Prepared text US Senate Candidate Rep.

Jon Hinck Maine Democratic Party State Convention 2 June 2012

Thank you. Mr. Chair. To convention delegates and alternates, to all the good Democrats serving in elected office, those running for office and all those others assembled here, Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you. Im yours, or paraphrasing Jason Mraz: I would be honored to be yours the next time you go into the voting booth. Right now I am most honored to share this occasion with our two outstanding members of the United States Congress. I am also honored to share this occasion with the other three Senate candidates here. We have had good discussions and debates. I am convinced that we will nominate a quality candidate. My thanks go to party chair Ben Grant and his team. They have our backs. I am pleased to be joined here by family and friends from around the State of Maine. I am particularly happy to be joined by my daughter Darcy and my mother-in-law Annette Browne and a brother-in-law. And I want to publicly thank my wife Juliet Browne, who you met, for that sweet introduction. I also recognize in this crowd many dedicated people who work hard day in and day out to help people in these difficult time, to assist seniors, to give our kids a good start, to counter domestic violence, to start businesses and employ people, to give new momentum to the labor movement, to follow through on our commitment to veterans. Thank you for your good work. Thank you too for finding time for electoral politics. Elections are a key part of the struggle to make our nation and communities better, fairer, more just and more successful. This is why I run.

I stand here today and seek your vote because in my view the United States Senate is not working for us right now. It is sad to say that that the exclusive club of 100 big shots, some call the worlds most deliberative body, is not hearing the voices of ordinary working people and deliberates without our interest in mind. Send me there to shake loose the job programs that Congress refuses to pass, to put people to work, so that real people have money to spend. That is when the economy will move. I must confess, I never expected to find myself on this stage at this big a moment. I have not followed the well worn path of career politicians. But I have dedicated my life to serving the public interest and making positive change. I am the son of hard working, humble people. I can say with confidence, that neither my Mom nor my Dad would have found themselves standing in front of this many people, ever. But they were both distinguished in their own ways. At eleven a.m. on the morning of June 8th, 1944, on the first days of Americas involvement in World War II, a convoy carrying the 358th infantry regiment, a unit of Pattons army, dropped anchor off Utah Beach on the coast of France. This is where my Father starting seeing combat against German troops. He was a Sergeant on the frontlines. In November 1944, somewhere along the steel and concrete Siegfried line near the Moselle River the regiment drew fire and my Dad was hit. It was his birthday. He carried shrapnel in his thigh for the rest of his life. My Mom was a self made scholar and life-long learner. She was a proud feminist as am I. She earned her doctorate in economics after having four children and starting late but working into her 70s as a college professor. My parents raised my three sisters and me in small town America, a farming community called Liberty Corner in New Jersey; population 250. The town had a gas station, post office, general store, my elementary school. No stoplights. Under a quaint white steeple was the Presbyterian Church we attended and where my boy scout troop met. Matt Dunlap suggests that I tell you that I attained the rank of Eagle Scout. It is true.

The summer when I was 8, we piled into the family station wagon two parents, three sisters (one still a baby) and my grandmother, headed down Route 202 to Maine. We came to visit Aunt Nick in Sullivan. And no, no one had to ride on the roof of the car. That and subsequent trips to Maine had lasting effects on me, helping to shape my love for the outdoors and fuel my resolve to get the hell out of New Jersey. In high school, my somewhat ordinary middle class family faced the hardship that far too many families know; my father lost his job. 22 years with the same firm but still 3 years short of getting a pension. Over the ensuing months stretching into years, I watched the big guy crumble a bit. He had one leg taken out of the stool on which his world rested. It changed things for me too. This meant that in college I would have to make money to get by and pay tuition. I would also graduate with a lot of college debt incredibly, it was still less even converted to todays dollars than many students graduate with now. I did what too many young people do to save money: I lived in the unsafe parts of town; I once rented an apartment in a condemned building; worked both a day job and took night shifts at a second job. I mention this not for sympathy votes but because I truly believe that those who seek elected office should understand what it is like to struggle to make ends meet. I know that compared to many Maine families, I only know the half of it. But an understanding of a hard life is in very short supply in the Senate. Some years after college, I answered a job ad to sell advertising for a good cause. It didnt take long for me to get deeply involved with that cause, protection of the environment. In 1979, I co-founded Greenpeace USA inspired by the leadership of other great environmental advocates like Ed Muskie. Muskie made it national priority to protect human health by protecting the air, the water, the land. Whether they know it or not, Maines Ed Muskie is a hero to every American who drinks water and breathes air.

My thanks to everyone here who helped propel Ed Muskies career. He was simply the most effective legislator of his generation, physically imposing, With a powerful voice, strong opinions and sizeable ambition. But the things that made Muskie effective were smaller, more subtle. He had not only brilliance, but thoroughness; he had a temper but also patience; not only a clear and principled vision, but also the ability to find consensus that kept faith with his vision. Let Maine measure its next Senator by those standards. By 1972, thanks to Ed Muskie and Republican Howard Baker, Congress passed the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. By the end of that decade I was working to achieve the Clean Water Act's stated mission to "restore and maintain the integrity of the nation's waters" and make those waters fishable and swimmable again. Let me tell you, the country was falling way short then. Toxic cancer-causing waste was still being discharged directly into American rivers and coastal water. I led campaigns to stop those practices and push industry and government to come clean. I worked on another Ed Muskie goal, to make our air breathable again. This is still critically important because Maine sits at the end of the countrys tail pipe. In my career, I have succeeded in making the air we breathe the air Maine children breathe a little cleaner. That is a record to take to Washington. Im yours because Democrats believe that we are in this together. We do not brand ourselves independents precisely because we stand together. We stand together to give hope to the once great American middle class and everyday working families. We are not ready to leave to our children the challenges presented to them today. Public schools. As we sit here today, public education, the major rung on the ladder to opportunity and success, is straining toward a breaking point. They say cut back, we say fight back. Stand together for first rate public education everywhere in Maine.

Health care. Unavailable to far too many; too costly for most. Stand together to achieve affordable, accessible health care in the form of a single payer system like Medicare-for-all. The environment. This world is starting to run a fever. I have no doubt that if Ed Muskie and George Mitchell were in the Senate today they would be tackling todays greatest environmental threat: climate disruption. Stand together to maximize energy efficiency and to generate cheap and clean renewable power. The deficit and debt. Too much deficit spending. I would have voted against the Iraq War, the Bush tax cuts, and the medicare part D giveaway to big pharma. Lets not let the party that championed those mistakes tell us how to fix this. Big money and politics. Stand together to free our government from the grip of big money special interests. Oil companies should not write our energy policy and big pharma shouldnt run the FDA. Corporations are not people and elections should not be auctions. An over-extended military and perpetual war. Support military action only as needed to defend our country. The projection of democracy and freedom is more powerful than the projection of force to the far corners of the globe. Lets bring more of our troops home and care for our veterans. Workers rights. We are seeing relentless attacks on collective bargaining, and decent jobs with a livable wage! We stand together to fight back. I say On Wisconsin! On Wisconsin! We are fighting back here but lost ground and saw Republicans take the collective bargaining rights of Decoster egg farm workers and in-home child care workers Social Security and Medicare. Here they go again. We must protect Social Security and Medicare the great bulwarks against poverty for all older Americans. These were created by Democrats and it is Democrats that have to stand together to keep them vital. Equal rights, justice and freedom. No exceptions. Voting is an American right and Democrats protect it. People have a right to privacy and we protect that. Couples have a right to decide when they want to start a family, this means full reproductive rights and a womens right to choose. People have a right to decide who they want to marry. This should be obvious.

Maine Democrats will be standing together this November as we renew the fight for Marriage Equality for ALL Maine families. Everyone loves a wedding, right? Next Spring we can say that Maine is open for the wedding business as the first State in America where the people voted to say: You Are Welcome Here! Incidentally, on a related point that is current and topical. The world just learned that the Green Lantern is out and joins Batwomen as the only openly gay superheros. Can one of you two come to Maine and save Michael Heath? The Republicans hate the phrase war on women. But what else do you call a concerted effort to restrict choice, deny coverage for contraception and prevent equal pay for equal work. Which leads back to the United States Senate, where just this year, 31 Senators all of them Republican and all of them men -- voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. I cannot believe that even on the issue of violence against women 31 Republican men would ignore the women in their party and vote that way. In fact, there are U.S. Senators, Republican men, who would require by law that a woman carry her rapists baby to term. We need to stand together against that. Tax policy. There is no greater area of inequality and unfairness than our nations tax policies. This election, Americans must be reminded that since 1978, income for the top 1% richest Americans has soared 275% while everyone else was treading water or worse, falling behind. Mitt Romney and his crowd make money by moving money - not with work. Millions come in each year on which he pays a federal tax rate of just 13.9%. This from years of failed tax policy right up to the Bush tax cuts. It is just plain wrong. Mitt Romney, and hedge fund managers who pour millions into his Super PACs, should not pay a lower tax rate on their income than do nurses, truck drivers, or folks who work in a cubicle at a call center. We MUST stand together to change it!!! Just this week, Angus King informed the Portland Phoenix that he is with the Republicans on this. Angus would not vote to repeal the Bush Tax Cuts on the wealthiest Americans. His views on this are wrong as a matter of economics and wrong as a matter of fairness. The bigger question is: where

is Angus King on all the votes on policies that have led to the massive wealth and income gap in this country. I favor closing that gap with opportunity for all, not privileges for a few. We are never going to balance the budget if we insist on letting Big Money slide on paying their fair share. Today 25 of the 100 highest paid CEOs earned more last year than their companies paid in taxes. This is crazy tax policy not fair tax policy. Incidentally, today I had a new experience coming up short on a Truth Test run by the Portland Press Herald. I said that G.E. is not paying taxes. The PPH clarified that GE paid an effective net income tax rate of minus -18.9 percent from 2008 to 2011 and that on average, it was subsidized for those years. But in 2011, the PPH further explains, GE would pay an effective tax rate of more than 11 percent and also pays other taxes that most of us pay. My God I love having these things clarified but please, the PPH was hastening to explain that a company that reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion but was subsidized on its income tax rate during four recent years sometimes does pay income taxes. But hold it, I live in a country where earlier this year major figures like John McCain, not to mention Fox news hosts, said over and over again that nearly 50 percent of Americans pay no taxes. That was false, but would be accurate but still misleading if it was made plain that the reference was to federal income taxes. But that still demeans millions of tax paying Americans who pay payroll taxes, sales taxes, gas taxes, beer taxes and other taxes that put too much of Americas tax burden on working families. I will here cite an IRS report cited by ABC news yesterday showing that 20,752 households that reported earning more than $200,000 in 2009 paid no federal income taxes. About 1,500 of those tax-free Americans were millionaires. To be clear, I am aware that they most likely paid some sales tax on Dom Perignon and other purchases. I will use a statement from our President that PolitiFact has already rated as MostlyTrue: "if you're a wealthy CEO or a hedge fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they've been since the 1950s." That is mostly disgraceful. People are suffering, our schools are struggling, our roads are crumbling. General Electric, Mitt Romney, Bruce Poliquin and all you hedge fund managers: stop relying on taxpayer money,

gimmicks and loopholes and just pay your fair share of taxes. More important lets stand together for fair taxation right here, right now as Democrats. I will mention endorsements here. Businessman Jim Wellehan, President of Maines own Lamey-Wellehan Shoes; Brownie Carson, long time Executive Director of the Natural Resources Council of Maine; Michael Brennan, Mayor of the City of Portland; and Beverly Daggett, former President of the Maine Senate all endorse my campaign. But I really want to highlight that I am endorsed by 25 current Maine Legislators, who are publicly supporting my candidacy. The Democratic Legislators come from both Congressional Districts, representing communities from Kittery to Old Town and from Rockport to Skowhegan. These good folks know us well from work in the trenches of Maine State government. One of them told me to tell you that: I am a visionary who was fighting special interests before they were called; that in 2006 I introduced the first bill in nation to take toxic BPA out of baby bottles and sippy cups; that I have been there on clean energy and energy efficiency; that I am outspoken on civil liberties for all people; that with my enormously skilled co-chair, I worked with the seven Democrats and six Republicans to achieve 100% unanimous votes in the Energy & Utilities Committee on important bills that needed hard work, like Ocean Energy, the PACE home and business weatherization financing bill and the three ring binder broadband bill; that in 2006, I introduced the first ranked choice voting bill and had it passed we would have a different governor now; that in 2007 I was the lead co-sponsor on a bill to deny corporate personhood under Maine law; and this legislator points out that I was there on tax fairness and economic justice way before most in the Legislature. One thing I know from my lifes work is that you never achieve anything meaningful alone. America can only regain traction, only get our mojo working, by standing up for what we know is right and by working together. What I know as that we Democrats have it right. We are the party of working families, not of special interests We are the party of economic justice, of opportunity and prosperity for all We are the party that recognizes that we are in this together.

Lets stand up and work together inspired to make this a better state, to make this a better nation, to make this a better world. Lets work as if we are living in the early days of a better nation. Because we can make it so. I am with you and offer myself as your candidate. THINK HINCK on June 12!