A Brewer-based progressive nonprofit knocked on thousands of doors ahead of this year’s local election in Bangor.
The organization, Food and Medicine, endorsed candidates for the City Council and School Committee races — and all of them won.
Although it’s hard to pinpoint how much of an impact the group’s organizing had on the election’s outcome, candidates and sitting councilors agreed that the nonprofit’s efforts were significant. The three candidates who won represented a progressive sweep of all three open council seats.
“I really think those efforts paid off, because everyone on that ticket was elected,” said City Councilor Susan Faloon, one of the endorsed candidates.
The organization runs numerous programs in the area that overlap with the work of Bangor’s City Council and has been involved in the city’s elections for more than 20 years, Executive Director Jack McKay said. The group makes endorsements most years, he said.
“There’s programs that we do that are pretty linked to Bangor City Council work,” McKay said, such as advocacy around public transportation. Bangor’s local government operates the Community Connector buses that run to and from numerous towns in the area.
Food and Medicine “works to address the root causes of poverty,” according to its website, and advocates around workers’ rights, public transportation and food insecurity. Most of its members live in Maine, and “a huge percentage of our members live in Bangor,” McKay said.
Committees from Food and Medicine and the Eastern Maine Labor Council, a labor union that is closely affiliated with the nonprofit, reviewed candidates’ answers to a questionnaire and chose which candidates to endorse, McKay said.
“I think we were really attracted to the people that had a positive vision and had the ability to implement positive vision on things like housing and quality jobs and mental health and recovery and these sort of things,” he added.
Much of the organization’s messaging encouraged voters to stick to the endorsed candidates to avoid splitting progressive votes in a year with a large candidate pool.
“There are 9 candidates for 3 City Council seats — meaning strange outcomes can happen if votes split, like clearing a path for a MAGA conspiracy theorist or a neo-Nazi,” the group wrote in one post, which featured a photo of candidate Richard Ward doing a Nazi salute. “Vote this bloc to make sure our community’s values win, not hate.”
After announcing the endorsements — which included Susan Faloon, Daniel Carson and Angela Walker for City Council — the organization sent mailings and canvassed around the city with dozens of volunteers. They knocked on more than 3,000 doors and talked to more than 1,000 people, according to McKay.
“They were able to hit, obviously, a lot more homes because they have more people, so I think that they really helped me too because I couldn’t get to every house,” said Faloon, who said she knocked on 1,400 doors herself ahead of the election.
Faloon said she saw many voters enter Bangor’s polling place with Food and Medicine’s endorsement cards in hand.
The Bangor Daily News also spoke with multiple voters on Election Day who said the group’s organizing played a role in who they decided to vote for.
“That was my frame of voting, because I really like their values,” said 20-year-old Lilyann Geiser.
McKay said he thinks part of why his group was able to make an impact on voters was their “long-term programs and commitment in Bangor,” such as the gardens it runs around the city. He estimated that between a quarter and a third of people volunteers spoke with already knew about Food and Medicine.
Councilor Michael Beck, who was elected to Bangor’s council last year, said he thinks the group’s work makes a big difference in local elections. He ran for council twice and was endorsed by Food and Medicine both times.
“People saw me aligned with their values and it motivated them to vote,” he said. “Honestly, the first election I had no business getting as many votes as I did. No one knew who I was.”
This year, it was a relatively close race for the second and third council seats. Walker won against the fourth-place candidate, James Gallagher, by 331 votes.
Walker and Gallagher did not respond to requests for comment.
Beck added that he thinks it’s possible the election outcome could’ve been different without Food and Medicine’s work. “At the very least, it would have been a heck of a lot closer than it was,” he said.
