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Judith Tunkle
Judith Tunkle (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Maine House of Representatives to represent District 53. She lost in the general election on November 5, 2024.
Tunkle completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. Click here to read the survey answers.
Biography
Judith Tunkle was born in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Pittsford Central High School. She attended Lasell College. She earned a bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State College in 1993 and a graduate degree from the University of Louisiana, Monroe in 1999. Her career experience includes working as a mental health professional. She has been affiliated with the National Resource Council of Maine, the Midcoast Conservancy, and the Lincoln County Historical Association.[1]
Elections
2024
See also: Maine House of Representatives elections, 2024
General election
General election for Maine House of Representatives District 53
Incumbent Michael Lemelin defeated Judith Tunkle in the general election for Maine House of Representatives District 53 on November 5, 2024.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Michael Lemelin (R) | 59.1 | 3,250 |
Judith Tunkle (D)  | 40.9 | 2,247 | ||
| Total votes: 5,497 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates
- Richard Goldman (D)
Democratic primary election
Democratic Primary for Maine House of Representatives District 53
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Richard Goldman in round 1 .
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Total votes: 375 |
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Republican primary election
Republican Primary for Maine House of Representatives District 53
The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Michael Lemelin in round 1 .
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Total votes: 539 |
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| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
Endorsements
Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for Tunkle in this election.
Campaign themes
2024
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Judith Tunkle completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2024. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Tunkle's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.
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Masters degree in Community Counseling and ran a private therapist practice in Baltimore until I retired. In all the places we lived the common thread was building community. I valued strengths I had to offer and valued the many strengths of the people I got to know and care about and we were all stronger. As we were looking to retire the only place where we had lived that felt like home was Maine. We built a house in Dresden Maine and started to build a community in Dresden. That involvement lead me, under the direction of the Select Board, to form the Dresden Broadband committee. After 3 years of learning and working with people in Lincoln
County on August 9 the Maine Connectivity Association gave us the final piece of grant funding to enable the public/private partnership that will offer fiber optical internet connectivity to all the unserved and underserved places in Lincoln County and Woolwich.- Mental health with a focus on prevention and treatment of issues related to substance abuse. We need more mental health services in our schools and more treatment centers in our communities. More training for people to be involved in both treatment and prevention will also be needed.
- Affordable housing seems to be a root cause of many of the problems facing the people in Maine today. There are many economic opportunities that are not being utilized because workers are not available and because housing isn't available. Some exciting new work has just been done to facilitate production of modular multi family dwellings. I am excited about the many opportunities affordable housing will bring. These include more housing options and new clean jobs.
- Education in Maine needs to better resourced. The schools need more support from the state financially and with more stable curriculum requirements. From early childhood to university educational opportunities need to be improved. The combination of social media and the disruption of Covid have made it so the students, their families and the school staff all require some adjustments in how school funding is evaluated. The schools are a fundamental community based institution that need more resources to help all the people in Maine adjust to and take advantage of our rapidly changing world.
values that they have in common. I want to help people to use those core issues and work to find ways to build on the common beliefs. The ideal would be to find ways to compromise. Positive government should not be based on winners and losers. In order for a society to
environment I used that as a tool that would enable me to help others dealing with similar grief.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
Campaign finance summary
Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.
See also
2024 Elections
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on August 22, 2024
