An interview with ME SEN Candidate Andrea LaFlamme

“They don’t have the power over the elections that they think they do.”

The Maine Senate race has been one of the most closely watched contests in the country. Democrats hope to finally unseat five-term Republican Susan Collins in the general election. The Democratic primary has already been hard fought; current Maine Governor Janet Milles is trailing political newcomer and progressive Graham Platner, despite revelations that Platner has long worn a Nazi tattoo and has a string of ugly racist, sexist, and homophobic posts on reddit (he has removed the tattoo and disavowed the comments.)

Platner and Mills are not the only ones running for the seat, however. Among the other candidates is Andrea LaFlamme (website here). She will not appear on the ballot, but is organizing a write-in campaign.

LaFlamme is a public health professor, union representative, and abortion rights activist who is running on a progressive platform. In a race where many on the left would rather support somebody who was not wearing a Nazi tattoo up to a minute ago, I thought it was worth finding out more about LaFlamme’s campaign and she kindly agreed to an interview.

I spoke to LaFlamme by phone. The conversation below has been edited for clarity and length.

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Noah Berlatsky:

You’re currently running for Maine Senate. You haven’t run for office before. Is that right?

Andrea LaFlamme:

Yeah, not for government office. I’m currently in my second term as chapter president for my union; I represent all of the adjunct professors at all the Maine community colleges. But I’ve never run for a government office.

So, what in your background would you say qualifies you to be a Senator?

I think actually the fact that I don’t have a history in politics makes me a really good candidate. I think that the people of the United States and the people of Maine would be a lot better served with more teachers and health experts in office than career politicians and lawyers.

Right now, what we’re seeing with the appointment of RFK, Jr. [as Secretary of Health and Human Services] — I think it’s important that we really stack the deck in the House and Senate with people who genuinely have the education and expertise in public health and who care for the American people.

You’re a public health professor, right?

Yes, I am

So what would you say RFK, Jr. is doing wrong?

How long are we gonna be on this call?

(Laughs). Well, I mean, I guess just a highlight or two.

He’s done a lot wrong. Just the tip of the iceberg, I would say his attitude toward vaccinations has been really, really terrible. We’re in an age, obviously, with a lot of misinformation and distrust. Vaccines have historically been very safe and beneficial for all Americans, and yet vaccination rates are declining, I think in large part, because of misinformation and people in positions of power like RFK who are parroting that same misinformation. It really creates a hazard for the larger population of Americans.

If you were in the Senate, how would you try to go about making people feel safer about vaccines? Or how do you increase vaccine uptake?

So I think if we look back historically, when vaccines were kind in their infancy, there was a lot of trust around vaccines, and people were enthusiastic about getting them because they saw it as a contribution that they could make to the public good. And I think that we have the ability to get back to that.

I’m also a reproductive health advocate. I’m very much a “my body, my choice” supporter. I think sometimes when people hear that I’m a public health professor and I think vaccines are really great, they think, “Oh, great, she’s going to make me get a bunch of shots I don’t want.”

And that couldn’t be further from the truth, because I don’t want anybody telling me what I have to put in my body either. So, I think the trick here is not with mandates and forcing people to get vaccines—certainly, you know, in order to attend public school, I think that sort of a mandate is fine. But I think that we never needed to have really strong mandates in place before because everybody just understood that it was in their best interest for their own personal health and the health of the community.

So I would really like to see us hold individuals accountable who are disseminating misinformation, and ultimately give people somebody to listen to who knows what they’re talking about.

Okay, so you mentioned abortion as an issue you’re focused on. You’re best known in the state because you wrote a chalk message outside Susan Collins’ house in 2022, where you told her that she was doing poorly on abortion rights. What has she done wrong on abortion and what would you like to see done differently if you were senator?

So my chalk message to her was specifically about the Women’s Health Protections Act, and asking her to sign on to that, which she ultimately did not. I also think her appointment and support of justice Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was really abhorrent—absolutely unacceptable, and a slap in the face to women, not just in Maine, but across the country. And obviously that was pivotal in the overturning of Roe v Wade, which is just horrible and sets us back decades here in Maine.

I am also known because I was the youngest president in the history of the Mabel Wadsworth Women’s Health Center, which is a local nonprofit feminist Health Center here in Bangor, Maine. It’s the only private nonprofit feminist health center and nonprofit abortion provider here in the state. They don’t take any federal funding at all, which allows them to be somewhat immune to some of these funding cuts that we see really affecting Maine Family Planning and Planned Parenthood.

I worked for them as a work-study student and stayed on as a volunteer and was elected president of their board. At the time, I also worked to champion an expansion of their services, to not just include services for women and abortion services, but also resources for trans clients and people of all genders.

You mentioned Kavanaugh and Roe v. Wade. Would you support expanding the Supreme Court?

I would. I would both support expanding the Supreme Court, and I would also support some sort of term limit for Supreme Court. You know, back when it was originally made a lifetime appointment, I don’t know what the life expectancy was, but it definitely wasn’t as high as it is today. And so I would love to see two things, term limits and expansion of the Supreme Court.

You mentioned trans issues. Republicans have been targeting trans women in sports, and some Democrats have said that they also feel that trans women should not be able to participate in women’s sports. What is your position there?

As you mentioned before, I’m a public health professor. I teach Public Health within their department of Women and Gender Studies. So I have a lot of opinions about that.

There’s been a lot of scientific studies done that finds that trans women actually have no physical advantage over cis women when it comes to sports. And I think that one thing that I also don’t like in Maine right now—there have been folks in our communities collecting signatures to have an initiative on our ballot, voting on whether or not trans folks should be allowed to play sports with their cis teammates. And one thing that part of the messaging that I’ve heard from some of the other Democrats is that, you know, trans people should be allowed to play, but this is kind of a non-issue, because there’s only two trans high school athletes in Maine.

And while I agree with the end result, which is they should definitely be allowed to play on teams with the genders that they identify with. I think that the qualifier of there only being two, and that’s why, like, it shouldn’t be an issue, is really a problem. Because I don’t care if there’s none, and there might be some next year. The issue is one of human rights, not of how many people get to play.

Currently in the primary, one of the people running is Janet Mills, who’s the governor of Maine, who actually stood up for trans athletes; she sued Trump and won when he tried to withhold funds to bully her into preventing trans athletes from participating in Maine.

So I wonder why you feel it’s important to run against her? Are there issues on which you disagree with her?

I think that Janet Mills has done a great job for the state of Maine. She set a great example for younger women like me that have political aspirations.

But there are some things that we fundamentally disagree on. For example, I am very supportive of tribal sovereignty, and that’s something that she historically has not been very supportive of. As I said too, I am a chapter president for my union, and she is not very union friendly at all. So that is, that is another issue where we differ.

And I guess in terms of the other most discussed person of the race—I take it you don’t have a Nazi tattoo.

I don’t. I actually have an estrogen molecule and a peace sign, if it matters at all. I think that is a pretty good representation of me and what I stand for

Not scandalous.

No! And that’s why I’m not in the tabloids. Maybe it’s a missed opportunity, I don’t know.

It must be a little frustrating to see people touting Plattner as the working-class candidate when—I mean, his grandfather was a famous architect. You’re actually the first one in your family to graduate from college, right?

Yeah, my mom actually got her associate’s degree when I was a child, but I’m the first one to get a four-year degree.

And growing up, we were low income, my brother and I, we got free and reduced lunch at school. And I remember what it was like to wait in the lunch line and know that when they got to me, they weren’t going to ask me to pay any money, and I was certain that all the other kids would notice.

Even now as an adult, I’m an adjunct professor. Last year, I made $30,000 a year without any benefits. And that’s the reality for adjunct professors, experts in their field, with graduate degrees. Just this past winter, I actually had to apply for heating assistance to help me cover the cost of heat. My contracts for teaching are on a semester-to-semester basis, so there’s often times where one semester ends and I haven’t received a contract yet, and I’ve had to apply for unemployment benefits during those periods.

How are you affording this run for Senate?

I have a very bare bones operation here. And I’m pretty tenacious!

Initially, when I made the decision to run, I approached the Democratic party last April. I wrote them a letter talking about my qualifications and my aspirations, and I never heard anything back from them. I just got completely ignored. And eventually I was able to get in touch with somebody there, and they told me that they couldn’t help me because it would be seen as favoritism.

And I explained to them that I wasn’t looking for any advantage. The information that I was seeking out was like, how do you register with the FEC? How do you make sure you get on the ballot? Things that would bring me up to speed with everybody else.

But they weren’t willing to help me, and that pushed me even harder. So I started just figuring everything out on my own. I registered with the SEC, I believe, on June 6 of last year. It was before any of the other candidates were even in the race. I was getting ready to actually announce my candidacy, and I was having some health issues that I really needed to address. So I just put everything on pause while I got that figured out. And it wasn’t until toward the middle to end of February that I was feeling good enough to announce and continue my campaign and finish what I started.

So it’s been a tough road. And it was tough sitting at home trying to focus on, okay, you really want to do this, but you’ve got to get better first, like you’ve got to take care of yourself. But I’m really happy to be in it, and there’s been a lot of people that I’ve met along the way while I was collecting signatures, and folks that I’ve talked to at different events, that I’ve been to that have told me that they don’t feel represented by the current candidates in the race, and that they are so happy that I am in the race, and they are so happy that I am representing them. That’s really what’s been driving me through this whole process‚is knowing that I want them to have a voice in the primary, and I want them to be able to cast a vote for the candidate that they feel best represents them.

We do have ranked choice voting, so I think it’s a great opportunity to get some support and show people what’s possible, even if you don’t have millions of dollars, because I think that’s one of the messages that I’ve been I’ve been talking to a lot of people about, too. When people put support behind candidates like me that don’t have millions of dollars, what that ultimately shows wealthy donors is that they aren’t needed, right? And they don’t have the power over the elections that they think they do. I’m hoping to give folks some representation and also to show that the average person can do this. They can run for office. There are ways to do it. And if you are a good candidate, and you make your voice heard, people will listen,

You’re not going to be on the ballot, right? People will have to write you in.

Correct. I wasn’t able to announce my campaign until towards the end of February. Typically, candidates are able to start collecting signatures for the ballot at the beginning of January, but obviously I wasn’t able to do that. So from the time I announced, I had three weeks to collect 2000 signatures, and I was able to collect over 1000 but I did not hit the 2000 threshold.

But it was clear from those three weeks, both from people that I talked to that were giving me their support and with the amount of support that I was able to generate through the signatures that if I had been able to start in January, that I would have had no problem meeting that threshhold.

So, yeah, we are running a write in campaign. We’re telling people to start practicing writing my name now, so that they’re all ready to go!

We talked about Mills a bit earlier. What are your concerns about Platner?

So my concerns are—when I compare myself to him, I look at the amount of education and experience that I have, whether it’s my time in union leadership or the fact that I literally went to college for six years to study how to keep the community healthy. And there’s all of my cumulative experience in education, I think that gives me a really great point of view to draw from.

I see my students in class. I see them struggling to afford rent, to afford food, and I’m really I’m in the middle of all of the problems that society is experiencing and seeing all of the systems of oppression that are really keeping working families down. And so when I see a candidate that doesn’t have that same amount of education and experience and maybe has to rely on those around them to give them that information—that kind of gives me pause a little bit, because then you’re not actually just voting for the candidate. You’re also voting for everybody that they surround themselves with. And that’s kind of a risky vote.

Are you concerned about some of the things he’s said in the past? I mean, he’s disavowed them, but…

I haven’t had to have any of my tattoos covered up. You know, I definitely think that people can change, and people can redeem themselves. But as a voter, as a Maine voter, I do not feel like he represents my best interests, and I do not think that he is the best candidate to represent me, and so that’s why I’m running, and what I’ve heard from other folks is that they feel the same.

One big issue with Democratic primaries this cycle is Israel and Gaza. I know you’ve said that Gaza is a genocide. Would you support restricting weapon sales to Israel as long as they are violating international law?

Yes, yes, I would. I would absolutely support that. You know, I think when foreign entities are committing war crimes with weapons that we supply them, that’s our problem too, right? That isn’t something that we should be implicating ourselves in, because by supplying those weapons, we are, in essence, supporting those actions. And I don’t think that that’s what the United States should be, should be doing,

To to me, it seems fairly clear that one of the things that’s happening with the Maine Senate race is that it’s become about Senate leadership in part. Because Chuck Schumer supported Janet Mills and Chris Murphy, and a number of the people in the Senate who seem to be thinking about trying to remove Schumer have been supporting Plattner. So I’m curious if you would vote for Chuck Schumer for Senate leadership?

I would not vote for Chuck Schumer as Senate leader. It seems to me that he doesn’t listen to the American people and what we want. I don’t think he has done a very good job standing up to the Trump administration and rallying folks trying to get votes against some of the bills that they’ve been able to get through the Senate. I think it’s time to see what somebody else can do. I’m not sure who I would support in his place, but I think it’s clear that he is better suited in a different role.

Democrats are pretty desperate for some accountability for Trump and for ways to restrain him. What do you think the Senate should be doing to try to hold him accountable or to prevent his ongoing attack on the Constitution?

Well, first, I think that members of the House should be drawing up impeachment charges. And as senator, I would certainly be attending those impeachment hearings, considering all the evidence and voting in a way that supports justice and accountability.

One of the big taglines right, in this whole Senate race has been about opposing Trump and who’s going to stand up to Trump?

And obviously that’s important. He’s the big fish that’s making all the terrible decisions. But ultimately, whoever wins this Senate election isn’t going to take office until the beginning of next year, at which point Trump has at most two year left. And this is a six-year appointment.

So for me— we all hate Trump. We all hate what he’s doing. But I think that the American people deserve more than somebody who just hates Trump. They should be looking for somebody who best represents them, because ultimately that’s what the Senator’s role, is going to be, even beyond his term in office.

I’d also like to say—you mentioned both Janet and Graham, and they are certainly the two front runners in this race. But I think it’s important to note that both of them were asked—they were both recruited to run.

And I wasn’t recruited; I decided that this is what I was going to do. Somebody didn’t knock on my door and say, “Hey, we really want you to do this. “I saw the need. I took it upon myself to do it, and didn’t wait for anybody to give me permission. So, so I would say that’s that is another way that I differ in my candidacy from them.

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Again, Andrea LaFlamme’s website is here.

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