Dean Scontras was born and raised in Southern Maine, the youngest of seven children.
He graduated from Sanford High School in ’87 and the University of Maine in ’91.
Despite being told that he was too small to play football, he played as a varsity wide receiver his freshman year at Sanford – and didn’t win a single game.
His senior year they were 6-2, and he went on to play Division IA ball for UMaine.
Years later, he’s striving to defeat the odds again, this time as a Republican taking on a lineup of power-hitting names in Maine’s Democratic party. He’s running for Maine’s first-district seat in the U.S. Congress.
His confidence is backed by facts, statistics and examples of where this state has been going wrong and what’s needed to correct it.
To the USM student body, he asks that you “not believe the hype.”
The “hype,” he told me when I sat down with him last week, is believing Democrats because they’re “good” and disagreeing with Republicans because they’re “bad” – a traditional Mainer attitude.
When Scontras graduated he did what half of the young people from this state’s colleges do.
“I hopped in my red Volkswagen Rabbit and left Maine. On that drive I heard a country song on the radio titled ‘I ain’t never comin back again.'” Scontras didn’t plan to either.
But he did, after spending time in nearly every metropolis in the country working in the tech industry. He returned to raise his family, wanting to share the Maine landscape with his kids.
“When I take my sons fishing on the rocks for stripers or play football on the beach, there is nothing else that I’d rather be doing. That is the most important thing to me.”
But more than just the family man, Scontras is a politician – and he’s concerned that the current Democrats aren’t doing what’s best for the state.
He says that the governor turned down tech companies looking to bring business to Maine, saying that the state wanted to keep an agrarian economy and was “more interested in growing tomatoes in a glass house.”
On another point, he says that Ethan Stremling (a Dem. opponent) and Governor Baldacci aren’t planning on giving Mainers the opportunity to be independent from the state.
Stremling wants to raise the minimum wage another dollar – which will make things tougher for small businesses.
I spoke up and said that Democrats like Stremling, who also owns low-income housing, keep pushing programs that allow low-income Mainers to live off the state, while at the same time keeping those people in poverty – and keeping their vote.
It’s a tactic that breeds laziness and dependency on government programs, which breeds Democratic voters.
Working Mainers suffer as their taxes and costs of living are constantly rising.
In an interesting example, Scontras compared Maine to Ireland.
“Ireland was a major exporter of potatoes and young people. The taxes and (agragarian) economy drove Ireland’s youth right out of the country.”
He says that once Ireland figured out that releasing tax pressures and introducing new types of industries would fix the problem, they began to thrive. Now that they’re at the top of the European Union, people are returning. “Young people are staying and exporting potatoes isn’t as important.”
Talking about a March 26 debate at the Maine Art Space Gallery, he put into two sentences what I’ve been trying to tell my liberal friends for years: “the Democrats on that stage and across Maine and America have begun to take away the idea that America is exceptional. It dilutes what is truly American.”
On Maine Republicans and the directions the party should take, he had an interesting allegory.
“The Maine Republican party is a lot like the Red Sox used to be. No matter how good they were or how much they were winning by, everyone expected them to lose.”
Everyone bought into it, he says, until the team and its fans began to trust the talent, rather than the curse. Down 3-0 in the ALCS, they came back-and Scontras isn’t about to forget it.
“The Maine Republican party needs to stop believing in the curse that this state will always be run by Democrats. There’s no better example than the Red Sox, even the Patriots. They had Bledsoe, who was a good quarterback with a legendary background, but then he went down and the unknown Tom Brady came in. [Brady] believed in himself and the fans stood behind him. These patterns of victory, the stories of the way these teams won, this is what the Maine Republican party needs to become.”
“Give me one reason why students should stay in Maine,” I asked him.
With the story of his own trip in the VW Rabbit and what eventually brought him back, his answer was simple. “To influence change.”
Opponent’s criticize Scontras’ inexperience in public office, but it becomes a moot point when one realizes that the House of Representatives is not merely a political stepping stone – it’s for working American citizens who wish to influence change and better the country’s future.
A proud Mainer with Reagan-like values, Scontras is striving for meaningful change and real progress toward the goals common to both Republicans and Democrats: maintaining graduates, eliminating budget deficits, decreasing the tax burden, and attracting businesses that will turn our economy around.
Don’t believe the hype around Democrats. Believe the hype around changes that will work.
Visit www.teamdean08.com for more information on Scontras and his candidacy.