As far as Maine Secretary of State Charlie Summers is concerned, the relationships he builds with community leaders around here and throughout Maine would help drive his work as a U.S. Senator. “The better plugged in I am, the better able I'll be to help the Midcoast area,” he said.

That's one of the things the Republican nominee said he learned in the Maine Senate and from his years as U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe's state director. If he wins her former seat November 6, Summers wants to draw on that perspective and his life experience as a veteran and one-time widower who raised two children.

“I understand the struggles of the average Maine family. Being a single father to an 8- and 11-year-old I had to be a devoted dad and a mom, and make sure that that terrible (loss) in all of our lives didn't define what they became,” Summers said.

His past military service in Iraq and Afghanistan will help him understand the needs of fellow Maine veterans, he said. It will also lead him to put America's best interests ahead of partisanship, he said. “We need to serve our country and not a political party or ourselves. We need to focus on the things we can work collectively on and not the things that divide us (because) at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to move the process forward for Maine and the country.”

Those are Maine claws

The Senate hopeful, whose eldest son was a lobster boat sternman for years, believes marketing is one of the Maine lobster industry's problems. Many Maine-caught lobsters go north to Canada and return under a Canadian brand name, he said.

“We need to market Maine lobster in the Maine brand. I think that's going to be critically important,” Summers said.

In addition, he wants to cut back on any regulations that are “overburdening” lobstermen and other small businesspeople. “We need to make sure we certainly protect our air, our water and our environment but also have a healthy balance there so people can get jobs and feed their families and pay the taxes necessary to fund our government,” he said.

“The regulatory climate is stifling creation of small businesses, (and) lobstermen are small businesspeople,” he said.

Jobs and the economy are his top priority, Summers said. “I look at my 3-year-old and I wonder if he's going to have the same opportunities that my other children and I have had growing up. It's going to be important reducing that debt and getting spending under control so businesses can grow and hire people.”

American energy

Summers said he favors an “all of the above” approach to energy, and wants America to turn as much as possible toward domestic energy sources.

“Let's face it. Every day that we import oil from the Mid-East, we're paying people that we're fighting against,” he said. “And I think we have a moral responsibility as a country to make sure we're energy self-sufficient. All forms of energy have to be figured into that.”

That could include nuclear power, he said. “I think that is something that needs to be considered again in this country,” he said. France runs its reactors “in an environmentally responsible way,” including management of the waste, he said.

However, Summers is not looking to try to revive nuclear power in Maine due to the lingering issue of the waste still stored at the site of the former Maine Yankee plant in Wiscasset, he said.

Summers supports the continuation of winter fuel aid through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program known as LIHEAP.

Look at all spending

“We're going to truly have to go through every line of the federal budget and cut spending where it's not necessary and make sure that we can transfer those funds into areas where we have a responsibility like Social Security and Medicare.”

Asked about what he would do for the region's aging population, Summers said he would oppose any Social Security cuts for people who currently receive it. For others, he would consider raising the eligibility age a year or two and looking at whether “people who are well off” could get less money than they would have coming under the current system.

Ideas welcome for Route 1

Summers has no specific plans regarding the Wiscasset area of Route 1, but said he'd “certainly be open to all ideas.” He described the corridor as critical to the region's tourism and movement of goods and services.

“We need to make sure federal funds are available to make sure that road is safe and adds to our economic formula in the Midcoast,” he said.

Susan Johns can be reached at 844-4633 or sjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com.