periods without health insurance and healthcare.

Like many in Maine, I began working at an early age and worked my way through the University of Maine, George Washington University and the London School of Economics.  And I subsequently served for more than 30 years in senior-level government and non-governmental organiztion positions, both in the US and abroad.

These positions included serving as a top aide to Maine’s secretary of state, the mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland, as a deputy and acting secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, and as a count program manager and regional team leader for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  These positions involved implementing and managing, not simply legislating or talking about, complex multimillion-dollar programs and operations.

These programs and operations included working closely with the US Army, State Department, United Nations and foreign and organizations overseas — and various state and local government agencies, businesses and non-governmental organizations in Maine, Maryland and elsewhere.

They are programs and operations that resulted in election and motor vehicle safety reforms in Maine, improved actions and famly assistance programs in Balimore, the implementation of ambitious job creation, education, healthcare, crime reduction and environmental protection programs in Maryland; and the completion of more than 3,500 peace and community-building projects in conflict-torn Cambodia, Haiti, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia.

I believe experience matters, but so too does my decades-long commitment to sustantially reforming our nation’s governing policies practices and institutions and eliminating the excessive and corrupting influence that money, wealth and disinformation have over our politics and government.  Like many Democrats, I am fully committed to enacting far-reaching legislative and constitutional reforms, among them, Medicare for All; universal childcare, expanded Social Security benefits; a natioal minimum lving wage; increased taxes on the wealthy; a ban on gerrymandering; federal clean elections financing; comprehensive immigration reform, judicial and legislative term limits; codification of Roe v. Wade’  an assault weapons ban; and an aggressive national climate action plan.

Reforms designed to not only salvage our democracy, but to also better protect our rights and freedoms and to enable us to finallly tackle such pressing challenges as unafordable housing and healthcare, insufficient retirement security; economic inequality, gun violence; shoddy infrastructure; and climate change.  Because only then are we likely to achieve the more perfect union envisionsed by our most thoughtful founders and forebears.

The foregoing by David Costello, a Candidate for US Senate, appeared in the “Bangor Daily News” on May 16, 2026.

For more information on Mr. Costello, please visit post herein dated June 11, 2025.