Author: Larry Lockman

I come bearing both good news and bad news from the frontlines of Maine’s culture wars. First the bad news. Gender ideologues across the state are celebrating their triumph in mid-coast Maine on August 1st, when the Regional School Unit (RSU) 40 school board voted to reinstate a “Transgender and Gender Expansive Student” policy that allows gender dysphoric male students with male genitalia to relieve themselves in the girls’ restroom and shower in the girls’ locker room. [RELATED: American Society of Plastic Surgeons Refuses to Support WPATH Standards for Child Gender Transitions…] The policy requires staff and students to address…

It’s painful to watch a once-great newspaper commit professional suicide in slow motion. Sadly, the Bangor Daily News has transformed itself over the past several decades from a respectable journalistic enterprise into a propaganda organ pushing left-wing identity politics. So it came as no surprise in the past couple of years when the BDN’s owners, editors, and reporters jumped aboard the Transgender Express bandwagon. I don’t have any personal objection to the paper’s embrace of this bizarre cult. As a private business, the BDN is free to wallow in whatever dangerous, delusional ideology suits its owners. [RELATED: No, Letting Boys…

The mother of all migrant magnets has been under construction in Augusta for two decades, if not longer. Engineered and fine-tuned by Maine’s woke ruling class, it’s designed to attract tens of thousands of illegal immigrants to settle here, all in the name of developing our economy and “strengthening our workforce” (newspeak for driving down wages with a large pool of cheap labor). More importantly for progressives, the accelerated influx will help remedy Maine’s deplorable demographic profile as one of the whitest states in the country. The latest model of the migrant magnet was rolled out last week under the…

By now most Mainers have heard about the scandal surrounding Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, the top lawmaker in Maine and first in line to succeed the Governor in case of a vacancy. Jackson is right now under preliminary investigation by the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, and may be facing investigations from the Maine Attorney General, the Maine Bureau of Insurance, and the U.S. Attorney of Maine. Has Jackson violated Maine’s Constitution, committed mortgage application fraud, insurance fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud? Perhaps. It certainly looks like the answer to at least some of those…

You know you’ve struck a raw nerve when the majority party at the State House swamp blasts out a fundraising email with a subject line like this: “Breaking: Former GOP Rep Compares ME Speaker to neo-Nazis” Right up front, let me say I’m flattered that Maine Democrats are once again invoking my name to scare their donors into coughing up cash for the party of Janet Mills and Joe Biden. Thank you. It is an honor. The trouble is, the unnamed author of the email communication didn’t address much less rebut any of the fact-based arguments set forth in my…

Is Maine at risk of being transformed into a bastion for white-supremacist neo-Nazi deadbeats such as the loser who claims to be setting up a paramilitary training camp in the woods of Springfield, 70 miles northeast of Bangor? Sen. Joe Baldacci (D-Penobscot) seems to think so. In fact, he’s so alarmed that he called on Gov. Janet Mills and Attorney General Aaron Frey to not only bring pressure to bear on this group, “but to try to force them out of the state altogether.” To drive that point home, Baldacci went on: “It’s time for the Governor, the Attorney General…

Lawrence Lockman of Bradley served four terms in the Maine House of Representatives, from 2012 to 2020. He is co-founder and President of the conservative non-profit Maine First Project. He may be reached at larrylockman22@gmail.com. We know people are smoking crack at the White House — but now we have to wonder, is someone smoking crack at the Blaine House too? What else would explain Gov. Janet Mills’ announcement on August 2nd that she wants to encourage 75,000 MORE immigrants to settle here over the next five years? That’s more than the total population of Portland — by far Maine’s…

With each passing day, Maine sinks deeper and deeper into the quicksand of a potentially irreversible demographic, economic, cultural, and political transformation. The trouble is, anyone who sounds the alarm about re-settling thousands upon thousands of unskilled, non-English speaking, non-citizens here after they crashed the southern border is maligned by Maine’s ruling class and its rumpswab media mouthpieces as a racist, a bigot, and a xenophobe. If that’s not enough to muzzle critics, the policy of unlimited open borders also enjoys bipartisan support at the State House swamp, thanks in large measure to the cheap-labor lobby’s outsized influence within the…

Maine’s K-12 Transgender Express encountered a speed bump last week just north of Bangor, jarring one of the wheels loose. There were no reported injuries. For now, the bus is parked in the breakdown lane, waiting for advice and roadside assistance from its high-priced Portland attorneys. The mishap occurred in Old Town during the regular monthly meeting of the RSU 34 board of directors on May 16th. At its previous meeting in April, the board gave initial approval to a reckless, irresponsible, pseudo-scientific policy that would allow biological males who claim to be transgender to use the girls’ restrooms and…

If you’re on this media platform reading this piece of commentary, my guess is that you’re just as fed up as I am with the biased, unprofessional news coverage that oozes daily from Maine’s lamestream media outlets. In fact, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? The Maine Wire is an oasis of fresh air and clean water on Maine’s parched journalistic landscape, that’s for sure. In the surrounding desert, the Portland Press Herald is one of the worst offenders with respect to parroting the party line of the authoritarian Leftists who dominate state government, academia, and the arts. But we’re…

It’s no secret that Reade Brower’s MaineToday Media empire – five daily newspapers and 25 weeklies across the state – doesn’t engage in journalism so much as celebrating every left-wing lunatic cause that oozes out of the swamp in Augusta and beyond. And what cause could be more left-wing and more lunatic than the transgender cult? So I wasn’t too surprised when the Portland Press Herald published a nasty and dishonest “opinion column” opinion column last month falsely accusing my non-profit Maine First Project of spreading “…fear and hatred which will result in the erasure of transgender lives.” The author…

It’s unfortunate that Republican legislators at the Statehouse in Augusta have thrown in the towel and joined with left-wing, open-borders Democrats in their relentless campaign to make Maine a more attractive destination for the thousands of illegal immigrants breaching America’s porous southern border every day. Unfortunate, but not unexpected or unprecedented. Don’t get me wrong. I understand the temptation to sign on to a purely symbolic resolution asking the feds to let asylum seekers go right to work within 30 days of stepping off the bus in Portland. It’s better than having them on welfare while their asylum claims are…

Maine’s international reputation as a welfare magnet continues to draw large numbers of illegal immigrants here, much to the delight of the cheap-labor lobby at the State House, as well as the sprawling Nanny State Nonprofit Industrial Complex of taxpayer-subsidized leeches who benefit from the foreign invasion. If you thought the surge of non-citizen newcomers into Maine during Gov. Janet Mills’ first term was stunning, hang on, it is shaping up to be much worse in her second. The ink was hardly dry last month on LD 3 – Mills’ $483-million heating, housing, and welfare boondoggle – when 400 more…

The advent of the New Year brings good news and bad news from the Statehouse swamp. Frankly, most of the news is bad, so let’s get that out of the way right up front so we can conclude on a positive note. The unvarnished truth is that the swamp in Augusta is deeper and wider than at any time in the past half century. During the first week of the New Year, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills was inaugurated for a second four-year term. Her re-election last November with more votes than any Governor in Maine history confirmed that Maine is…

The clown show on the Kennebec returned to the State House for an encore appearance last week, and this time all the clowns were singing from the same page of the uni-party hymnal. After five hours of public testimony before an ad hoc version of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee on Dec. 21, all the Republican members of the committee joined with all the Democrats to give their unanimous blessing to Gov. Janet Mills’ request for nearly a half billion dollars worth of emergency spending for “winter energy relief payments” to 880,000 Mainers. The full Legislature will vote on…

The biennial clown show on the banks of the Kennebec opened last week at the Statehouse with scores of newcomers joining the all-too-familiar cast of characters. Wednesday, December 7th was a long day of pomp and circumstance, melodrama, hand-wringing, pearl-clutching, demogoguery, finger-pointing, virtue-signaling, and grandstanding. The three-ring circus was topped off with a grand finale late in the evening, as a chorus of veteran clowns belted out graphic descriptions of Mainers freezing to death in their homes and on the streets when the weather turns cold in January. The exhausted clowns all went home after the grueling 12-hour opening act.…

Now that we’ve had a week or so to reflect on the blue wave that crashed over Maine on Election Day, it’s time for a sober assessment of what went wrong. While it’s tempting to wallow in despair over the outcome, I would prefer to focus instead on the lessons we can learn. And there are many. I want to begin by thanking Paul and Ann LePage for all they have done to restore Maine to The Way Life Should Be during his two terms in the Blaine House. Remember, Maine state government was a deadbeat debtor when LePage took…

With midterm elections just days away, we’re finally hearing some talk on the campaign trail about the impact of illegal immigration on Mainers. That discussion was prompted by remarks from Bruce Poliquin in his electoral re-match with Rep. Jared Golden for Maine’s 2nd District congressional seat. During a televised debate last month, and in a recent TV interview, Poliquin relayed the story of a woman he met who told him she was living in her car with her cats. Poliquin encouraged her to contact the local housing authority, but she said she already had. “I was at the top of…

Are you as concerned as I am about campus leftists shutting down debate on urgent public policy issues? Do you agree that Maine and America need to have immigration policies in place that protect US citizens? If the answer is “yes,” I encourage you to show up at the University of Southern Maine in Portland on Thursday, February 16th for an event sponsored by the USM campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. They have invited me to speak about the bill I’m sponsoring to ensure that municipalities in Maine comply with federal immigration law. As soon as the event…

If it weren’t for double standards, Speaker of the House Sara Gideon (D-Freeport) wouldn’t have any standards at all. Yes, that’s a damning indictment, but how else can we explain her decision to block consideration of a legislative resolution celebrating freedom of choice in education?  I thought Gideon was pro-choice. But wait! That’s not where I’m going with this. Last week, Speaker Gideon defended her decision to kill a joint Senate/House resolution recognizing the seventh annual National School Choice Week on the grounds that leadership wants to stay away from “politically divisive” resolutions. Frankly, that doesn’t even pass the straight-face test. The language…

Strip away all the grandstanding, chest-thumping, and election-year politics that erupted in the wake of Gov. Paul LePage’s controversial comments about drug dealers, and his subsequent voicemail message to a Democrat legislator – and what’s left? The same psychological disorder that’s afflicted progressives since the day LePage took office. This is just another outbreak of LePage Derangement Syndrome, most likely a delayed reaction to the outcome of the last election. Leftist politicians and talking heads correctly perceive Paul LePage as an existential threat to their progressive agenda and everything they have done for the past half century to waterboard Maine’s…

This is a comment I received from an 81-year old widow in Penobscot County in response to a constituent survey I mailed to every household in my District earlier this year: “A woman and her five kids and pregnant daughter came up from Florida and got on welfare immediately. Got her check-up for both her and her daughter. Had her teeth out. I had to pay $1,500 to have mine out. She got new dentures. I had to pay $2,000 for mine. She got new glasses. I had to pay $600 for mine. Her daughter had her baby on…

As the Legislature lurches toward adjournment in the next week or two, Maine people may be tempted to avert their eyes from the spectacle of sausage-making at the State House. The end of the session is always messy, and this year is no exception, as lawmakers render final judgment on a huge backlog of pending bills. Some will die “on the table” and others will die “between the chambers” — and some bills will just plain die — before lawmakers depart the killing fields and return to their districts. But at least one piece of legislative roadkill may come back…

It’s crunch time at the State House. After months of dawdling, the dam is about to break. Bills that have been stuck in the legislative pipeline are flooding into the House chamber for debate. We are moving from morning sessions three days a week, to morning and afternoon sessions five days a week, and possible triple sessions next week. Statutory adjournment is April 20th. House majority Democrat leadership controls the flow of legislation, and no serious observer believes that the dam break is anything but intentional, designed to short-circuit debate on pending legislation. And in at least one instance, Democrat…

I have good news from the Coliseum on the Kennebec! The State House hostage crisis that began on February 9th in the Maine House of Representatives ended yesterday, exactly a month after it started. Democrats in the House released the badly beaten, malnourished hostages, who were rushed to an undisclosed location in the capitol for a medical evaluation. Initial reports indicate that there were no life-threatening injuries, and that the hostages will recover from the trauma of their month-long captivity. And just exactly who were the hostages? I am referring to Maine’s long-suffering taxpayers, in particular middle-class families who work…

If there were ever any doubt that Democrats in the Maine House of Representatives are willing to kill tax conformity if they don’t get their way on raiding $22 million from the state treasury for another round of school subsidies, we now have a smoking gun that should remove any lingering doubts. A recent email exchange exposes the Democrats’ strategy of holding tax conformity hostage to the spending spree. And it appears they’re prepared to shoot the hostage if legislators refuse to pay the ransom demanded. State Rep. Linda Sanborn (D-Gorham), a member of the Appropriations committee, has advised a…

In this election year when all 186 seats in the Legislature are up for grabs, what’s happening right now at the Statehouse should send a clear message to voters: if you want more jobs and more economic opportunity for your kids and grandkids, never vote for a Democrat. Never. Ever. If that sounds like a harshly partisan assessment, I won’t argue the point. What I will argue is that from my vantage point in the front row of the House chamber, it’s clear to me that the most extreme elements of the Democrat party are now in the driver’s seat…

It’s a new year, and being an even-numbered year, it’s an election year, which means all 186 seats in the Maine Legislature are up for grabs in November. And whether we like it or not, politics will dominate this year’s short session of the Legislature, which convened on January 6th, and is scheduled for adjournment on April 20th. Even before the opening gavel came down, legislators were confronted with a proposed impeachment order calling on us to investigate allegations that Gov. Paul LePage has engaged in such egregious misconduct that he should be removed from office. Sponsored by Rep. Ben…

As the first session of the 127th Legislature lurches toward statutory adjournment on June 17th, Maine people can breathe a sigh of relief. Next month’s adjournment means that it will be another six months before legislators are forced to consider nonsensical bills that would victimize Maine’s small businesses community. This is my third year serving on the 13-member Labor, Commerce, Research & Economic Development (LCRED) committee, and I’m still dumbfounded by the job-killing legislation that arrives on our desks. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear public testimony on legislation that goes far beyond what even the most anti-business…

I was surprised to read in a recent op-ed column by state Sen. Emily Cain (D-Orono) that federal dollars have been “set aside” to provide free medical care to an additional 70,000  Mainers under the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion. How can that be? Surely Sen. Cain is aware that the federal government is dead broke and $17 trillion in debt. In fact, more than a third of federal spending is now funded by borrowing the money, and passing the IOUs to our kids and grandkids. To put it bluntly, anyone who thinks the feds have set aside free money for Maine…

I’m getting real tired of being lectured about morality by the Speaker of the House, Rep. Mark W. Eves (D-North Berwick). One year ago, during the debate over reigning in the explosive growth of Maine’s Medicaid programs, then-Rep. and Speaker-to-be Eves praised the decade-long expansion of the welfare state as a “wise investment” of taxpayers’ money. He claimed that Maine people are healthier and more productive as a result of increased MaineCare enrollment, and charged that it would be “morally wrong” to deny free health care to any of the tens of thousands of new enrollees, many of them able-bodied young people…