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Angus King III · Newsradio WGAN

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  A special in studio guest. Very pleased to welcome onto the
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  program Angus King, the third who is joining us now, candidate
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  for governor on the Democratic side in 2026.
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  And as we were briefly talking about in the time between our
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  segments here, that is less than a month away.
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  It's right around the corner. And so you're in the, I guess,
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  the classic homestretch. We're in the shoot 4-4 weeks
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  from today, although everyone can start voting as of
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  yesterday, so I suppose it's. Right, it's Tuesday.
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  We're voting. We're in it.
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  Yep, we are in it. So you're making your closing
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  pitches, which is one of the reasons we wanted to have
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  everybody on and talk a little bit about their campaigns.
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  You launched this effort quite a ways ago.
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  I mean, it's been quite a long. Campaign at this 12 months and a
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  couple of days. Yeah, So tell me a little bit
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  about what your experience has been thus far.
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  I mean, you and I were talking about, you know, your your peek
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  inside of your dad's campaigns over the years.
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  And this is very different, obviously.
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  So tell me what you've seen in and learned in this experience.
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  Yeah. It certainly is different.
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  I worked on my father's first campaign.
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  I had every kids dream job which was his scheduler.
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  I got to tell my dad where to go and what time to be there, but
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  this is a very different experience.
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  Number one, it's it's very humbling in order to be out
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  there talking to people who want you to succeed.
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  And that's a that's a very different, it's a very different
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  feeling being on the in the front of the room rather than in
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  the back. But it's also incredibly
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  energizing. I have loved every single minute
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  of this campaign. And a lot of it is because it's
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  the perfect antidote to what's in the news everyday.
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  If you just read the paper, you would be you.
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  You could be reasonably depressed and think that the
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  state of humanity is pretty bad. And the actual fact is people
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  are, are fundamentally good. And as I've traveled around the
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  state, I get to meet people who are doing incredibly good things
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  and are dedicated to their families, to their communities.
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  They are making a real difference in people's lives.
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  And so I end up at the end of every day, both energized
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  because I, I love the engagement, but also quite
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  optimistic. And again, when you read the
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  news, optimism isn't usually what leaps off the page.
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  And so I feel like it's a real privilege and and honor to get
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  to be doing. This, it's a weird thing to say
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  as a guy who hosts the news show, but I, I, I try to tell
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  people not to read the news too much.
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  I, I just stay out of it as much as I possibly can.
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  But you know, you're in a primary right now and you have
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  obviously a number of candidates that you're running against and
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  you're trying to get the nomination for the Democratic
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  Party to go on to the fall campaign here.
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  And you know, they're all different in in in many ways
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  ways. How is it that you can stand out
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  and differentiate yourself versus the others in this race
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  right now? You know, if you're a Democratic
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  voter listening to this and we actually have more than you
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  might think, you know, what would what would be the the
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  reason why you versus the other four are the one.
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  Yeah, they're, look, I'm running against four very good people
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  and that part actually feels pretty good.
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  And that's what you should have in a primary people who are
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  people of integrity and character.
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  And, you know, they have all had long careers in state
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  government, essentially. And so the real differentiation
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  is I have not. I've spent my life out in the
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  out in the real world, building housing, building renewable
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  energy projects, running companies, creating jobs,
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  signing the front of the paycheck as well as the back.
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  And I think there's real value in somebody who has actually
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  lived with the results of a lot of policy that's been decided,
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  someone who can bridge the gap between policy and practice.
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  So who can bridge the gap between politics and real
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  people? And so I think there is and,
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  and, and it's not that I haven't worked in government.
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  I understand government. I've worked for President
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  Clinton in the White House. So I've I've worked at the
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  highest levels of the executive branch.
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  But I have spent 25 plus years actually out in the world.
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  And I think there's a real genuine difference in the way
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  that you see how things should work.
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  And I think there's a real genuine difference in how you
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  approach things. When you're building something,
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  you need everybody to agree. You need everybody to be part of
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  the part of the program. And so that requires A mindset
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  and ability to sit down and listen and bring people
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  together, even people who normally would disagree and get
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  them to move forward and and do something.
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  There are no prizes in in business for a building that
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  doesn't get built or for an energy project that doesn't get
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  built. Whereas you can make a
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  legislative point even if your bill loses and really all you
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  want, all you're oriented toward is winning 5149.
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  Interesting. It's a very different, different
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  mindset. So I wouldn't take anything away
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  from them. But I think someone who has seen
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  both, who has put the public and private sectors together to
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  positive effect, I think is a genuinely different, different
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  lane and different view. And I think that leads to the
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  differences between us. Well, I'll tell you 11
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  observation I have in terms of differences here is that when I
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  hear, you know, the five talking about policy and whatnot, you
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  are noticeably different to me because you actually say stuff
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  like you just said rather than focusing I think an undue amount
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  of attention on say the administration in Washington and
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  whatnot. It's not that I'm sure you don't
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  have opinions about that and you have differences and a lot of
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  blame and all the other stuff, but you seem to be much more
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  focused on there are some problems in front of us.
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  I'd like to solve them. Let's talk about what those are.
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  And here's my experience for, you know, maybe doing that and I
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  will, I will also say, I mean to have a background in energy and,
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  and housing, not a bad, not a bad thing, not a bad pitch this
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  year when energy and housing tend to be two of our big.
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  Problems, I think in this moment, I mean if you think in
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  the last eight years our housing prices have doubled in Maine and
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  our energy costs have grown at twice the national average, why
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  those are, those are the result of of policy decisions along the
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  way on the housing side. Part of it is we just make it
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  very hard to build things in Maine.
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  We have very convoluted zoning and comprehensive plans.
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  We have very convoluted building codes.
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  We have a lot of things that's just simply make it hard.
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  I think it's also been, there's just been not as much focus on
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  it. I know there has been recently
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  and, and the legislature passed a few things to change some,
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  some opportunities and, and they're, you know, tweaks along
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  and have made a difference. But I think there's a lot more
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  we can do. And I think we just need to be a
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  lot bolder. And how do we, number one, set a
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  goal #2 then Orient the entire administration toward achieving
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  that goal. Again, I, my success in business
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  has been all about you can't manage what you don't measure.
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  For the longest time, we didn't even measure how many houses we
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  built in Maine. If you don't measure it pretty
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  hard to figure out if you're doing, if you're doing the right
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  things. So I think there's real, it's
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  going to be critical to have good data, which we now are, are
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  starting to get. But then how do we make it
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  easier for people without sacrificing our environmental
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  standards, right? It's critical that Maine's
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  quality of life is why we're all here.
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  And as long as we can protect that, I know that we can make a
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  difference again, also without imposing things on towns.
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  Maine is a home state or home rule state, and we've got to
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  make sure that we navigate that properly.
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  But I think we can provide carrots instead of sticks and
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  help towns. That's it.
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  I'm glad you, I'm glad you put it that way.
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  So I was going to ask you a follow up and related to that,
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  because when you're talking about building, in your
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  experience with this, where is the biggest problem?
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  Is it state policy or is it municipal policy?
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  Because we've had a lot of attention on municipal policy in
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  the last, say, 5 or 10 years or so and what decisions like the
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  City of Portland have done to ultimately affect the obviously
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  the profitability of a project and whether or not you want to
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  actually build there at all. I mean, I have folks.
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  Which almost nobody does. Friends of mine that are telling
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  me that they have no interest in ever building or, or buying a
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  building in Portland because of a lot of reasons.
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  But there's also state, you know, regulations that are
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  involved in this too. So as a governor, right?
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  How do you affect that when it's obviously a mix of both and I
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  would, I would say a little bit more municipal, but you know,
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  I'd love to get your take on it, yeah.
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  No, for sure there's a municipal challenge.
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  I built my, our house in Portland.
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  So I can, I can speak with very personal experience to how
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  incredibly difficult they, they may challenge.
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  Yes. And so I think there's a,
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  there's a real municipal component.
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  I think of it as both. And I'll, I'll tell you my, my
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  grandfather worked for Maine State housing for many, many
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  years. His name was Charlie Hazard.
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  And so I'd named my housing plan the Charlie plan and, and it
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  starts at the state level because I'm running for
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  governor. And so I think that's where it
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  should start. And again, I think you can have
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  real impact on the at the state level on number one.
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  Do you have a goal number 2, is it a real priority?
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  And do you focus on it with urgency?
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  And then #3 let's look at the, for example, there are different
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  agencies that play a role in housing.
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  They are not particularly coordinated.
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  You want, you might go quickly through one and, and, and like
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  molasses through another. And, and I think it's really
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  critical. And I've seen in other states
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  where they have had some of this coordination where they want to
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  get to yes. And it feels like in Maine, we
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  want to get to process and when you and, and you may have a lot
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  of good intentions, but you pile on good intention on top of good
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  intention and you have death by 1000 good intentions and no
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  project can get through. So we're adding a lot of time to
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  a lot of our housing projects across the state because what
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  happens at the state level and time skills projects, right?
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  Think of what's happened in the last year to lumber pricing or
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  to fuel pricing or you know, pick your favorite input.
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  And so time is, is is a huge challenge.
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  The next though is what do you do to help towns?
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  Can you? And especially, what do you do
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  to help the towns that want help?
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  There are some towns that don't want housing.
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  They clearly have made that clear.
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  As a good main tradition. And, and I don't, I don't, I'm
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  not going to spend, you know, my first 100 days trying to push a
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  rope uphill, No. But you did mention carrots,
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  right? I mean incentive.
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  Carrots, but carrots matter. That's right.
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  So, you know, for example, a lot of towns are struggling with
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  sewer and water expansions. And I think there's an
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  opportunity to have a revolving fund.
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  We have some revolving funds now, but let's see if we can
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  target them to the towns that really want to lean in and make
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  a difference. There are towns that do want to
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  build housing, Biddeford, Lewiston, There are other, there
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  are others. And so I think there's an
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  opportunity to help the people and, and the also with technical
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  insight. There are towns that have very
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  convoluted building codes and rules and they, I think would
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  appreciate some support. They don't have the resources to
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  cut through it, but I think there's also the, the, the key
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  is how do we help support them in, in regional ways?
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  I was at GP Cog the other day, the Greater Portland Council of
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  Governments, and they actually focus on how do we regionalize
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  some of these things? How do we help all of our towns
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  in the in the surrounding area, the 30 or so towns, how do we
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  help them? So it's not just the Portland's
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  of the world that have those resources, but but every town
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  around them. Yeah.
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  Well, I mean to do one last question on the topic briefly, I
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  suppose. Do you think there's any role
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  for providing incentives and say like the revenue sharing program
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  or something like that to try to incentivize towns to choose
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  policies that would be more pro growth in some fashion?
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  Because I think that's one element I've heard from some
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  candidates that are running, particularly the Republican
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  side, where they've been open to the idea of trying to dangle an
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  additional carrot there to say, like we know that you like doing
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  rent control or inclusionary zoning or whatever in in this
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  certain way. If you'd like to do it this way,
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  we'll give you extra money in the revenue sharing programmed
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  as an incentive bonus, if you will, for doing that, which
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  would hopefully unlock some of those policies and allow people
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  to to build a little more easily in places where, I mean, you
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  just got to call a spade a spade like people need to build in
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  Portland like. It's where.
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  The demand is it's where the people live, it's where the jobs
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  where. The jobs are right and half the
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  people who work in Portland can't afford to live anywhere
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  near it because we have made it hard to build housing here.
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  So no, I, I'm, I'm, I'm open to looking at any carrot that makes
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  sense, that's fiscally responsible, but that is going
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  to incentivize people who want to build more housing.
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  That's why I started with sewer and because that's the
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  bottleneck in a lot of these towns.
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  But I'm open to other ideas. Again, carrots I just think make
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  make more sense in this context. And look, I've built housing.
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  I've built thousands of units of housing for people across the
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  country. I've seen states where it's
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  worked better, but I've also seen states where it really
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  didn't work very well. And, and, and I know in Maine we
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  could, we could make it easier. Speaking with Angus King, the
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  third, who is a Democratic candidate running for Governor
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  of Maine in the primary, which is 4 Tuesdays from now.
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  I'm talking a little bit about his campaign and we have about 6
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  or 7 minutes left here. Your other expertise obviously
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  is in the energy sector and, and what you've seen there and
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  obviously being pretty heavily into clean energy and whatnot.
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  But this is a big issue for Maine.
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  It's a big issue for Maine consumers and and just
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  ratepayers that have houses. And it's also obviously a big
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  issue for attracting business and what not here.
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  If you have anything that is heavy industry or something
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  that's going to use energy, an extra cent means millions of
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  dollars for you. So tell me a little bit about
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  what's going wrong here right now and why it's such a
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  difficult environment and what can be done to actually knock
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  that down? Yeah, I would say there are two
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  versions of what's going wrong number #1 we have some of the
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  highest energy rates in the country, so that that that's the
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  punch line of what's going wrong.
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  The other is this past winter we were energy short and ended up
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  having to run the oil fired plan out at Cousins Island a lot of
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  the time, which is not only the most expensive energy you could
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  find, but it's also incredibly dirty.
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  And landing in that place is, I think, a cascade of policy
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  decisions that were made, you know, 3020, ten years ago.
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  But that doesn't happen overnight.
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  It doesn't happen overnight, but that's a terrible place to land.
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  And so to me, there are a couple of things.
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  Number one, we've got to focus on our permitting process in
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  Maine. It is we make it again very
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  hard. And this is not about standards,
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  this is about process. We make it really hard to build
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  things and we add a lot of cost to these projects because of
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  that. So we've added a lot of cost and
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  ultimately that impacts ratepayers.
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  So there's a real permitting challenge and process challenge
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  that we have to get through. The next is how do we use the
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  grid that we have more efficiently across the country,
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  other utilities, other states are doing a better job trying to
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  trying to work on how do we make sure that we're not just paying
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  to keep adding, keep building, keep adding cost.
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  How do we make sure that the grid that we have is used as
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  efficiently as possible? You can do it with sensors and
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  technology and batteries and all of these things that end up
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  lowering cost for ratepayers as opposed to the current model,
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  which is the utility is incentivized to at just build
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  more. And as long as they build more,
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  they get to charge more and that's a good outcome for them.
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  So we've got to change that. I think that model to make sure
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  that they're focused on how do they reduce costs as much as
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  increasing them, because I think that's ultimately in the long
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  run, what's going to bring down costs for ratepayers.
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  The last piece is how do we make sure we keep getting better
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  deals for Maine ratepayers. We've had a couple of policy
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  choices that ended up adding real cost to Maine ratepayers.
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  And I think we've got to be much more thoughtful, especially on
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  bigger energy projects like what do we do with northern wind with
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  Maine and northern with wind in northern Maine.
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  There's a real opportunity there, but we've got to make
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  sure that's a win for Maine ratepayers as well As for
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  everybody else. What?
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  Do you think about the net energy billing side of this
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  argument? I, I think that program was not
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  well designed and it ended up being a very expensive program
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  for main ratepayers. And I understand why it was why
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  it was designed, but it did not have any, any apparatus to
• 15:53
  adjust prices down. So we ended up with a lot of
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  very expensive, fundamentally expensive solar power.
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  I've been in the solar and wind business for a lot of my life.
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  You can build solar is a can be the cheapest, fastest, sort of
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  lowest carbon energy we can, we can deliver right now.
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  And I am a huge supporter of it. But that program was very
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  expensive and we need to fix it. And the fix that was put in sort
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  of retroactively on it I think was also not a great solution
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  because it hurt the very people who are building solar in our
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  state. And I've had people come to me
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  and say I will never come and build solar in your state again
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  because of what just happened. So I think we sort of had a
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  program that was not well designed that cost ratepayers
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  and then we managed to anger the people who built it in the first
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  place. That to me seems like a a loss.
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  And I think we've that's, that's a great example where I think
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  we've got to be much smarter on our energy policy going forward
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  because we can incentivize, we can have solar and wind that are
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  effective for ratepayers that are effective for the planet and
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  and do the right things, but we got to get it right.
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  And we only have a couple more minutes left here, Angus King
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  the third joining us. The only other thing I'd like to
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  ask you about before we get out of here is just about what we
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  saw in the last, the last go round of the legislative session
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  here. We ultimately had obviously a
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  contentious budget situation for like the third time in a row.
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  And obviously there's a lot of criticism on the right side of
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  the political aisle for what they saw.
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  Do you have a take on what you you've seen Maine government do
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  in the last maybe few sessions here?
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  Is are they on the right track? Are they going in the right
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  direction? You know, investments, obviously
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  the raising the millionaire's tax, a surcharge on top of that
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  and what not? Is that the right path?
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  Is that the wrong path? Is there some sort of third way?
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  What do you think about this? Yeah, I, I am, I am running for
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  governor largely because I think there are changes we've got to
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  make. And part of why I'm running is I
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  think a lot of the hyper partisanship that we've seen
• 17:45
  across the country and, and somewhat here in Maine is the
• 17:48
  wrong direction. And again, I've spent my life
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  mostly in business, having to bring people together, having to
• 17:54
  find common ground with folks, having to get to the place of
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  how do we actually get something done.
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  And so I my hope would be that we can find our way back to
• 18:05
  bipartisan budgets where we can find our way back to building
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  some continuity into the system so that people can count on
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  what's coming out of the legend. Start with you in a commitment.
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  It does to to basically do it I mean.
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  It it does now you can't be held hostage by it, right?
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  Someone could say, OK, fine, if we're going to have a bipartisan
• 18:24
  budget, we're going to insist on blank.
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  That's totally anathema to what what you might believe in.
• 18:29
  So you've got to be able to have a willing and and.
• 18:34
  But partnerships require some level of trust.
• 18:36
  I mean like, you know what I mean?
• 18:37
  That's that's exactly right. And, and, and a willingness to
• 18:40
  sit down and I am willing to sit down.
• 18:43
  That's literally been my whole career is sitting down and then
• 18:47
  getting things done. And I think it's really
• 18:49
  important again, that you've got that level of trust and that you
• 18:53
  really focus on the things that matter.
• 18:55
  I think that's the other challenge that we have.
• 18:57
  The legislature had what 2500 bills in the last session?
• 19:01
  I think if we focus on on housing, healthcare, energy and
• 19:06
  and economic development and education, let's start with
• 19:10
  those, I think we'd be in a pretty good place.
• 19:12
  And I think you could find real common ground that actually
• 19:16
  provides some solutions that are robust, that are sustainable,
• 19:20
  that are going to last for a long time and are going to be in
• 19:22
  the best interest of everybody here in Maine.
• 19:24
  I'm running for governor for the whole state and and that's
• 19:28
  what's driving me today. Give me the website before I get
• 19:30
  out of. Here Angus for governor.com.
• 19:32
  Start voting now and independents can vote in the
• 19:34
  primary, so please join us. They can.
• 19:36
  That's what you call hit in the post.
• 19:38
  We're out of time. Appreciate it very much.
• 19:39
  We'll talk again soon.