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| 📷 Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin talks to people after a session at the National Governors Association meeting in Portland on July 14, 2022. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett) |
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The Virginia governor will fundraise with Maine's former chief executive in Lewiston.
— Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin joins former Maine Gov. Paul LePage for an evening fundraiser in downtown Lewiston. Tickets ran $500 per person for a "VIP" reception and $50 for a general reception afterward.
— Youngkin, elected less than a year ago after a campaign built around conservative education frustrations, has been traveling the country to help elect Republican governors. His trip has been heavily criticized by Democrats in Virginia who noted LePage's past controversies over racial remarks.
— "I don’t know of [any] racially inflammatory statements and, therefore, I’m not sure that that’s accurate," Youngkin told The Washington Post when asked last week about his visit to help LePage in his race against Gov. Janet Mills.
— LePage's campaign has said Youngkin is not doing public events. The fundraiser is closed to press. The Maine Democratic Party is holding a counter-programming call for reporters at 10 a.m. featuring Susan Swecker, the Virginia party chair, and two in-state officials.
A Democratic lawmaker urged a watchdog panel to subpoena sensitive child welfare documents.
— Sen. Bill Diamond, D-Windham, told WGAN on Wednesday that the Legislature's Government Oversight Committee should use its subpoena power to get the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to turn over confidential documents related to four child deaths in the past year.
— Whether to do this has been debated by lawmakers since the state rejected a request last month to allow committee members to view the documents, which can be given to the watchdog panel's staff. Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew said wider distribution of documents related to ongoing criminal cases would "undermine the purposes of those proceedings."
— Diamond, a frequent critic of state child welfare policy who does not sit on the watchdog panel, said lawmakers need the raw information as part of their investigation of the system to make recommendations and hopefully "prevent these failures from happening again." |
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What we're reading
— Legislative Republicans do not yet agree on the need for a "parents bill of rights," a vague LePage proposal central to his campaign against Mills.
— "Forever chemical" contamination at a Maine Air National Guard base in Bangor could be spreading into the surrounding area, a federal report found.
— The world's first hybrid cruise ship will stop in Castine on its ride from Halifax to Boston later this month. The town is not believed to have ever received a foreign-flagged cruise ship.
— U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine's 1st District, tested positive for COVID-19 for the second time since July.
— Maine's strict internet privacy law will survive after internet service providers dropped a lawsuit in federal court against it. |
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