When I ran for the Maine House as a progressive in a staunchly conservative district, I did so with the full knowledge – and eager anticipation – of the need to listen in a spirit of openness and respect to those constituents with beliefs that were vastly different from my own. As a local representative, it would have been incumbent on me to hear the concerns of my neighbors and engage with them to find workable solutions wherever possible. I would not have pursued my party’s nomination had I not felt that I could effectively serve everyone, regardless of their party. Perhaps optimistically, I expected that other candidates would take their responsibility to their future constituents as seriously.
This is why I feel such profound disappointment as I learn of the ways in which Rep. Michael Lemelin (R-Chelsea) has chosen to interact with his constituents and other concerned Mainers. A recent article in the Portland Press Herald documented Lemelin’s correspondence with Krista Gerrity, an Asian American woman who had written to 51 bipartisan legislators who were urging state officials to relax their guidelines for a return to full-time, in-person school. In response to Gerrity’s email, which addressed the push for going back sans the recommended social distancing precautions, Lemelin chastised Gerrity and dismissed her concerns; shared erroneous and dangerous information about COVID-19; and invoked a racist, anti-Asian trope to describe the disease. To an Asian American woman. In a time of heightened discrimination and violence toward Asian Americans. From his legislative email account.
And this wasn’t just a bad day for Rep. Lemelin. This wasn’t something about which, on reflection, he expressed regret. No…in the time since this became public, Lemelin has eschewed an apology to Ms. Gerrity, choosing instead to double-down on his rhetoric. And on April 12, the representative sought his own apology from Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau, who rightfully criticized Lemelin’s exchange as offensive and potentially hurtful to AAPI Mainers, as well as “beneath the office Rep. Lemelin holds.” Having engaged with Ms. Gerrity in a way that attempted to silence her voice and bully her into submission, Lemelin characterized Fecteau’s comments in exactly the same way. Oh, the irony.
Further, the exchange with Ms. Gerrity typifies his engagements with individuals who do not share his worldview. On his campaign Facebook page, after the election, Lemelin suggested that people who have legitimate concerns about making their families and communities safer from COVID-19 should “all go into hibernation and let the rest of us live our lives,” as if that is a reasonable solution that will bring us closer to ending the pandemic. He scolded another constituent for expressing worry for her neighbors, seriously ill with COVID, when she reached out to him for assistance. Rather than inquiring as to who they were or how he could help, which would have been my first reaction, Lemelin instead attempted to shame her for her lack of similar concern about “a virus” that hospitalized 880 people in 2019. (I believe he’s referring to the flu here, although in the exchange he also equated a global pandemic that has killed nearly 3 million people with the common cold.) He then lectured her on, among other things, his responsibility to relay the facts of “real science,” as opposed to research from the Centers for Disease Control; how her “beloved Governor” “tells lies”; and her supposed lack of respect for his beliefs. All of this from a legislator assigned to the Standing Committee on Health and Human Services. At a time when incidents of the disease were surging throughout Maine.
As an individual, Rep. Lemelin is entirely welcome to his strongly-held beliefs, as misguided as I — or anyone else — might find them. As an elected official who repeatedly pledged to represent the priorities and interests of the people of District 88, however, he has a different responsibility. It’s not to share his version of the truth, but to honor his constituents’ truths: their kitchen-table concerns, their up-in-the-middle-of-the-night worries, their desire to do the right things for their families and communities.
If you are privileged enough to be chosen to serve your community in an elected capacity, you have an obligation to balance your personal beliefs with the diversity of your constituents’ values, perspectives, and needs. To listen — not to hear, but to understand. Notice that I did not suggest that you must abandon your beliefs, but rather that you find a way of holding space for others, maintaining respect, compassion, and positive regard no matter who those people are. I’m proud to know many state legislators who do just that…it’s just a simple choice about holding oneself accountable as a public official, and it’s clear what choice Lemelin has made.
I also wonder if Rep. Lemelin has paused to consider how profoundly harmful his choice is to fledgling activists, people who are becoming politically engaged for the first time. Whether intentional or not, these kinds of rebukes silence community voices rather than encouraging much-needed civic participation. I’m thankful that Ms. Gerrity’s reaction was not to shrink back, but to shine a bright public light on her experience. Many other people would have been disheartened by such a response, with the likely result that they would stop sharing concerns, seeking solutions…and expecting to be respectfully heard. The damage that does to our democratic ethos, both in Maine and more broadly, is incalculable.
In my social work graduate school program, my classmates and I talk a lot about encountering others with humility and respect, about approaching people with curiosity and compassion. In my business career, my colleagues and I talked a lot about “servant leadership,” a concept described by Robert Greenleaf in which a desire to serve comes before the desire to lead. A servant-leader focuses not on the accumulation and exercise of power for their own ends, but on the growth and well-being of people and the communities to which they belong. It’s important that our elected officials have strongly-held beliefs, but also the grace and humility to listen and learn, to take constituent concerns seriously, to value a diversity of ideas, and to celebrate civic engagement regardless of which part of the political spectrum it comes. In my campaign last fall, my goal was to understand and act upon the needs of the people of southern Aroostook, even when we had fundamentally different opinions…because it wasn’t about me, it was about them. All of them.
Perhaps Rep. Lemelin needs to learn some of that humility…to put aside the ego that informs his need to be a “truth-teller” and to become a solution-finder instead. Or perhaps this is just the unfortunate state of our politics today…a polarized, partisan morass in which many of our elected representatives choose to care only about the people who think like them. Whatever the case, the people of District 88 — and Maine as a whole — deserve better.
Photo: Then- GOP candidate Michael Lemelin. | Michael Lemelin for Maine House 88, Facebook
Daily Updates