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Meghan Gardner

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Meghan Gardner
Image of Meghan Gardner

Democratic Party

Elections and appointments
Last election

July 14, 2020

Personal
Birthplace
Weymouth Town, Mass.
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Meghan Gardner (Democratic Party) ran for election to the Maine House of Representatives to represent District 123. She lost in the Democratic primary on July 14, 2020.

Gardner completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Meghan Gardner was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts.[1]

Elections

2020

See also: Maine House of Representatives elections, 2020

General election

General election for Maine House of Representatives District 123

Laurie Osher defeated Cameron Bowie in the general election for Maine House of Representatives District 123 on November 3, 2020.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Laurie Osher
Laurie Osher (D) Candidate Connection
 
72.3
 
3,008
Image of Cameron Bowie
Cameron Bowie (R)
 
27.7
 
1,154

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 4,162
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Democratic primary election

Democratic Primary for Maine House of Representatives District 123

The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Laurie Osher in round 1 .

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 970
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.

Republican primary election

Republican Primary for Maine House of Representatives District 123

The following candidates advanced in the ranked-choice voting election: Cameron Bowie in round 1 .

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 135
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign themes

2020

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Meghan Gardner completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Gardner's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Meghan Gardner is a writer, teacher, and current Orono Town Councilor. In her time on Council, she has served as the Chair of the Comprehensive Plan Implementation Committee and the Council Liaison to the Orono Historical Society. She earned her PhD in English from the University of Denver, her MA in English from the University of Maine, and her BA in American Studies from Brandeis University. A published author, she has taught writing and literature at the University of Maine, Husson University and Orono High School. She and her husband, Cory, are the proprietors of The Common Loon Public House in Orono; they have a daughter, Ella, two goofy golden retrievers, and a 19-year-old cat.
  • We must increase State reimbursements so that municipalities that are in desperate need of infrastructure repair and property tax relief, like Orono, can prioritize those items.
  • In the face of concerns at the Federal level, we must enshrine our rights in State law, such as protecting a woman's right to control her medical decisions, LGBTQ+ rights, access to affordable health care, worker protections, and every Maine resident's right to clean air, soil, and water.
  • We must promote economic development in the region that aligns with our community's character and shared values, as well as economic recovery initiatives that support small businesses in particular, as they represent the majority of the district's business community.
I'm originally from the Boston area, and of a working-class Irish Catholic background; when I turned 18, my mother told me, "Listen up, kid: In this house we vote for Ted Kennedy, and whatever else Ted Kennedy tells us to vote for." She was joking, but that story gets at the heart of what I'm passionate about. On a fundamental level, I'm a Democrat because the core tenant of my political philosophy is a variation of a sentiment expressed by many writers and activists, from Emma Lazarus to Audre Lorde to Martin Luther King Jr. and more: No one is free until we are all free. Everyone is deserving of equal rights, everyone deserves a seat at the table, and in one of the wealthiest nations in human history, no one should starve or sicken because they can't afford access to food, medicine, or shelter. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness cannot be reasonably enshrined as rights when the deck is stacked against so many people simply because of who they are, or where and how they were born. The modern Democratic Party has been, and should continue to be, a catalyst for social, political, and economic change in this country; I want to be part of that change, from the ground up.

Government is like an ecosystem: all of the various parts are connected, and in order to govern effectively, one must have a grasp of all of it. In order to do that, you have to do your homework. An elected official must put in the time and effort to truly understand the intricacies of policies and operations, to understand how everything fits together, to have a command of the information at their disposal.

I am also an effective communicator. When I was elected to Council, one of my overarching goals was to help improve communication from the Town to the residents, because I believed then as I do now: that clear communication will lead not only to increased transparency but also get people more active in local government, which is crucial.

I believe that as an elected official it is my duty to I listen to my constituents: politics is incredibly divisive now, and often people will simply make assumptions instead of listening. I have a strong core of progressive ideals, but I know I will represent people who don't necessarily agree with me. I believe that the most effective way to govern (if you're being true to yourself) is to get buy-in from people who might not have thought they'd support you. This involves really listening to their concerns, and trying to figure out a way forward together. Elected officials make decisions that have very real impacts on people's lives, and they must never lose site of this.
For most of my life, I never imagined I would end up a politician; I thought that was the exclusive realm of lawyers and businessmen, not writers and artists and teachers like me. I thought that I would try to make the world a fairer and more equitable place through my actions as a private citizen and by bringing awareness to these issues in my work. But in my lifetime, I've watched our political system become more and more fractured, and it began to occur to me that perhaps part of the problem is the exclusivity and insularity of the political realm. Many of our governing bodies aren't truly representative of the people they purport to represent, by any metric, and they never have been. The broader the skill sets of our elected officials, the better we'll be at solving problems and working toward finding common ground. Yes, we should have business people and lawyers...and farmers, writers, steel workers, scientists, teachers, and so on. We need people with experience and institutional knowledge, and we also need people with new perspectives and fresh ideas.

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.

See also

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Footnotes

  1. ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 6, 2020


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