Ahead of Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to Maine yesterday, the Maine Democratic Party hosted leaders from across the state to call out the Trump administration’s failed pandemic response and broken health care promises.

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News Center Maine: “The Maine Democratic Party responded [...] Executive Director Lisa Roberts released a statement saying in part, ‘Maine voters are tired of Trump and Pence's broken promises and they're ready to send Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to the White House.

WABI: Maine Dems hold virtual roundtable during Vice President’s visit

  • Congresswoman Chellie Pingree took part saying the administration has completely mishandled the coronavirus pandemic. She says as a result, the country has numbers going in the wrong direction and an economy that is continuing to be challenged.
     
  • Maine Senate President and democrat, Troy Jackson says, “With COVID-19, America has been knocked down. There’s no doubt about it. There’s millions of people that have lost their jobs. There’s people that have lost their healthcare. Small businesses that have lost and there’s no plan on how to help these people. It’s just a complete failure of leadership.”
     
  • “I see a positive future in electing Vice President Biden and Senator Harris to be our next President and Vice President to get us out of the mess that this self-serving administration has left us with," says Maine’s Attorney General Aaron Frey.

Maine Public: Democrats Respond To Pence's Maine Visit: He 'Proudly' Led Anti-Women, Anti-LGBT Measures

  • Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who is campaigning to keep her seat in the 1st District, said she witnessed firsthand the issues that Pence worked on while they both served in Congress. “He was proudly the leader of many of the measures that were anti-women’s right to choose, anti-LGBT rights, whether it was defunding Planned Parenthood or his continuing support of anti-LGBT measures, including supporting the bigoted conversion therapy, which is banned here in the state of Maine,” she said.
     
  • Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey said that the Trump-Pence administration has failed in its response to the coronavirus pandemic. “We were promised testing. We were promised that we were going to be able to make sure that us, our families, were safe and COVID-19 negative. Still waiting for that broad access that was promised very early on in the crisis,” he said.
     
  • Frey also criticized the Trump-Pence administration for threatening access to health care during the pandemic by backing a Supreme Court case that seeks to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

WMTW: Vice President Mike Pence rallies supporters in Maine's critical 2nd District

  • The Maine Democratic Party responded to Pence’s visit by saying that the Trump administration has “destroyed” the country during their “failed leadership” during the coronavirus pandemic.
     
  • “Their unwillingness to fund the important measures we’ve needed, whether it’s to take care of people’s health, to reopen our schools, to keep our economy going, or to make sure we’ve had adequate testing and tracing. They fought us every step of the way; they didn’t tell the American people the truth,” Rep. Chellie Pingree said.

Bangor Daily News: In Maine’s swing 2nd District, Mike Pence says ‘era of economic surrender is over’

  • The rally came as coronavirus cases were climbing again in the U.S., driven by hotspots in the Midwest and Rocky Mountains. The country is fifth-highest in the world in per-capita cases, according to Johns Hopkins University. Pence chairs Trump’s coronavirus task force and Democrats targeted that response in a statement before the vice president’s speech.
     
  • “They haven’t told the American people the truth, they’ve completely mishandled this, and as a result we still have a country with numbers going in the wrong direction and an economy that is continuing to be challenged,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from the 1st District.

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