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Eliot Cutler, an independent candidate in the 2010 Maine gubernatorial election, believes Maine’s current system of post-secondary education is destined to fail.
“We’re a state of 1.3 million people. We have 14 separate campuses — seven community college campuses and seven university campuses,” said Cutler, a Cape Elizabeth attorney, in a February telephone interview. “The [University of Maine] system and the community college system don’t communicate with each other.”
Cutler said the system is undermining itself because many community college credits are non-transferable within the University of Maine System. He said functions and programs in the two systems are being duplicated — a serious problem for a fiscally challenged state.
“We need to merge the systems. They ought to be under the same governing board; they should be under the same executive. They should be much more closely coordinated with [the] K-12 education system in Maine,” Cutler said.
An increase in economic activity is the only way to keep college graduates in Maine, according to Cutler. He said Maine is “the oldest state in the nation and getting older,” and expressed worry for the economic future in Maine if the trend continues.
“You increase the level of economic activity by tearing down the barriers that are keeping it out, and in Maine, right now, we have a cost of living and doing business in this state that is keeping out investment and that has to change,” Cutler said.
Cutler said Maine’s Legislature has been building a wall of costs for decades. He blamed Democrats and Republicans in Augusta for being unable to reverse course.
“When someone looks at Maine as a place to start a business or invest in a business, he or she looks at Maine and sees high cost of electricity, high cost of health insurance [and] high cost of delivering public services. And by the time you add up all of those costs, you end up with a cost structure that makes it very discouraging,” Cutler said. “I want to lower the price of living and doing business in Maine.”
Cutler does not want to close university campuses — an option he considers as a last resort because of community impact in smaller university communities statewide. He does, however, want to rethink the usage of community college and university campuses.
“There’s a lot we can do with the resources we have that make a lot more sense than what we’re doing,” Cutler said.
Cutler proposed the idea of magnet high schools throughout Maine, such as an agricultural sciences school in potato-rich Aroostook County, a foreign language school in the largely francophone Fort Kent, an economics school in densely populated southern Maine and a marine sciences school in coastal Machias. All magnet schools, the candidate said, could be housed along with university campuses in those areas.
“You [would] begin to open up greater, broader possibilities that make more economic sense and make more educational sense,” Cutler said.
Cutler said his plan for education reform — which also includes free preschool, a transition to merit pay increases for teachers, longer K-12 school days and an integrated “K- through lifetime system” — is his first priority and a proposal he says one would never see from the Democratic Party. Cutler said the leadership of the party is bound to the Maine Education Association and teachers unions.
“They can’t free themselves from what the union wants. Now, you can’t reform public education in the state of Maine unless you free yourself from the obligations to the teachers’ unions,” Cutler said.
Cutler has a long résumé in federal government, though he has never before run for elected office. He started his career as a legislative assistant for former U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie, D-Maine, who also served as Maine’s governor and U.S. Secretary of State.
He served under former Democratic president Jimmy Carter as associate director for natural resources, energy and science in the White House Office of Management and Budget from 1977 to 1980.
“I was the one who basically redirected the investment program in the energy department into alternative energy technologies — solar, wind and so forth. In 1980 and the early ’80s, a higher percentage of total electricity in the United States was being generated from alternative technologies than it is today,” Cutler said.
A longtime Democrat, Cutler registered as a Republican briefly in 2006 in opposition to Gov. John Baldacci’s performance. He said Baldacci’s approach to state budget issues doesn’t make sense.
“You can’t [balance a budget] by giving, which is what this governor proposed to do in his supplemental budget. The only way you can do it is by a bottom-up evaluation of every program in the state and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work and throwing out what doesn’t work,” Cutler said. “It’s tough work and you piss off a lot of people, but if you’re not willing to break eggs you shouldn’t be governor.”
Cutler switched back to the Democratic Party for a short time in 2008 to vote for Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries. Cutler contributed $4,500 in separate donations to the Obama campaign, according to OpenSecrets.org, a Web site that monitors monetary donations made to politicians.
Cutler said Democrats and Republicans “are starved for new ideas,” leading to increased reliance on special interest groups. Cutler feels confident in his chances, joking that Nov. 2, the day of the election, will be “Independent’s Day” in Maine.
“I don’t come into this with the obligations and wrapped up in the dogma of the two parties. And I think the two parties have demonstratively failed,” Cutler said. “Look, I have more experience than anybody in this race. In politics, in government, in business. It’s not as though I’m a neophyte.”
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