Sen. Longley announces 2nd District nomination Democrat hopes to ‘follow Baldacci’s footsteps’

BANGOR – Joey Barkin of Glenburn didn’t know anything about Maine Sen. Susan Longley, D-Liberty, when his political science teacher at John Bapst High School urged her students to attend the state senator’s press conference Wednesday evening.

When the 17-year-old from Glenburn asked his mother about Longley, Barbara Tennent told him that she not only knew the candidate for Congress, they’d lived in the same dorm at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Tennent also told her son how Longley had organized envelope-stuffing parties when her father, James Longley, was running for governor as an independent.

Longley, 45, stressed those kinds of connections in announcing Wednesday evening that she is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2nd District congressional seat. She made the announcement at Momma B’s Kitchen, owned by Rosemary Baldacci, the sister of U.S. Rep. John Baldacci, who is running for governor.

“Just as the congressman seeks to follow in my dad’s footsteps, I’m hoping to follow in Congressman Baldacci’s footsteps,” Longley told the 50 or so people crowded into the Hammond Street restaurant. “Public service is an ethic in the Longley family, just as it is in the Baldacci family and a lot of other Maine families. This is a small state, so we all know each other.”

The state senator is scheduled to make a similar announcement today in Lewiston, where she was born and raised. Longley said her campaign headquarters will be located in the former Lamey Wellehan shoe store on Lisbon Street.

“That’s where my mom bought me my first pair of shoes as a toddler and I had my first job as a teen-ager,” she said.

In making her announcement, Longley said it was difficult to talk about herself in light of the events of Sept. 11, which had touched her family deeply, just as it had touched many Maine people. She said her brother James, the former 1st District representative, was on his way to work at the Pentagon when another Longley sister called him on his car phone. He told her he had seen an explosion and was headed to the site to help, then the line went dead.

“It was three hours before we heard that he was okay,” Susan Longley said Wednesday. “In the same hour that we heard our brother Jim was safe, we learned that our cousin Jim was on United Airlines Flight 175 [which crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center]. Now, the first casualty of the war is a Maine native.”

Longley said that it was important to support President George W. Bush’s efforts to bring the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to justice, but in the process “we must not abandon our democratic principles.”

The candidate added that while Congress must take steps to increase airport security, guards should be federal employees who are paid more than minimum wage and receive benefits. She said Congress should support the efforts of the military and law enforcement, but the nation’s legislators must also continue to honor the constitution and the laws that have evolved over the past 200 years.

Longley chairs the state Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee and is serving her fourth term in the Senate. Her campaign literature states that she helped create the Cub Care legislation, the health care expansion program for children of working parents; worked to establish a nationally acclaimed incentive program for businesses that help with dependents’ health care concerns; and helped develop Start ME Right, a child care initiative that included tax credits for parents as well as scholarships for child care workers.

Bangor City Councilor Dan Tremble said in introducing Longley, that Baldacci “leaves big shoes to fill. “I believe Susan Longley is that person.”

Though his sister is supporting Longley, Congressman Baldacci has declined to throw his support to any of the six Democratic primary candidates.

In a statement released by his campaign office, Baldacci said Wednesday he “believes that many well-qualified candidates are seeking to represent the people of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, and he looks forward to supporting and working with the Democratic nominee following next year’s primary election.”

Other candidates who are running in the Democratic primary are former state Sen. Sean Faircloth of Bangor, Senate President Michael Michaud of East Millinocket, state Sen. John Nutting of Leeds, Lewiston Mayor Kaileigh Tara and David Costello of Lewiston, a former U.S. foreign assistance officer.

As Longley’s announcement party wound down about 6:30 p.m., Barkin, the John Bapst student, sat in a corner filling out a form to volunteer to work on the campaign of his mother’s college classmate.