Dana Dow said he doesn’t want to take slices of the pie from one group to give to another. He wants to make the pie bigger for everyone. Dow served as state senator from 2004 to 2008, then sought the seat again when his successor, David Trahan, resigned. He lost in the special election to Christopher Johnson. Dow also served a term in the Maine House of Representatives from 2010 to 2012.

Dow said that he personally was voting against Question One, the marijuana legalization question. “My son is voting for it; he thinks it’s a good way to control substance abuse, but I’m an old school teacher, and I’m voting against,” he said. Dow said he is in favor of medical marijuana, which he said has performed miracles for some people. “This is a long and complicated bill, and it is the tip of the iceberg. I’m not sure what will take place in the Legislature if it passes.”

Dow also opposes Question 2, saying that most of those who would be subject to the additional three percent tax, generating $157 million to fund schools, would be small businesses. “We say we’re for small business in Maine, but this certainly doesn’t help them out,” he said. He pointed out that people who live in other places for 183 days per year wouldn’t pay it, and that the bill says that the Legislature isn’t bound to spend the money on schools.

Dow said he is in favor of closing loopholes in gun sales laws, but that Question 3 is too far-reaching. “A lot of this has to do with lending a gun to someone, and the definition of family is questionable. I wouldn’t be able to lend a gun to my brother’s nephew, who is a Marine.” He said he could take up the issue if it dealt with permanent sales only.

On Question 4, Dow said he has no problem raising a reasonable minimum wage, but if Question 4 passes, Maine’s minimum wage would be the highest in New England. “Small restaurants are worried about it,” he said. “One manager I talked to said they’d be out of business in five years. They’ll be forced to raise food prices.” Dow said most people want businesses to pay their fair share. “What fair share aren’t they paying?” he asked. “We need to solve the minimum wage problem for the 40 percent of the people who are really making minimum wage, not the wait staff who are making a lot more than that.

Dow is also against Question 5, the ranked choice voting measure. “The system can be too easily rigged to get whatever party you want in,” he said. “It’s been tried in a few cities, and didn’t seem to make much of a difference.”

Dow does support Question 6, the highway bond.

Dow also addressed some of the issues likely to come up in the next legislative session. In health care, he said Medicaid expansion serves healthy young adults, and if Maine were to take the federal match, it might be forced to drop the program for those people, if the match drops. He said opioid addiction is a serious problem nationwide, and needs funding. “But where is the money going to come from,” he asked. “If we put it here, we have to take it from other people.” Mental health in general, he said, is a bigger problem in Maine than most people realize.

Some of the funding might be able to be realized by reducing nursing home costs, now about $100,000 per year per patient, by more aging in place initiatives for people who need assisted living care, Dow said.

He has concerns about the use of Electronic Benefit Cards out of state, and said that some cards have been found in places such as Brooklyn and Lowell. If photos on the cards can stem that problem, he said, it might be worth trying. Or restricting benefit use to Maine and New Hampshire for those who live on the borders. He said he is also in favor of a six-month delay for new Maine residents whether they are immigrants or not. “Everybody is equal, I don’t discriminate,” he said. “We need to solve economic inequality.”

One of the biggest issues for businesses and residents alike is the cost of electricity. “We refuse to bring in Canadian hydropower,” he said. “We eliminated our own cheap energy, and now we can’t buy power from (HydroQuebec) because it encourages them to build dams. We have to do everything we can do to encourage businesses to come here and stay here, and one of those things is lowering the price of energy.”