Maine State Senator Eric Brakey is planning on making history in 2018 by winning the U.S. Senate race in his home state and becoming the third-youngest person to be elected to that legislative body.
That goal is still easier said than done. Brakey is running against Sen. Angus King (I) in a state that hasn’t seen an incumbent senator lose re-election since 1978. Yet, he believes that the politics in Maine has changed, and people are clamoring for a more libertarian message.
“We saw particularly in the last year that there’s a big political realignment going on,” Brakey told Red Alert Politics. “People here in Maine are getting increasingly frustrated with the failures of government, and we’ve seen that in a state that has pretty consistently voted for the left. We saw for the first time in the second congressional district we have the only Republican Congressman in all of New England and the district went very strong for Donald Trump.”
“There’s a real opportunity right now for someone who has a different kind of Republican message like I do, a Republican message values not just economic freedom but also personal freedom,” Brakey said before highlighting some libertarian trends in Maine. “We’re a state that in the last election cycle voted both against gun control and for legalizing marijuana and I think that says something about the libertarian, ‘leave me alone’ attitude of the people of Maine.”
Brakey said that the Democratic Party’s movement to become more progressive has left a lot of working class people behind, the same kind of people who flipped to support Trump in 2016.
“I grew up my entire life in being told and believing in a Republican Party that was supposed to stand for limited government,” Brakey continued. “I grew up being told that the Republican Party and the philosophy of limited government meant that we believed that for the most part not competent, can barely run the post office and DMV, and yet, we’re at a point where we expect the military to run operations in 150 countries all across the world.”
The kind of political philosophy Brakey subscribes to is one that both doesn’t support vast military operations overseas, domestic spying programs, as well as bloated federal programs.
“This campaign is about standing up for the little guy against the kings of Washington who every day that they’re up there they vote to take more of our liberties and freedoms away and constraint more and more power in their own hands.”
