‘A Daughter of Maine’ can’t live here anymore

A sad thing happened recently. Kaileigh Tara, former two-time Democratic mayor of Lewiston, decided to leave Maine. Her home is being foreclosed on. She has not had a full-time, permanent position for years now. She is going to California, like so many before her, with high hopes of making a life there. And Maine is much the worse for her departure.

When I was a candidate, along with five other people, in the open District 2 congressional seat in 2001, I used the phrase “a Daughter of Maine” paraphrased from author Robert P. Tristram Coffin, godfather to my best friend’s mother, Juniper. Juniper demanded I read all of Coffin before my campaign. And good advice, too. Coffin should be required reading for everyone.

No one I met on the campaign trail embodied the true meaning of Daughter of Maine more than Kaileigh Tara. I first met Kaileigh at a Rumford debate, when she was one of my opponents. She was striking; dark, fiery and confident. She immediately approached me with a warm smile and an outstretched hand. Not only was she sharp, she was also a good sport. Although we were opponents we became friends as the campaign progressed. When Kaileigh eventually dropped out of the race, she endorsed me and David Costello, another opponent.

For those of you who do not know her story, let me tell you of a Maine character Robert Coffin would have adored. Kaileigh was born Catholic to Franco-American textile-worker parents in Lewiston. She suffered, as many Mainers do, incest by a male relative. When she became an adult and confronted her past, part of her healing process was to change her name to Kaileigh Tara.

Kaileigh, possessing abundant amounts of courage, decided it was important to speak out, openly and honestly, about her name change and the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. She wanted to make a public space so that younger girls and boys would have the courage to break this Maine cycle of cruelty. It is very difficult to speak publicly about personal abuse. Most people remain silent. The silence feeds the cycle. But not everyone, particularly men, like to hear about incest and sexual abuse. And I suspect that Kaileigh’s courage on this issue cost her dearly.

Kaileigh, as a single mom on welfare, decided to run, as a Democrat, for mayor of Maine’s most important Democratic stronghold, Lewiston. She was 33. Much to everyone’s surprise, she won. She received not one call of congratulations from the Maine Democratic Party. Nor did she hear from the Democratic National Committee in Washington. She went on to run for a second term and win again. Still, the Democratic Party never called her.

As mayor Kaileigh was vocal and passionate about diversity and compassion. She encouraged the first Togo refugees to move to Lewiston and was subsequently welcoming to Somali refugees. She has been vividly intolerant of racist reactions; including, quite disturbingly, from the new mayor, who made national headlines by sending the Somalis a letter asking them to not “allow” more Africans to move to Maine.

Kaileigh used her public office to speak about another issue we all would rather ignore: poverty. She talked about having her electricity cut off and what it is like to live on welfare and come from the working class of Maine. Apparently, the liberal elites of Maine would rather read Richard Russo than have a welfare mom in a position of leadership because this made everyone nervous.

The Democratic Party has lots of rhetoric about our “grass-roots” networks, encouraging young people to get involved, mentoring “the next generation of political leaders,” being the party of diversity and compassion, the party to support the poor and women’s choice. If this is true, let me tell you, it ain’t happening in Maine.

But Kaileigh “paid her dues” to the Democratic Party anyway, smiling the whole time. As mayor she received $4,200 a year. So she had to manage this full-time job with another full-time job at the local hospital. She resigned from her job at the hospital, incidentally, when they told her that her insurance would reimburse for Viagra but not for the pill.

Since she resigned from the hospital, in 2001, she has held together her family on a string of substitute teaching positions. She asked and asked and asked the Democratic governor, John Baldacci, for a position. She applied for many jobs all over the state. She applied to pro-choice women’s groups and to women’s political organizations. She tried to join Sen. John Kerry’s campaign and that was before he started doing well. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

She finally got a letter for Gov Baldacci telling her they just couldn’t find a position for her “unique” skills and talents. But they wished her well.

So the good ole boy network, which has got Maine in a stranglehold, triumphs again.

This smart, feisty, bold, beautiful woman with integrity and determination is leaving Maine. Because she has been told she is not needed. She is leaving because we, in Maine and we, in the Democratic Party, have told her again and again in many different ways we simply do not want or appreciate her qualities.

We have no room for courage and intelligence when it is packaged in a Daughter of Maine. These qualities are more appealing in a Son of Maine. Or, perhaps, in a Wealthy Daughter of Maine for if Kaileigh was not poor, Catholic and Franco, I suspect that being a woman wouldn’t cost her so much. But the elite, liberal women of Maine tend to be just as snobby as the good ole boy network.

She is leaving, in truth, because she forced us to look at ourselves – poverty, incest, sexual and physical abuse of women and children and racism – and we felt uncomfortable with what we saw in ourselves. So we tried to silence her voice rather than fix the problems that plague us.

As Coffin said in “Red Sky in the Morning,” today, the day Kaileigh’s e-mail told me she is leaving Maine, “was a bad day all around” not only for Kaileigh, and for me her friend, but for Maine. And the future of Maine. What kind of society are we, we must ask ourselves, when someone like Kaileigh Tara cannot find a place. I can tell you this; it does not bode well for the future sons and daughters of Maine. It would not make Robert Coffin proud. And it does not make me proud to call myself a Mainer or a Democrat.

Lori Handrahan, Ph.D. is a research fellow at The Cuny Center in Washington, D.C. Like Kaileigh, she also could not find a job in Maine. She can be reached for comments at L.M.Handrahan-alumni@lse.ac.uk