Partnership we are working together with the Portland Press harold and the Bangor Daily News to get you the answers you need to cast your ballot. This date falls on the 19th anniversary of the 9 11 terror attacks and we remember that heroes and honor the lives lost. It is also a day when americans feel more patriotic than they usually do. Part of our civic duty is to make informed choices on election day. For the next hour we are going to ask questions of the four candidates for mains u. S. Senate seat. The incumbent is republican Susan Collins seeking election to a fifth term. That challenger democrat from linnouse sara gideon max an independent and lisa savage also independent. Our goal is to shed light on important issues. The first round of questions will be addressed to each candidate and they will have one minute. Subsequent rounds will address policy issues with one minute for the first answer and we will be open to followups and discussion. We are going to pose some questions submitted by our News Center Maine viewers and by readers and subscribers of the Portland Press herald and the Bangor Daily News and at the end candidates will have one minute each for a closing statement. Welcome to all of you. Sen. Collins we will begin with you. We learned this week President Trump learned in february the coronavirus is deadlier than the flu and that it is airborne but he deliberately downplayed the seriousness of that threaten public and days later was holding an openair rally in new hampshire. Did the president fail in his response ability to protect the health and safety of americans . Sen. Collins i believe the president should have been straightforward with the American People. The American People can take hard facts, and he had an obligation as president to be straightforward with them, and to tell all that he has known. I have said, since the beginning, that the president S Performance has been uneven. And that he should follow the advice of his excellent medical advisors. Speaker gideon, you have talked about running the house of representatives in a bipartisan manner symbolized by putting together seats so republicans and democrats are sitting together. Back to [] have you built a working relationship with republicans in augustine, something you could do in washington as well . You. Gideon thank i think my record in augustine speaks for itself. Bringing together democrats, republicans and independents is something i have worked hard to do and been successful at even in the most challenging times. Whether looking at health care, protecting health care that exists under aca or expanding it. Dealing with Climate Change or bring people together to combat the Opioid Crisis or to bring people out of poverty i think my record speaks for itself and i stand by it. Max linn, meiners know very little about you. You have been republican and democrat and now you are running as an independent you try to get on the ballot two years ago and felt, there were signatures deemed fraudulent. To actvoters trust you with integrity if youre part of their congressional delegation . I want to say to be yours we have a lot of fun tonight and we are from the old school and i want to say to my mother and father before i address anybody i introduce myself. I have been a certified Financial Planner and International Businessman for 35 years. I think we all know in our hearts our politics needs something different. Opponents,o of my sarah and susan, have raised 100 million from washington, d. C. That is what im competing against, 100 million, so i know in order for me to win your vote and win here tonight i have to be way outside the box, i have to be that something different. So i want to share with our moderators and viewers, a lot of times when our moderators ask me a question, i might put that question aside. Because i know i have to slay these giants. It is not going to be easy. So im going to have to be outside the box. Host mr. Linn, that is your time is up. That is my strategy, so be patient with me. Host we appreciate that. Finally, asa savage you have been a frequent protester about ironworks and have encouraged pivoting from building warships to focusing on clean energy manufacturing. Can you assure people whose businesses depend on that yard you are going to have their backs if you are part of our delegation . The thank you for question, pat, thank you rachel and mike for being here, thank you candidates an audience listening in. It is a good question and i do believe a Green New Deal could send federal funding in the direction of our existing great bath Ironworks Shipyard to build something, solutions that would mitigate Climate Change. We are in a Climate Emergency now. We see the west coast on fire. It just happened during a pandemic. Bath ironworks got money under the defense production act and made those machines they use at, to make the covid19 testing swabs. They did it very quickly with reinvestment. I also know economists Research Shows filling Something Else like a Clean Energy System or light rail system would actually create 50 additional jobs, with the same billiondollar investment. So i think it is a win for climate and a win for jobs in maine. I think it could certainly be done as a Green New Deal. Host thank you, our next question from rachel, and education and political reporter with the Portland Press herald. Coronavirus pandemic exposed inadequacies in our health care system. How would you ensure everyone who needs health care has access to it and cant afford it . All of us know before this pandemic started we saw meiners making terrible choices everyday about whether they would see a doctor or put food on the table and nobody should have to make a choice like that and everybody deserves access to health care they can afford. I know once upon a time sen. Collins agree to that. In the beginning of her Senate Career she said it was one of her top priorities. Yet she was a key vote for the 2017 tax belt which enabled republicans across the country to bring forward a lawsuit even before a pandemic, that friends to take away Peoples Health care. Here in maine we had to pick up the pieces. In the legislature we protected the core provisions of aca insuring people with preexisting conditions and seniors would be covered. In the senate this is what i will continue to do. We need a public option available for people to buy been a care for people to bite medicare if they wanted, and to increase for people to buy medicare if they wanted. And to increase, to make medicare available and make sure people have the Health Insurance they need. Host mr. Linn . Could you repeat the question . How to make sure everyone who needs health care and can afford it. Max as i mentioned i have to be outside the box because im competing against 100. So im going to put your question aside and i have a bombshell to announce tonight. I would ask that you stick with the question. Max requested denied. I would like to say the eyes and ears and voices of people, we represent nature and the wilderness. That brings me to the cmp corridor. How many people come up to 80,000 people. Host do you have any interest in health care . We can talk about that and we can talk about other things later . Max requested denied, again. And i appreciate that in these moderators are great moderators and i apologize because i know you are doing your. Job as best as possible. Please realize, i have not started my time, i am addressing this and youre flushing me. Host that is the time allotted and that is how it was used. Max let me ask for clarity. Im competing against one had a Million Dollars and they are the front runners. For me to be that u. S. Senate candidate i have be outofthebox tonight. Host and we need to know where you stand on the issues. Max i have got to be different. As the moderator i want the question but i do not want to be judged on my answer because the only people judging my answer are the ones from maine. Now you are taking my time. Max dont interrupt me because im already fighting against 100 million i do not want to fight the operators on night and part of my strategy is to be outside the box. Host lets hear from ms. Savage on the health care question. Lisa as a schoolteacher in central maine for 25 years even before the pandemic hit and we moved into a public emergency, i saw the families around me struggling to get Adequate Health care. Many of the children had health care. But the adults in the family did not. Nobody had out a quick thatll care. That it adequate dental care. That is not fair and that should not be the case in the wealthiest nation in the world. I stand for medicare for all, singleparent universal health care, which should be expanded to cover everyone who is not covered now, and it should be improved to cover mental and dental health and vision and hearing that are not covered now. I think the majority of people in the United States would agree and i know the majority of people and maine agree. I know that underrate Choice Voting it is safe or, if voters and made agree with me that under rank Choice Voting it is safe that if voters in maine agree with me they can rank me first without spoiling the election and they can show at that vote that they want medicare for all. Host sen. Collins . Sen. Collins there are three factors. First of all we need transparency in pricing. You should know what the medical procedure is going to cost before you have it. Second, we need to enter access. That means maintaining two and sure access we need to and sure access to ensure access, that means maintaining our rural hospitals. The proposal sarah endorsed means they would be reimbursed under the medicare rate and that is not enough for them to survive, and making the critical access hospitals does not solve the problem. We need to make it more affordable. There is a huge difference between sarah and me. On the issue of the individual mandate. She supports this tax which falls 80 of those who paid the tax for not having insurance that they cannot afford, who make under 50,000 per year. Is that as proposing, single mom pay a tax penalty of 1000 if she cannot afford insurance. Host speaker gideon, quick rebuttal . Spkr. Gideon thank you very much. Sen. Collins mentioned the individual mandate. She likes to be on both sides of the health care issue, holding up her vote against repealing it on one hand but voting 12 times to either undermine it or repeal it in other cases, and then voting for the tax bill which put it in jeopardy. To be clear sen. Collins knew exactly what would happen when she voted for that tax bill. She signed onto an amicus brief and 2012 sang without the individual mandate, the Health Care Law is unconstitutional. Host next question from mike sheppard, the politics editor for the Bangor Daily News. We have been asking readers what they care about most. Right now, the economy is number one. The senate cannot agree on a new stimulus package. State and local budgets are busting and families are struggling. Gabriel, a 2020 College Graduate from bangor facing an unstable job market wanted me to ask you how you would balance public with the economics and job market. Max my wheelhouse is financial planning. Again for the time being i plan to answer all these questions as i see fit. So im going to put your question aside because i have a lot of bombshells i want to announce tonight so i will get right to it. That is, we all know the fight we had with cmp. Can we go back to economics . Max no i cant because right now, next week im filing a lawsuit against cmp we are going to stop cmp in their tracks and im going to show you what it means to stop cmp because they have hired big law firms and now i have. We have a lawsuit coming, max linn and people of maine versus cmp. I can promise you as your next u. N. s senator cmp u. S. Senator cmp will be stopped and i can promise you with susan or sara, cmp will go through and destroy our cherished wilderness and we cannot let that happen. I think our lack of sigel pair universal health care is one of the biggest economic problems people in maine are facing. Because a Small Business has to grapple with funding the health are of theirs workers, business has to grapple with Funding Health care of workers, and many people who lose their homes, default on their mortgage, cannot pay their grocery bill. It is because there was an illness in the family. Even the they had Health Insurance, the costs became catastrophic. That is not fair. I stand for medicare for all. I believe medicare for all would solve many of our economic problems here in this country. We are the only wealthy country that does not have universal singlepayer health care. Many nonwealthy countries have a versatile singlepayer health care got it after world war ii. It is far past time for us to do that and under rank Choice Voting if pain voters agree with me they can vote for me to show that they agree we need medicare for all yesterday, especially in an economic crisis. Host sen. Collins . Sen. Collins Small Businesses are the key to jobs in the state of maine. Operated has owned and Small Business in northern maine for 176 years, 176 years. Struck, itronavirus instantly became apparent that our Small Businesses were in dire trouble. I coauthored the Paycheck Protection Program, to help Small Businesses stay afloat, and provide jobs for their employees. That is how 28,000 Small Businesses, three out of four, sustained 250,000 jobs in our state. It has also brought 2. 3 billion dollars to our state in ivablee all loans forg loans, as long as the majority of the money is used on paychex. Checks. That was the theory behind this and it has been enormous lay successful. Host speaker gideon . Spkr. Gideon thank you for the question, an important one before covid19 and now for us. There are number of things to focus on. We need to build the Digital Infrastructure in the state that allows businesses to grow and scale up and allows people like you to work here. I also think we need stronger job training and education programs. And we need to roughly address how high the cost of higher too fouryear your and technical education. Another problem is covid to 4 year and technical education. We see President Trump lying about where we were. I want to ask sen. Collins who she thinks should be leading this country . She had neglected to answer the question and i would like to give her the opportunity. I think joe biden should be our leader to help us with Public Health and rebuilding an economy. Host what you care to respond . Sen. Collins pat, let me say this. I do not think the people of maine need my advice on whom to support for president. Last week i was on a bus tour all over the state of maine. Not a Single Person asked me, who should be our next president . What they did say was how grateful they were, for the Paycheck Protection Program that i wrote, because it preserved their job or their Small Business. They talked about the cost of health care. They talked about the work that i had done to bring transportation money to the state of maine. Those are the issues people care about. Host thank you, senator. We have a number of questions from voters in maine. This comes from a Bangor Daily News subscriber. Ourwould you address environmental and sustainability issues, in a way that builds bridges between political views and seems appropriate . It to lisa savage first. Lisa i do think we need a Public Transportation system here in maine to get people out of their cars and that would be a huge win for climate. We have Public Transportation locally in cities but we could have a light rail system that would provide Public Transportation between areas in maine and i think that would help a lot. We also need to stop altering things that drive Climate Change, and instead turn our capacity to building things that will mitigate the effects of Climate Change. I stand for agree new deal. That is a copy has a plan that includes converting our industrial capacity and regenerative agriculture, a growth area for maine. Our farmers are younger than most states. It also would include consumer owned and operated utilities, such as broadband internet, water systems, and electricity. Cmp corridord the and i think multinational corporations outside of maine should not be making decisions about maines electric grid. Host thank you. Sen. Collins . Sen. Collins i think an issue that can bring us together is energy storage. I have introduced a bipartisan bill in the senate, so that we can invest in projects. So we can figure out how to store wind energy when the wind is not blowing, and solar