State Rep. Cheryl Golek, D-Harpswell, is running for a second term against Republican challenger Sean Hall, a Harpswell firefighter making his second bid for the House.
Golek said she is seeking reelection to continue her work as an advocate for working Mainers and those who are struggling financially. Her first-term accomplishments include bills promoting affordable housing.
A former teacher, Hall said his priorities if elected would include boosting access to affordable housing, property tax relief for retirees, promoting vocational training for young people, and helping the local working waterfront.
The candidates are running in Maine House District 99, which includes all of Harpswell and northeast Brunswick.Polls will be open on Nov. 5 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at Harpswell Community School.
Cheryl Golek
State Rep. Cheryl Golek, of Harpswell Neck, said she is seeking reelection to continue her work as an advocate for Mainers who are struggling financially.
Golek, a Democrat, is nearing the end of her first two-year term representing House District 99, which includes Harpswell and part of Brunswick. She was elected in 2022, defeating Stephen “Bubba” Davis, of Cundy’s Harbor, in a race to succeed Rep. Jay McCreight, D-Harpswell, who was term-limited.
After growing up in generational poverty and struggling for years to make ends meet, Golek now owns The Vicarage by the Sea, a dementia care home in Harpswell, with longtime partner Johanna Wigg. They have four children, including two adult sons and two young daughters.
Golek is a member of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee and the newly formed Joint Select Committee on Housing. She said the accomplishments of her current term include passing bills to promote manufactured and federally subsidized housing. If reelected, she said her priorities wouldn’t change.
“I have a combination of what I consider my highest priorities, but they’re all connected at the hip,” Golek said in an interview. “The three things we need for a foundation in our state that we have to fix are our affordable housing, we have to expand child care, and we have to rebuild our workforce.”
She noted that studies show Maine would need more than 88,000 additional housing units by 2030 just to keep up with demand. The state is finally stepping up its investment in affordable housing, she said, but more needs to be done to address the needs of lower-income residents.
“I think our state should really look at percentages of affordability, even if that means giving tax credits to landlords to help offset costs to make a percentage of their units affordable,” she said. “We need to eliminate (income-based) discrimination in our housing.”
Another approach Golek supports is a state-run housing voucher system that would complement the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Choice Voucher Program, also known as Section 8.
Golek said climate change is another difficult issue facing the state. The Gulf of Maine is warming rapidly, she said, and the state must continue its ongoing initiatives to address that warming and its impacts.
“I think Maine has done a fairly decent job of this,” Golek said. “It doesn’t have to be clean initiatives (versus protecting) somebody’s job. We can do both, and we need to do both. We shouldn’t be creating something at the expense of somebody’s livelihood.”
Golek supported the state’s creation of a multimillion-dollar fund to compensate working waterfront businesses for damage caused by storms. She would also like to see the state take on a greater share of the cost of repairing storm-damaged roads.
Golek said she is a strong advocate for Maine’s working waterfront. For example, she supported a 2023 law protecting the bulk of Maine’s lobstering areas from offshore wind development. She also supported the creation of innovation and legal defense funds for the lobster industry.
Another top priority is improving Mainers’ access to health care, Golek said. She supports expanding subsidized care and requiring greater transparency in terms of what medical providers charge patients.
“If I go to Walmart, I get a receipt breaking down everything that I’ve purchased,” she said. “I think we should get that with our medical care, too.”
Golek said if she is reelected, she will reintroduce a bill to place child care centers in local high schools to benefit teachers and other working parents. The centers would be staffed in part by older, trained students. The initial bill passed in the Legislature but didn’t receive funding.
Golek said the biggest hurdle to boosting Maine’s workforce is the high cost of housing, child care and other necessities. She said 75% of Brunswick residents can’t afford market-rate housing.
“When we think about how to build our workforce, people have to be able to afford to live where they work,” she said. “And it’s not just Brunswick — Harpswell needs employees.”
Golek said she is concerned about Maine’s aging population. The state has many “amazing” volunteer programs aimed at helping residents, but their volunteers are aging out with no one to replace them. The state needs to become more affordable in order to attract and retain younger people, she said.
Golek said the No. 1 issue facing Maine schools is low teacher pay. The state has made strides to increase compensation for educators, she said, but it needs to do more.
In general, Golek said Maine must do more to prioritize the needs of its people above corporate interests.
“We need a much more equitable tax system in this state,” she said.
For more information, visit legislature.maine.gov/housedems/golek/.
Sean Hall
Harpswell firefighter and educator Sean Hall said a desire to help others led him to pursue a seat in the Maine House of Representatives.
Hall, a Republican, is challenging Democratic incumbent Cheryl Golek in Maine House District 99, which includes Harpswell and part of Brunswick.
“I’ve been a pretty active member of the community with volunteering and community service — mostly with the fire department, and before that, mentorship with young folks,” Hall said in an interview. “I worked at the middle school as a teacher, and I kind of have a service mindset.”
Hall is assistant chief of the Orr’s and Bailey Islands Fire Department and teaches emergency medical technicians. He is a full-time firefighter for the town of Harpswell and serves on the town’s Marine Resources Committee.
A U.S. Army veteran, Hall holds a master’s degree in education and is a former science teacher. He has also worked on lobster boats as a sternman.
Hall ran for the Maine House in 2018, losing to former state Rep. Jay McCreight. He also ran for the local school board in 2021 and lost to current member Frank Wright.
Hall said his top priorities if elected would include improving access to affordable housing, securing property tax relief for retirees and those on fixed incomes, promoting vocational training for young people, and helping the local working waterfront.
“I’m interested in protecting the (fishing) industry and access to the water,” he said, adding that there are “some onerous regulations coming down” that affect the industry.
Hall said he would ensure waterfront businesses have access to grants and other assistance to strengthen their infrastructure as climate change contributes to more powerful and damaging coastal storms.
He favors making it easier for those businesses to seek relief following weather-related disasters, such as by training liaisons to help them cut through bureaucratic red tape.
Fishermen need more advocates in the Legislature to help protect their interests and push back against excessive regulation, Hall said, adding that Maine’s fishing industry has shown the ability to regulate itself effectively.
He opposes offshore and terrestrial wind turbines in areas where tourism and fishing businesses would be negatively affected.
“We’re blessed to live in a state with a lot of natural beauty, and I think the addition of windmills and other things kind of detract from that,” Hall said. “I don’t think anybody wants to look at windmills.”
To help improve access to health care, particularly in rural areas, Hall said he would advocate for what’s known as community paramedicine. It involves paramedics and EMTs taking on expanded roles such as offering preventive care and health education.
Hall said he would seek to keep younger workers in Maine by promoting workforce housing initiatives and boosting grant programs to pay for vocational training and other education, so workers aren’t saddled with school-related debt.
He also favors expanding training opportunities in marine professions at area community colleges to help satisfy the industry’s need for more workers.
“Boatyards are screaming for people,” Hall said. “They just don’t have enough folks to do the work that needs to be done.”
Hall said Maine’s K-12 schools need to focus more on outcomes-based education and “restore academic rigor,” ensuring their curriculums align closely with the state’s workforce needs.
He noted that Maine’s position has slipped recently in some national rankings of K-12 achievement. Hall said some high school graduates lack basic skills such as filling out a job application.
In a recently published letter to the Harpswell Anchor, Hall expressed concerns about young people undergoing irreversible “medical procedures,” a reference to transgender youths receiving what’s known as gender-affirming care.
He said in order to protect young people from potential mistakes, the Legislature should step in and restrict what sort of procedures are available to them.
According to research published in the medical journal JAMA Surgery, less than 1% of transgender patients who have gender-affirming surgery report regretting their decision. Such procedures lead to desirable outcomes for mental health, including “reduced rates of suicide attempts” and “higher levels of life satisfaction,” according to a paper published in the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health.
Hall also expressed concerns about the growing number of vaccinations required for children, arguing that it has primarily benefited the pharmaceutical industry and that too many vaccines have been rushed through the regulatory system.
Hall said he would advocate for more holistic approaches to disease prevention and greater regulatory scrutiny of medications.
More information about Hall’s candidacy is available at district99.info.
