Portland Phoenix Endorses Michael Brennan

If any candidate in this race is a Portland Phoenix candidate, it’s Michael Brennan. In his time in the Maine Legislature, he has pushed health-care reform, higher-education funding, land conservation, ocean-water quality protection, improved mental-health and substance-abuse services, and affordable housing - and that’s not quite the half of it.

A social-justice true believer, Brennan has spent his professional and legislative career fighting for Mainers in need. He is without close ties in Washington DC, but is instead deeply grounded in Maine. And his experience has given him a glimpse of the broken congressional system, dealing with the feds on his - and Maine’s - terms, fighting against No Child Left Behind requirements that make no sense for us, protecting people forced out of Maine’s discount prescription-drug plan, and opposing the war.

He wants an immediate exit from Iraq, a national single-payer health-care system, and free public-university education for qualifying high-school graduates. Brennan is not proposing these bold moves based on idealism or inexperience; he knows what we need to do, and is not afraid to say it.

He’s also not afraid to call out people who stand in the way of what Maine and our country need to do, but in a way that will get them to work with him, not against him, in the fight to take America back.