Trusted Leadership. Proven Results.
The corrupt political parties are trying to distract voters because they cannot defend the results of the system they have created. The Democrats are trying to paint Rick as a Republican. The Republicans are trying to paint Rick as a Democrat. This is the same tired playbook. The political parties are lying for their own political agenda.
The truth: People from all across the political spectrum are supporting Rick because he is Independent and focused on fixing what is broken.
Rick’s record speaks for itself. He has always been focused on getting results for Mainers – fighting against dark money special interests, taking on the utilities, supporting working families, and standing up for people too often left behind.
Protecting our Democracy from Dark Money Influence
Rick has been a champion of protecting Maine’s democracy and fighting dark money special interests. He knows how tired Mainers are of political insiders and big donors having too much sway in our elections,
Rick chaired the successful ballot initiative that banned foreign governments from spending in Maine’s elections, an effort that passed with a record breaking 86% support from the Maine voters. He also championed the ballot initiative to limit contributions to PACs to $5,000, which passed with the highest number of votes in the state’s history. Rick continues to defend these initiatives on behalf of Maine voters as they are being challenged in court.
Rick also co-sponsored and helped pass legislation to strengthen Maine's Clean Election Act. He sponsored legislation to support real transparency by backing a true donor disclosure law that would unmask dark money by tracing PAC donations back to their original sources.
Making Housing Affordable
Rick has been engaged with Maine’s housing sector for 35+ years, gaining firsthand experience in the manufactured housing industry early in his career and later shaping statewide policy as a legislative leader. He has approached Maine’s housing crisis with seriousness and urgency, engaging directly with builders, employers, communities, and national innovators to understand what’s working and what’s standing in the way.
As a Senator and member of the Joint Standing Committee on Housing and Economic Development, he has worked to expand factory-built and innovative housing production, as well as increase transparency and fairness around municipal impact fees so viable projects aren’t stalled unnecessarily. He continues to champion a proposal to build and repair housing through a bipartisan housing bond and has pushed to modernize outdated tax policy so Maine-made homes can compete.
Making Energy Affordable and Holding Utilities Accountable
Rick has a record of working to make energy more affordable and utilities more accountable to the people of Maine. He sponsored legislation to protect ratepayers from cost-shifting, and was lead cosponsor of a bill to create a Net Energy Billing Cost Stabilization Fund to shield households and businesses from price spikes.
Rick was a champion of the effort to establish Maine's new Department of Energy Resources to bring coherence and accountability to the state's energy management and was lead cosponsor of a recent bill to protect and compensate public utility whistleblowers.
He was lead cosponsor of the Pine Tree Power Act, which would have converted Maine's investor-owned utilities into a consumer-owned nonprofit focused on lower rates and local control.
Rick has backed legislation to encourage clean energy development on contaminated land, support landowners harmed by PFAS contamination, and lower costs through responsible energy projects.
He was a cosponsor of the Maine Climate Superfund Act, which would hold fossil fuel corporations accountable to help pay for the damages their emissions have caused instead of forcing Maine families and taxpayers to bear those costs alone, protecting our vulnerable communities across the state.
Reducing the Pressure of Taxes on Maine Families
Rick's work on tax policy has focused on reducing pressure on Maine families and municipalities by lowering hidden costs, protecting year-round residents, and making the system fairer and more predictable. His approach has centered on structural reforms that squeeze more value out of every dollar and keep local costs from being passed down to homeowners and renters. Rick has consistently supported efforts to increase homestead-based relief for primary residents, worked to raise the state's reimbursement rate to municipalities for homestead exemption revenue loss, and fix loopholes in tax exemption programs that drive up costs so households can better manage rising bills, particularly older Mainers and working families on fixed incomes.
Delivering for Kids and Families
Rick believes our future starts with our children, and his record shows that. As Co-Chair of the Legislature’s Children’s Caucus for four years, he helped drive major child care gains – first implementing and then doubling the wage supplement fund for child care workers to $30 million per year, expanding child care subsidies for low income working parents by $10 million annually, making the largest state investment ever in Head Start with $3.7 million per year, and creating a $2.5 million annual program to help child care workers afford care for their own children.
Rick also co-sponsored practical reforms that expanded access quickly – allowing the State to contract directly with child care providers in underserved areas and enabling family child care providers to safely serve more children – changes that delivered immediate relief, especially in rural communities
Strengthening Maine’s Health Care and Protecting Reproductive Rights
Rick believes you should not have to fight through a broken system just to see a doctor, afford a prescription, or pay off a medical bill. Through smart and consistent legislation, he has strengthened Maine’s health care system by focusing on stability, affordability, and making care work better for Mainers.
He has led efforts to grow Maine’s health care workforce through targeted scholarship programs, training pipelines, and licensure reforms that help attract and retain providers.
He has worked to protect hospitals from extractive corporate practices and strengthen the financial stability of care delivery, particularly in rural communities. Rick has also advanced reforms to rein in insurance practices that drive up costs, improve transparency, and modernize payment systems so care delivery is more predictable and sustainable including cosponsoring ongoing legislation to reform prior authorization requirements that delay or deny care for patients managing chronic and long-term conditions. He has expanded access to care and rural stability through telehealth and broadband leadership, ensuring providers and patients can connect no matter where they live.
Rick was instrumental in securing bipartisan support to dedicate ongoing state revenue to community substance use recovery centers, helping expand access to addiction treatment and long-term recovery services across Maine.
More than three decades ago, Rick cosponsored the law that codified Roe v. Wade into Maine law, and last year he earned a 92% rating from Planned Parenthood Maine Action Fund, reflecting strong and consistent support for reproductive health access and patient protections. Rick believes women deserve the freedom, privacy, and dignity to make their own health care decisions
In recognition of this sustained leadership, Rick was named a Public Health Policy Champion by the Maine Public Health Association in 2025.
Supporting our Schools and Teachers
Rick grew up in a family of teachers, and his father created Maine's first environmental education curriculum and the Maine studies curriculum. As Co-Chair of the Legislature's Children's Caucus for four years, Rick helped drive some of the largest investments Maine has made in children and families -- work that laid the foundation for his early childhood and education priorities.
Rick co-sponsored a successful bill to raise the minimum teacher salary. He sponsored the Outdoor School for All Maine Students program, which was emergency-enacted, expanding experiential, whole-child learning for students statewide. He championed a law establishing minimum temperature standards in school buildings – a bill that came directly from a constituent teacher whose own kids spent days in classrooms above 90 degrees. He led passage of a bill to create a mobile learning lab that brings educational resources directly to rural communities that lack them.
Growing Maine’s Economy
Rick has spent his career building businesses, backing innovation, and making it easier to create jobs in Maine.
Rick has built businesses and created jobs. Rick became CEO of The Corporate Library in 2006. The company was a money-losing Portland startup that Rick turned into a profitable global firm, renamed GMI Ratings, and added offices in New York, San Diego, and London. The company became a world-leading independent source of corporate governance data and ratings used by institutional investors and others to manage risk and hold corporate boards accountable. Under Rick’s leadership, the firm built the market: before GMI Ratings, there was no independent, systematic way to rate how well corporate boards served shareholders.
He also led a restructuring of Quoddy, a Maine footwear brand founded in 1947, saving manufacturing jobs at a time when domestic shoe production was in free fall.
For 20 years Rick was a director at GWI, Maine’s first ISP, and helped with four major transformations of the company and the conversion of the firm into a B-corporation.
In the late 1990s, Rick championed the establishment of the Maine Economic Improvement Fund, Maine Technology Institute (MTI), and other initiatives. MTI is Maine's primary engine for turning research into commercial businesses and good-paying jobs. MTI has since distributed nearly $387 million to more than 4,300 projects across the state. And Rick has kept at it, pressing to increase research and development spending and directing MTI to review its targeted technology sectors to keep them aligned with Maine's economic needs.
Rick worked to connect businesses with workers and capital. He cosponsored legislation to establish the Housing Stability Fund, helping workers afford housing near their jobs, and worked to give displaced workers access to job training and education services. He championed capital access for Maine's heritage industries, sponsoring legislation to provide reduced interest rates for logging and fishing operations and cosponsoring work to strengthen FAME's capacity to support businesses.
Protecting and Preserving Maine’s Natural Resources
Rick grew up exploring Maine's great outdoors and believes in protecting and preserving our natural resources. He has a consistent record on clean water, conservation, and environmental protection across his entire lifetime. That ethic has been a part of him since childhood, growing up in a Maine family that taught respect for our precious natural resources, with a father who wrote the state's first environmental education curriculum. His upbringing was spent outdoors, from the Allagash to Baxter, from the St. Croix to the North Maine Woods to the White Mountain National Forest, where he developed a deep sense of place and fell in love with the natural beauty of Maine.
That foundation carried through Rick's legislative service, his business life leading companies that pioneered corporate accountability and environmental standards, and his community work organizing events like his annual trail run benefiting the local land trust and participating in Surfrider Foundation and River Guardians cleanups. Throughout his public service, Rick has been recognized as an environmental champion, bringing together both sides of the aisle for environmental stewardship.
Rick co-sponsored legislation to establish a Climate Superfund cost recovery program requiring fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damage.
He co-led the successful effort to establish maximum contaminant levels for PFAS in public drinking water systems. He also strengthened water supply protection fund management, bottled water quality standards, and protections against invasive aquatic plant infestations in Maine's inland waters.
Rick has been a fighter for our great state on conservation and forests, he has enhanced protection of high-value natural resources statewide. He funded farmland conservation, replenished Land for Maine's Future through a general fund bond, and extended Land for Maine's Future funding. He co-sponsored legislation to establish a comprehensive interagency approach to invasive species management.
Modernizing Maine’s Infrastructure
Rick has a record of building the infrastructure that connects Maine communities and protects the systems people depend on.
Rick championed the efforts to bring broadband to all corners of the state – by accelerating the buildout of high-speed internet statewide and streamlining broadband infrastructure deployment across utility poles and railroad crossings.
On transportation, Rick worked to provide sustainable funding to fix our roads and bridges. He led the successful effort to fund the Mountain Division rails-to-trails corridor in western Maine. He fought to pass a general fund bond to promote the design, development, and maintenance of trails for outdoor recreation and active transportation.
Rick strengthened water supply protection fund management and established maximum contaminant levels for PFAS in drinking water systems, protecting public health across the state.
Rick spearheaded the effort to establish Maine's landmark Extended Producer Responsibility program for packaging, shifting the cost of disposal from property taxpayers onto the companies that produce the packaging. He also helped to reduce food waste and increase composting.
Championing Tribal Sovereignty
Tribal sovereignty is about more than policy, it is about dignity, self-determination, and keeping our word. The Wabanaki Nations have been here since long before the State of Maine existed and they deserve a government that recognizes their rights and treats them with deep respect. Rick's record on tribal issues reflects a consistent commitment to the Wabanaki Nations, not a campaign-season conversion. He has co-sponsored bills to restore Wabanaki access to federal laws and to enact the remaining recommendations of the task force on the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act. He has co-sponsored the effort to require legislative approval for Juniper Ridge Landfill operating contracts, directly addressing the environmental threat to the Penobscot Nation. He co-sponsored the bill to provide Indigenous peoples free access to Maine state parks. And he sponsored the constitutional resolution to require publication of Maine Indian treaty obligations, recognizing that the State's foundational relationship with the Wabanaki Nations deserves to be visible and acknowledged.
Rick was named a Champion by the Wabanaki Alliance in 2023.
Protecting Victims
Our state has been failing sexual assault victims. Protecting victims starts with a simple promise: if you have been hurt, exploited, or abused, the system should stand with you, not make your fight harder. Rick sponsored legislation to establish a statewide sexual assault forensic examination kit tracking system and co-sponsored a bill to conduct an inventory of existing kits in law enforcement possession.
Rick has worked to protect victims of sex trafficking and sexual exploitation through post-conviction review processes, criminal record sealing, and expansion of the address confidentiality program. He has strengthened domestic violence protections through proximity restrictions in protection orders and amendments to domestic violence laws. He sponsored legislation to clarify criminal penalties for assaults on emergency medical services personnel. He co-sponsored legislation to provide funding for sexual assault services.
Supporting the Recovery Community
Rick successfully launched a last minute bid to secured funding for community substance use recovery centers – one of the most significant opioid treatment investments in Maine's recent legislative history – and he led in the effort to expand Good Samaritan protections for overdose reporting.
