Bobby Charles- Segments 4 & 5

Welcome back to Inside Maine. I'm your host, Aaron Chadbourne, on this very special Fourth of July edition of Inside Maine. We're so thrilled to be spending the day talking to candidates running for governor, this great state of Maine. And joining us now is a good friend of the show, Bobby Charles. He is officially the Republican candidate for governor. Bobby, welcome back to Inside Maine. Aaron, always glad to be with you. And a happy Fourth of July to everybody out there. Now, I want to start on the Fourth of July because it is the nation's birthday. It is also the 250, which is symbolic and important. I know there's a lot that's been made by Republicans in the fact that Governor Mills chose not to participate in the Great American State Fair. The state of Maine booth was empty with just a couple of chairs sitting there. I know you and others have been working on making a better showing there. What can you tell me about that? And what reflections do you have on this Fourth of July? Yeah, you know, let me unpack that and answer it in two ways. First, I think all Mainers should be celebrating. I don't care what your political party is. I think you should be celebrating the 250th birthday of this nation. We are an exceptional nation, a word by the way that you and I probably both know came out of Alexander de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who looked at us, not coming out of ourselves. We are an unbelievable nation. We have always been that. We have our moments where we failed, but we correct our mistakes. And that's really true also of the state of Maine. We've had moments where things were dark. I consider that they're not great right now economically and in some other ways, but I think that we are in the business and this last 14 months have put us in the business of correcting those mistakes. So let me say this was a great, it is a great 250th birthday. It's a great day to celebrate with the family and friends. What happened, the second piece of that answer question is really about what happened in Washington. in a nonpartisan effort to celebrate the 250th, by the way, very similar to the kinds of things we did in the 70s and, you know, at each big anniversary of this country, presidents who are the primary elected official in the United States, supported by the other elected officials, try to put together an event that makes us proud of who we are, what we've been, all the sacrifice. prices that got us here. And as you say, there are a couple of states, Maine was one, where the governors took a belligerent, I'll call it, attitude toward this celebration and decided it was more important to, I guess, thumb their nose at the White House than it was to celebrate the hereditary and the cultural and the business and the, you know, legacy identity of their state. So. Interestingly, I was contacted a few weeks ago by somebody who said, are you going to, are they doing it? Because I knew the person involved in these celebrations, and I said, I don't know. And it turns out that Mills and the tourism folks decided they were, quote, too busy to bother celebrating Maine. uh in the nation's capital when literally hundreds of thousands of people are streaming through the you know the blue angels are flying over it's a huge undertaking and so uh first i think the chamber of commerce and then several legislators including uh reagan paul tiffany strout uh i think tray stewart a bunch of other people said you know what we can do better than this and the businesses started to be contacted and then groups like um

reads across America, it said, you know what, we'll put our radio booth down there. We'll put a representation down there. And then there were lobstermen who stepped up. And then there were loggers and then there were farmers and then there were service industries. And all of a sudden, literally in the last few days, there has been just a groundswell of Mainers with no political... agenda at all saying, you know what, we love Maine. We want the rest of the country to know, first of all, that we love Maine, and secondly, that they should love Maine. And so there is, if you go online right now, and I just put up a few videos and a few things, but if you go online, you will see there is now an incredible radiating sense of excitement. I mean, dozens of people in this small space that are celebrating Maine. And why not? I mean, we, you know, we, for what it's worth, 90% of all the lobster. consumed in the United States comes out of Maine, paper comes out of Maine, wood comes out of Maine, agricultural products. Like potatoes that are the biggest in the country, I'd say, come out of Maine. Lots of stuff we do. You do real estate. We have beautiful real estate in this state. And I say all this because on the one hand, it's really a dismaying thing, almost an evidence to me that the Democrats, these progressive Democrats, have just lost their way, that you can imagine the emotional satisfaction of hating the White House. is what trumps or over, overrides your pride in your state and the businesses and the culture of the state, something's wrong in the way you're thinking. And then the flip side of it is this incredible can-do, hardworking spirit of Mainers, who of all stripes said, you know what? If they're not going to do it, we're going to do it. And I guess that's the way, you know, both in the military and in the civilian world, if there is a need and you perceive the need, you should step up. And that's what Mainers did. I'm amazingly proud of all the Mainers who participated.

It definitely seems like the 250th anniversary of the founding of this country should be something that we can put partisanship aside and actually do it. And I wonder a little bit for you, Bobby, thinking about if you're successful, you become governor. We've just come through a period of time where there is so much division in Augusta, more than I've seen in my lifetime. Governor Mills and the Democrats insisted on partisan budgets. They were majority only budgets. They blamed it. They said we didn't want to give Republicans a chance to shut down the government. which honestly, like having been there and having negotiated a couple budgets, having shut down the government with Governor Lepage, it's very hard to not keep the government running. It takes a really big deal for it not to. But what's been lost in allowing Republicans any say, allowing another party in a say is quite a bit. When you think about restoring Maine to the place where it was when you grew up. a place where maybe there's more common sense, it's more functional, more cooperation, more working together. Do you think that we're in for just more partisanship and more division? Or, I mean, you know, you came through a pretty bitter primary. You won with a very conservative message. Now you're going to have to appeal to Democrats to independents in order to win. And you're also going to have to work with them in order to govern. How are you thinking about that? Yeah, so really you've got two questions there, Aaron. The first is, how do you manage Augusta and the divisions, the deep divisions there? And then secondly, how do you pull in Democrats and independents? And I will tell you that the news, not just for Republicans, but for Mainers in general on this, is, I think, incredibly good news. And so let me break it out this way. There is a feeling in this state. I was just down in Yarmouth in Portland yesterday, groups of visiting down there. There is a feeling in this state that Augusta in general. It's not so much Democrats and Republicans pitching or tilting at each other, it's that a lot of what happens, and it's been under Democrat control now for seven years, a lot of what happens is just out of touch with average manors. And it's very concretely out of touch. It's out of touch in terms of energy costs, in terms of the property tax burden highest in the country. It's out of touch in terms of constantly raising the income taxes. It's out of touch with respect to education, what parents expect of the school systems, what teachers ask. actually expect of the school systems. And if you interview and talk to teachers, they're not happy people right now. And of course, what we expect in the most basic sense of integrity in our government. So I would recast the first part of your question as, how do we get an Augusta, which is now going to be, God willing, in sync with the people, respectful of, responsive to maybe even anticipatory of the concerns that average Mainers have. about how to keep their kids in the state, how not to lose their homes, how to keep taxes under control, how to get things back to it, basically what they grew up with, what you and I grew up with, what we call normal in this state. The second thing I'm going to say is that...

This idea that Republicans have to somehow be the same as Democrats, but the opposite when we're in control, I actually don't buy into that. I never bought into it at the federal level, and I don't buy into it here. I believe that responsible leadership is the leadership of an entire state. So what does that mean? It means you need to listen well. I was on the phone with the Democrat this morning who was telling me I was wrong about something, and I listened. I'm not sure that they're right, but I listened, and I'm not sure that I'm right. I'm going to listen harder on that. There are some very important issues that, I guess I'll put it this way. Again, I know others like Venn diagrams, but if you were to take two circles and overlap them, I'm going to bet you that 80% of what's overlapped is... is really Republicans and Democrats agreeing on what needs to happen in the state. They may disagree on the means by which we get there. How do you lower property taxes? How quickly do you lower income taxes? How do you get the energy costs down? How do you do that while preserving some people's desire to do it a different way? How do you get our school system back on track? How do you do it swiftly so you don't lose another generation of students? How do you get the fraud out of the state? How do you do that in a nonpartisan way, which I say follow the money and it doesn't. matter where it leads, wherever it leads, that person's going to be prosecuted if they're violating the law. I think part of this partisanship business is a self-inflicted wound. I think we've come to the conclusion that we generally have to identify ourselves as being against. instead of being four. Imagine a governor who models the behavior of actually listening, and I have actually corresponded with every single legislator years, a couple of years ago when they talked about the AG, I literally wrote a private handwritten note to every single Democrat legislator, and I offered to have a conversation and about two dozen took me up on those conversations i don't believe that main needs to keep modeling this kind of a frame divide i think we can go back to being principled high integrity fiscally responsible safe educationally aspiring and strong without having to say that that's all the fault of one or the doing of another. Unfortunately, the way we got here is a very straight line. We made, the government made decisions. They've grown this budget by 64% in seven years. They busted the budget. And they did that in the way that you just described there. And they did majority budgets, which is really anti-constitutional. You and I both took constitutional law. We both know what that means. They did it in a way that was intentionally sort of the middle finger to the minority. And I will never do that. I actually agree on a great number of things. I just was for an hour before the Maine Municipal Association. I don't think I disagreed with anything. There were Republicans and Democrats on that group. And I don't like all the unfunding.

mandates that have been pushed down. So I guess what I'm really trying to tell you is if you have a reasonable, thoughtful, relatively patient, principled, high integrity leader, You will find that people respond to that favorably. And I get lots of crap thrown at me online, and that's okay. I don't take any of it. Truly, do not take any of it personally. I learned that from Colin Jerome Powell and from Ronald Reagan, and I don't. I think people bring their own disaffections to the table. They're upset, and that's okay. You're allowed to be upset. We're a free country, free speech. As long as you don't threaten somebody's safety, you're allowed to be upset. And then... I get the chance to respond to that. And you would be surprised to just tie that question down. You would be surprised how many Democrats and independents online and offline are talking to me favorably. I got a call yesterday from a guy I've never met, never met him. He said, I've been a lifetime Democrat. I've looked at what you've done. my wife and I are going to max donate to you. And I was blown away. I was blown away. That does not happen just sort of for the record. So I said, can you tell me what it is that caused you to say that? You said, I just think you're the only one out there that's serious about solving the problems that we both feel are real. And, you know, they don't want to lose their pension. They don't want to lose their health care. They're living, I won't say hand to mouth, but on a fixed income. They don't, they cannot suffer more increases in property taxes. They can't suffer losing their kids to move. out of state. They want them to stay here. They want the state to work for them in the way that it always did. And so I think, honestly, Aaron, all I'm promising to come back to your question is common sense. That's all I'm doing. No, it's interesting. I've talked to Rick Bennett before. He's one of the other candidates for governor. He's an independent now. He was a Republican. He is serving on the Appropriations Committee. One point that he's made is that a lot of the budget hasn't actually had a public hearing because they don't work it out in the public. They agree amongst themselves in the back rooms and they come out and they pass a budget. That's no way to run a business. That's the right to run a family budget. It's no way to run a government. And so I think it's really, really preposterous. And you're right to call it out and point it out. But I'm also interested in what you're saying about the allegation. on the internet because I had Hannah Pingree on the last segment and she was talking about all the memes that your campaign generates about her and some of the AI and how she looks and I know in the primary there was a lot of you know AI use of images and both at you and from you and that sort of thing and I think if I've heard a criticism of you from people who don't disagree with your politics some of them think that some of the campaign seems either mean or petty or you know using AI to create garbage I'm curious how you've thought about I mean obviously campaigns are what they are in the modern age How have you thought about that impact on how people view how you are? So we and by my direction are a largely overwhelming majority of what we're putting out there, and we did this in our television ads, overwhelmingly positive in the way we look at things, because my view is the state is in a dark place.

And Hannah Pingree, who was the right hand of Janet Mills, is responsible for that dark place. Now, do you use words to explain that dark place? Do you use images of people who can't pay their bills? They can't pay their energy bills. They're suffering. I think what we're doing is we're trying, you know, we live in a visual moment. We live in a moment where people pay more attention to the first three seconds. This is really true online of Facebook and Instagram. The first three seconds, they either pay attention or they don't. So... in order to get somebody's attention, you use visuals. If she doesn't like the visuals, then she can go back and, you know, and she can use her own visuals. But I will tell you right now that the guts of what we're doing is pointing out what's wrong with how we got here and where we are in order to find solutions. And I am putting out, I will tease it a little bit to right now, about two weeks from now, we're going to do a detailed press conference on our tax policies, our energy policies. breaking down how you begin for the first time to cut a budget that has not been cut in decades. And you do that while preserving all essential services. You actually use the roadmap that auditors have already given us in terms of finding waste, fraud, and abuse. And, you know, if all that Hannah Pingree can do is complain about the visuals in the memes, I think that tells you what she doesn't want to talk about. What she doesn't want to talk about are the fact that all these property taxes for which she and Bennett say they're going to put a committee together. and figure out how the property taxes suddenly got out of control. Yeah, it's not a mystery. It's absolutely not a mystery. We have more unfunded mandates in this state on our towns and counties than just about any state proportional in the country with the result that we have the highest property taxes in the country. Those unfunded mandates were driven by votes that both Pingree and Bennett took, and they were driven by policies that Hannah Pringry was responsible for. at the direction of Governor Mills. So, you know, you can run away from the property taxes, but the reality is you're responsible for them. Same thing is true with income taxes. Same thing is true with energy costs. When you push 36% increases year over year on energy costs, on Mainers who have absolutely no ability to pay for that, the largest increase in the nation. And you want to talk about memes. Let's talk about memes that explain to people, at least in one go, that you've bumped up energy costs 56%. during your term. And she really was the alter ego for the governor. So it is during her term, right? At the end of the day, you have put main families in a position where they cannot pay their bills. And that is by pushing solar and wind subsidies and net energy billing a green... a green strategy that just failed it has failed it has not generated cheaper energy so what am i going to do i'm going to reverse that if you want solar and you want wind i got nothing against solar and wind if you want to put that all over your house and all over your fields aaron you should do that is a free country and a free market and a free nation and a free state but you should not ask me to pay for your solar panels particularly when i can barely pay my own bills and so My goal here is to get back to common sense. And, you know, this AI business is new. I have a digital team who runs things by me. I have literally canceled things that they put out there because I don't think they, I don't think, I think it's one thing to be funny. It's one thing to be entertaining. And it's another thing to be mean-spirited. We will never be mean-spirited, but we will be funny. And, you know, sometimes you put memes out there. Other people put them out about me.

You know, as long as they don't cross the line into liable, I think it's fine. I'm okay with it. I think it's almost like the old days of the cartoons that were done by the far side artist or the New Yorker cartoonists, you know, they, or even in some of the major, you know, even in our papers up here, you had political cartoons. That's okay. But what I really get back to is all of that is driving attention to something that matters. People cannot afford to live in the state. They're leaving. Businesses are leaving by three or four hundred a year. Our seniors are leaving. They spend another week in Florida and all of a sudden they got no income taxes. Our young people are believing because they cannot afford the rent in any of the major cities. And you know this. You're in real estate. The average or the median, actually, income for a main or under 35 is $200 a month below median rent. That is the death of the American dream. And the Democrats are the ones that push the unfunded mandates down to the towns and counties that did that. They're the ones that pushed the regulations onto the businesses that have run them. out of here. They're the ones that keep raising the income tax. They raised it by 2% last session. And people go, it's only 2%. We're going to just kill the wealthy so that we can live on the dole. Actually, it doesn't work that way. I did an economic analysis myself. I mean, one of my graduate degrees from Oxford is from in economics. And I will tell you, and I've run a business for 25 years. What happens is we're going to lose between 8,000 and 16,000 jobs. And the main policy institute indicates between 3% and 7% of our top arms. because of that decision. Does that matter? Yeah, that does matter. Because the way it works is 99% of our businesses in this state are small businesses. They're LLCs or their S-Corps. And so they have to pay that money. They look like millionaires, but they're not. They're just, they get five, maybe 20 employees. The number one cost to a company, every single company on the planet is labor. Because you have to pay more taxes, you cut labor. So maybe you only cut one or two of your employees. That's a huge impact on the state of Maine. So anyway, my view is, you know, Democrats are calling me and volunteering and giving me money. Independence are doing the same thing. I'll leave you with a survey that came out about two weeks ago, and you may have seen only 11% of Maine's independents believe that Maine is on the right track. 89% want change. I am the living embodiment of common sense, straightforward, honest as the day is long, change if what you want is affordability, safety, good schools, and integrity in your government. You're listening to Inside Main. I'm your host, Aaron Chadburn. We're speaking with gubernatorial candidate, GOP nominee, Bobby Charles. Bobby, I feel like we've barely scratched the service. I want to get into other policy questions with you. Are you available to hang out for another segment so we can go deep on some of these things? We'll certainly do that. And I have to say you brought up Toadville before. And one of the observations that Tokeville had was that he said in our government, the way that it's set up, is it's set up to be great, but it's going to benefit. lawyers and lobbyists. And he predicted that, I think, presci and Lee, you also, maybe you don't have time to get into it. But when we come back, I want you to talk about the challenge that you have about taking money from lobbyists that you're putting out there for both Rick Bennett. I'm Aaron Chadbourne. This is Inside Maine. It's a very special Fourth of July. When we come back, we'll continue talking and we'll go deep in policy with Bobby Charles candidate for governor.

We are back on Inside Maine. It is the 4th of July. I'm Aaron Chadbourne, so pleased to be here on this very hot 4th of July and pleased to be joined by Bobby Charles. He's the Republican candidate for governor in the great state of Maine. He'll be on the ballot in November. Bobby, thanks for staying for another segment. Before the break, I teased a little bit this challenge you put out there and how it relates to lobbyists and lawyers. Tell me a bit more about what the challenge is and what it is your thinking. So let me nest that in a brigger observation, having probably met 20,000 Mainers in the last 14 months, maybe more, and of all stripes, Democrat, Independent, Republican, I will tell you that one of the resounding discoveries that I made is that people... are very unhappy with their state government, by which I don't just mean policy. I mean, they do not trust the government. It doesn't, they don't trust them on excise taxes. They don't trust them on review and regulations. They don't trust them on the unfunded mandates. They don't trust them on whether or not they're going to, whether the election process, they don't trust the government. And so the context, the beginning part of my thinking about that pledge was everything I do as a candidate. and therefore everything I also end up doing as a governor has to be rebuilding a sense of trust in the government. So some of that's policy-oriented. Get my taxes down, get my streets back to being safe, give my kids a school that I can trust. They're going to get a good education in. You know, give me energy costs that I can afford. Give me housing. It'll keep my kids in the state and won't cause me to lose my home. That's all trust-oriented, too. The integrity of the system, of the electoral system is actually, and I don't just mean voter ID. I mean how you perceive the person who steps up to serve you publicly as a school board member, as a dog catcher, I don't know if we have dog catchers anymore, but as a dog catcher, animal control group. I don't think we elect them anymore. I think they just don't. Yeah, we probably don't, yeah. Or as a governor, you need to trust that person. So here's my... Here's my challenge to Pingree and to Bennett. You know, Bennett started basically collecting money to serve in the government in 1990. And Pingree's has been there for, you know, a decade and a half. She's been there. And she, these people collect money, I think, from people that expect favors from them. And my pledge is very straightforward, and this is my challenge. I refuse to accept any money from lobbyists or lobbying law firms. And I refuse to accept any money from CNP and from data centers. Those are specific issue-oriented things. But the reason that I go back to lobbying is if you are someone giving money as a lobbyist to a candidate, you're essentially believing that you're going to buy a favor. If you're running for governor, if you are running for governor, you should not. be operating in a way that causes you to have an expectation that someone is going to get a favor from you because their business is buying favors. I will put it to you also slightly differently. If you give me no money, you are a lobbyist for pick your favorite cause or company or sector.

And you're a lobbyist, but you give me no money because I won't take your money. But then you come to plead me a case. We need more hospitals. We need more this. We need more that. I can listen to you as a merit-based advocate for an outcome that might be very valid. But I am also pure as the driven snow when it comes to... somehow arguing, someone arguing that I have been bought, that I'm going to give you that outcome because you gave me money. To me, this is the most commonsensical, everyday thing. And I thought it, by the way, of other people 30 years ago. I thought, why is it? Members of Congress, senators don't say, I'm not going to take money from lobbyists because it implies or it leads open the inference that I will be giving them something for that money. I'm happy to take, I mean, I'm the grassroots candidate, Aaron. I have probably 7,000 everyday Mainers who are philosophically in tune with lower taxes, getting the drug traffickers out, getting the illegal aliens out, getting the energy costs down, the schools back into business of producing really great students and getting fraud out of the state. They believe in those philosophical and policy choices. I love getting money from them because I'm the Jimmy Stewart guy. I've got no money. I pulled $200,000 out of my retirement because I've got no money. I am the guy that believes this is about the people's voice. And I'll tell you, it makes me tear up sometimes the level of trust that people put in me in expectation. I got a letter a couple of weeks ago from a lady way up north in Maine. She said, Bobby, I love you. I want to support you. She's a very much older lady. She said, I want to support you. I believe in what you're doing. And I want you to know that, you know, I'm enclosing a donation because I believe in you. That donation was a $5 money order. This is someone who had to take $5 down to the post office and get a money order and send it to me. That's like the widows might. That's, you know, people can, these big super PACs can give tons of money and, you know, Pingree's got gobs and gobs of dark money and Bennett knows how to raise it to. But they all owe favors to people if they accept that money. My argument is, why don't you join me? Hannah, and why don't you join me, Rick, in a very straightforward commitment that you will not take money from people who are giving you the money in the expectation you'll give them a favor. I don't think that's absurd. I think that's a common sense request. I think on the left, I think definitely for Janet Mills when she ran for governor, she took a lot of money and did a lot of favors for these organizations. And so I think that's probably a fair one. And it could be the teachers union. It could be the main people's lions. It could be any of these people that are able to peddle in dark money and the money they spend on behalf of her. For her, though, I don't know where her money comes from. I know her former stepfather was certainly able to be helpful to her mom. For Rick Bennett, I think he's a different one, though. That's very interesting because, again, he, if you look at his...

his recent history in the legislature, he's been the most anti-CMP legislator. He led on the pine state power or pine tree power, whatever they were calling the government takeover of power. He fought CMP in the transmission corridor. On the corporate side, he's been putting in the anti-PFAS legislation, making corporations pay for their packaging. So I don't know that he's like a seller to corporate interest. And if you look at his private sector career, the stuff that he did with the corporate library, with Bobby Monks, with others, like, I mean, he's kind of stood up to special interests. in a number of ways. Because I think Rick kind of just has his own philosophy. But I'm sure he is taking money from lobbyists. And I'm sure that I think, you know, my challenge, so my challenge, I come right back to ground zero, Aaron, if if a guy that was always a Republican and then decided a couple of years ago to be a progressive and he, you know, he's voted for these things that these groups want, right? Whether they're going to be a populist, not a progressive though, right? Well, let me, let me challenge you on that. Is it populist? to vote for sanctuary state status? I don't think so. I think that's leftist. Is it populist to vote for pushing boys into girls' sports? For whatever your rationale, I don't think that's populist. I think that's... a guy that wants to run as an independent because he probably can't win in either the Republican or Democrat primaries, and therefore he decided, I'm going to go hard left, and I'm going to imagine that the sum of the parts divided by two is going to put me as an independent. When you have been essentially a moderate Republican for a long time, and now you become really a leftist Democrat for the last couple of years of voting, I don't think you add the two up. I think it shows you really don't have any clear idea what your moral compass is. And I saw Rick the other day. I said hi to him at a restaurant. But I, you know, he's been around Maine politics for 35 years. And he's been part of the problem that created all these. real burdens on average Mainers every day, and so has Pingree. So, you know, my view is we could admire the problem all day. I'm not here to admire the problem. I'm here to provide solutions. Part of the solution set is to make clear to the average main voter that you are not going to be voting with special interests, to make clear that... And how better to do that than to say, I will not accept money from, and you could pick, I picked a couple, CNP and data centers, but it's really the bigger question. I will not accept money from people who are identifying themselves. as wanting to purchase access for the purpose of getting an outcome if you want to come to me and i've talked to lobbyists since who are angry with me they said hey i was going to give you money and blah blah blah i said yeah you can i don't i don't care okay if you want to come plead to me on the merits that your cause whether it has to do with real estate hospitals

you know, business incentives. I don't care. You want to come make a case. Come make the case. But do not burden me with having to explain why you gave me money. And in the end, if I decide that you're right, I have to say that I have to explain to people that I wasn't purchased. If you are not in the business of selling favors, then join me in saying you're not going to take money from lobbyists. It's straightforward. You're listening to Inside Maine. I'm your host, Aaron Chad. When we're speaking to Bobby Charles, he is the Republican candidate for governor. No, that's funny. It reminds me of Governor LePage who I worked for. Like, he didn't care who the lobbyist was or what they had done for him. He always said, like, what's in the interest of the main people? And I think that's very liberating to be able to do that. I think it's a very interesting approach to take. I want to talk to you about some policy issues and we're running at a time. But before we do that, you're talking about character of people running for office. I asked Hannah Pingree a few minutes ago. about Graham Platner. I mean, this guy, it seems like there's no end to these scandals. And Hannah, to her credit, said that he needs to answer for it. And she believes all women. And she said, you know, she would prefer to see a Democrat and someone that wouldn't vote the way that Susan Collins does. But that Graham Platner certainly has to answer. And I said, yeah, he's got a lot of explaining to do. But I wonder what you make of the fact that here's someone who seems to be so flawed and he seems to have a lot of skeletons in his closet and that there's a big significant part of the population that's willing to overlook that because I don't know, it's not unlike the Tea Party movement. There's this kind of leftist populism thing building saying that the establishment left isn't serving them well and they're willing to put in this, you know, quote unquote oyster farmer who has the Nazi tattoo, who has problematic relationships with women who. has put a lot of very incendiary and inappropriate and unacceptable language online. But they're willing to send him there. They're willing to send him there as a freshman senator to fire the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee who's serving the interests of the state of Maine. It's absurd to me. I don't know how we got here, but what do you make of that situation? So. I think much of what you said there was accurate, but you are, you're a very diplomatic guy. And I'll also say Hannah Pingree. is obviously trying to dance on the head of a needle because she, or pin, because she's trying to, you know, I've encouraged both Hannah Pingree and Rick Bennett to completely disavow this man. This man is not competent to be a school board member. He's certainly not competent to be a United States senator. And his moral fiber, I don't, I guess I'm looking around, I don't see a whole lot of moral fiber there at all. But I will tell you what I tell people. First of all, I am against the reason that Graham Platner has any... following is because people are sick and tired of being used and abused by government at every level. A lot of Democrats are sick and tired also, which is why a lot of them are supporting me. They are sick and tired of being used and abused by Augusta insiders, but they also look at the federal government, which is further away from them than the state government, and they feel like, you know, they feel unrepresented. They feel...

agitated in the same way that the old network news movie used to have, the guy says, throw up the window and shout, I'm mad as hell and I won't take it anymore. There are voters for Graham Platner who are that. There are also voters for Graham Platner that are willing to forgive all of his egregious acts. And I consider them more than offensive. I think some of them borderline criminal, but they're willing to forgive those because they want to control the United States Senate. And I put Chuck Schumer in that category. The way I explain Graham Platner is this. I don't have much respect for the guy. He should be disavowed. He does not deserve the honor of representing the state of Maine. I am very supportive of Susan Collins. She is an arch professional. She is the most honorable, decent, humble, good-hearted human being, and I've known her for almost 50 years. She's also the second most powerful person in the United States controlling the entire budget, and she is going to help the state of Maine. My answer on Graham Platner is... If you ever picked apples as a kid, we used to actually put them in barrels. And if you get to the bottom of the barrel of the box, it's all just muck. That's all that's left. There isn't any apple there. And the Democrat Party has no bench. They have gone to somebody that I think represents muck when it comes to the way that you used to frame candidates. You might not have liked Ed Muskie. You might not have liked George Mitchell and before all these other things came out about him. They were viewed as people that could get along with other people, respected the country, respected. They had self-respect. So at end of the day, I am a believer in the spirit of people who are honorable, hold themselves to a certain moral standard, and therefore deserve our trust. And I think one of the things that Graham Platner represents is not any of that, but I also think that he represents people who are sick and tired of the government being in their face. So I do want to turn to policy. It's obviously a very hot day to day. People are running their air conditioners. I had tenants in one of my units call me to say, hey, the heat pumps aren't keeping up. Can I get an air unit, window unit to put in? Which has also everyone looking at their electricity bill, seeing how the rates have gone up. We talked a little bit about CMP. But what is it that you think the governor of Maine and the main government can actually do to lower energy costs? So I want to drive everybody right to my website. We have a, I had a 25 point energy plan to get the cost down 30 or 40%. They made me reduce it to eight points, but it's all still, they said people won't read 25 points. But it begins with getting rid of net energy billing, stop subsidizing things that actually cost us money through our nose. I mean, the state itself just described that solar and wind are costing the average rate payer, $220 million a year. We cannot afford it. that. So get rid of all the subsidies for solar and wind. By the way, as I said earlier, if you like solar, if you like wind, it's a free country and you can buy it and do it, but you just can't make me. You shouldn't be making me pay for what you want. So, you know, part of it's there. Complete the Constitution pipeline. That means getting the federal government to lean in on Massachusetts and get that cheaper natural gas out of Pennsylvania up here. I think we can do that, join the Iroquois line to that. Save the four dams on the Kennebec. Do not allow Sappy to be. to be damaged at all. I will on day one sign an executive order preserving Sappy. They have actually, that mill has an $8 billion footprint in the state of Maine impact on a huge part of the central part of the state. And so uncap hydro, get us cheaper, more hydro power. Get rid of all the bureaucracy. Get us out of Reggie. Get us out of the efficiency council. All these things cost money. They don't save money. Stop building up the bureaucracy in Augusta. They, you know, LePage's energy office.

was two people. They now have 22 people. Now magnify that across the government. They don't need that. You don't need a public advocate who's just pushing green power, which is extremely costly, never mind damaging to the state in a bunch of other ways. So there are about 25 ways that you can ultimately get us back to about 40% down from where we are. Jim Lebrecht, Jerry Chasse, all of my team are about increased competition. get rid of what doesn't work. And what doesn't work is a deregulatory environment that actually damages competition, pull the politics out of energy, make energy companies compete to lower our rates. And one of my virtual guarantees is that within 24 months, we will have rates down dramatically instead of seeing a 36% increase year over year in energy costs that absolutely no one can afford. So one of the other areas that people are focused on is housing costs. And I'm not saying that just because I sell real estate, but it's really at the cornerstone of our economy. The cost to build has gone up. The cost of rent has gone up. And a lot of it is driven in Maine by the supply shortage. And a lot of supply shortage is driven by how expensive it is to build here. And this goes back to the conversation we were having a few minutes ago about MMA, about these kind of local control things that are great in theory. There are a lot of builders that don't build at scale because the rules are different, whether you're in Gorham versus Standish versus Buxton versus Westbrook versus Wayne or Augusta or Bangor. There are just different zoning rules. And there are all these things that people have added. You know, the federal government has rules. The bill that's sitting on the president's desk that he's waiting to see if he can get political leverage before he signs it is hopefully going to streamline a lot of federal steps for review. But there's a lot of added cost at the local level that creates barriers to development. and barriers to affordable housing. And what we've lost is we've lost the starter home, right? It's no longer profitable for builders to build a starter home. And yet that's what first-time homeowners want. It's what older people downsizing want to go to. How do we make housing affordable? And obviously, the interest rate matters, but the underlying costs that are driving it up are much more complex than that. The core answer is you free the market. You just described beautifully the reality. Older folks want to downsize into an affordable home they can afford on a fixed income, whether they buy it or build it or whether it's a condo or it's a house. Younger people want the chance just to have. have that starter home, build it, buy it. As we indicated earlier, property taxes as a starting point are devastating. You know, the, again, the impact of a property tax on a home builder, forget the home builders on rent. Again, the rent, $200 difference between for working young manors, a $200 difference between rent and income. That's two sides of one problem. You need to give them more of their income to keep by lowering income taxes. And we will methodically do that very conscientiously and very methodically. And then you need to lower property taxes by using the power of the governor to roll back a lot of these unfunded mandates. However, you make a really good point, Aaron, which is that...

diversity of policy thinking at the local level can be a great American virtue. It can also be a burden if you're missing economies of scale or economies, I would say, of construction. So one of the things that governor has to do, and I am already pledged to do it. You can see it in many of my plans on the website. Take the city of Bangor, the city of Portland. They have permitting... First of all, competence is an issue. And I think we have to insist on competence when it comes to management. But they have permitting requirements that can drag on permitting for a year, two years, three years, okay? We should set up state requirements. requirements that say if you're going to get state money for a and b and c and d and e and f which you do if you're going to get state money you will get all your permits cleared within six months bingo it has to happen okay or you don't get the money well by god it's the strangest thing what happens there and when you put consequences behind stuff all of a sudden they start to do it get the permitting down get the costs down of regulations on those starter homes get the feeder costs into those materials like energy costs down. I will actually go, this is a difference with President Trump, I will actually go down to the White House and push, and I will do it at the USTR level and at the State Department level. I want to see, and commerce, I will see, I want to see us wave off some of the tariffs that have created increased costs for Mainers in their supply chain, which, and by the way, softwood lumber is one of those things, because the Canadian province is actually subsidized the harvest of the wood. We don't do that here. So these are all, you know, trade barriers are, whether you're subsidizing something and making it less expensive or whether you're putting a tariff on it or another trade restriction on it, it's basically the same thing. So one of the things I want to do is I want to make the inputs cheaper, the taxes less, the regulation less, and the regulation both on the township. and regulations as they relate to the companies themselves. I am a firm believer because we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are states all over the United States like South Dakota, Tennessee, Florida, Texas that do this right, that we can actually... energize our home building market. Yes, we want prefab homes. Yes, we want small homes. Yes, we want a lot of the diversity in the market. But we also want to incentivize builders to do it in a way that allows them to make money, to come to the state of Maine, and to believe that this is a great market for increasing the housing stock. You know, we 64% of our housing stock, I think, is more than 60 years old. We need to be building homes. And we want our young people to stay here. And I want the anxiety.

level to go out of the mind of seniors who worry about whether or not they can stay in a home they paid off years ago because of the property taxes. So, you know, net, net, net, everything relates to everything else, Aaron. It's, you know, education relates to workplace, workplace relates to taxes. Taxes relate to energy, energy relates to building out homes. And a lot of this also relates back to public safety. If we can get the taxes down, the public safety up, the schools back, the trades into the schools, the energy costs down, and accountability back into government, a sense at the very top as governor that I want you as a city counselor to be thinking harder about how to spur business in your town and city, we will get there. We will get there. We know it can be done. So my commitment is I'm spending every waking hour doing it as a candidate. I will do the same thing as your governor. Well, Bobby, we're out of time. Bobby Charles is the Republican candidate for governor. If people want to learn more about your campaign or get involved, where can they go? Please just go to bobbyfermaine.com. B-O-B-B-B-B-F-O-R-M-A-N-E.com. If you believe in change, go to bobbyfermain.com, read about it, how we're going to do it. Give me the prayers and dollars that can help make it happen. Bobby Charles, thanks for being with us. I'm Aaron Chadbourne. This is Inside Maine. When we come back, we'll be joined by the independent candidate for governor, Rick Bennett. Stay tuned here on Inside Maine.