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John -- My name is Ross LaJeunesse, and I’m running for the United States Senate. I was born and raised in Maine, not far from where my husband Patrick and I live today. My dad drove a UPS truck, and my mom babysat neighborhood kids. We hunted, had a big garden and raised cows, chickens and sheep -- not as hobbies, but to put food on the table. I’m writing you today because we need to retire Susan Collins to get Maine -- and our country -- back on track. And I believe I am the Democrat to get it done. Three experiences in particular have made me the leader I am today: The first experience was coming out in 1990; I was twenty years old. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but I couldn’t continue lying to my friends, my family, or myself.
When I told my parents -- and felt the relief of sharing that truth with them -- I promised myself to always live a life of truth, even when it might be hard to do so. Because those are the values I grew up with. Too many of our leaders never made that promise to themselves, and we’ve all paid the price. The second experience that shaped my life was the day bank assessors came to decide if they were going to foreclose on my childhood home. My parents had pooled their hard-earned savings with friends and opened a small hardware store, but when the store went under, we almost lost everything. I will never forget how powerless I felt watching the bank assessors inspect our home -- a house my parents built with their own hands. We struggled to get back on our feet, and my mom started cleaning the homes of wealthy families in Kennebunkport so we could keep our own home. It became obvious to me then that there were two Maines. There is the Maine with wealthy families and beautiful homes you'll see on the postcards -- and there is the Maine I grew up in, with hard-working people struggling to pay the winter heating bill and worrying about putting gas in the tank. The third experience that shaped me came later in my adult life -- when Google asked me to sacrifice my principles for their bottom line. I joined Google because I believed in the power of technology to make the world better. In 2010, I proudly executed our decision to leave the Chinese search market and stand up for free expression rather than cooperate with government censorship. But, like too many great American companies, Google has changed. When I saw women harassed, when I saw LGBTQ people discriminated against, when I saw the company abandon human rights to prioritize its quarterly earnings and a higher stock price -- the choice was as clear as the situation. I left and came home. When I look at what’s going on here in Maine -- where the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans, where our lobstering, lumber and blueberry industries are suffering from endless trade wars, where our kids and businesses lag further and further behind due to the lack of basic infrastructure like high speed internet -- and all Susan Collins has managed to do is give $1.5 trillion in tax cuts to corporations making record profits -- it’s obvious that we need a change -- and we need it now. After 23 years in Washington, Susan Collins has clearly forgotten about ordinary Mainers. Her loyalty to Maine and to our country stops at the door to Mitch McConnell's office. We have a real shot to elect a Senator from Maine who isn’t afraid to stand up to the corruption in Washington and who'll fight for working families everywhere. Yours in this fight, Ross LaJeunesse
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