COMMUNITY PROFILE:
This district serves the Oxford County communities of Brownfield, Denmark, Fryeburg, Hebron, Norway, Otisfield, Oxford, Paris, Sweden and Waterford.
This district also serves the Androscoggin County communities of Mechanic Falls and Minot.
This district also serves the Cumberland County communities of Bridgton and Harrison.
There are 27,185 actively registered voters within this district:
CURRENT REPRESENTATIVE:
Richard “Rick” Bennett, a Republican from Oxford. Sen. Bennett has recently served in the state legislature since being elected in November 2020. He previously served in the House from 1991-1994 and the Senate from 1997-2004.
As a business innovator, Sen. Bennett has led the turnaround of several Maine-based enterprises. From 2006-2014, he was CEO and then Chairman of GMI Ratings and its predecessor, The Corporate Library, an investment research firm headquartered in Portland, Maine, with offices in New York, San Diego and London. Under his leadership, the firm grew from a money-losing start-up to a profitable global enterprise employing approximately 50 people in its Maine office.
As co-chairman of Quoddy, the storied footwear brand based in Lewiston, Sen. Bennett led a restructuring that saved local shoe-making jobs and created a platform for the company’s growth. He has served on the board of directors of Biddeford-based GWI, a leading telecom and internet company, for the past 20 years and helped GWI adapt and grow in a volatile, fast-moving market. The nation’s only Certified B Corp telecom, the company is now building miles of high-speed fiber direct to homes and businesses in western Maine. He is currently President and CEO of ValueEdge Advisors, a firm he formed in the summer of 2014 to hold big companies accountable to their stakeholders.
Sen. Bennett served for several years on the boards of the Maine Heritage Policy Center – now called the Maine Policy Institute – and Maine Conservation Voters. He was appointed by then-President George W. Bush to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships in 2005 and served on the Commission until 2009. More recently, he was a trustee of Hebron Academy from 2010-2019.
Sen. Bennett serves on the appropriations and financial affairs committee which covers General Fund appropriations and general fiscal policy; federal funds allocations, special revenue and block grant allocations when part of a biennial or supplemental budget; Budget Stabilization Fund; general obligation bond issues; collective bargaining funding; budgeting methodologies; review of financial orders; and financial evaluation of agencies of state government.
Sen. Bennett also serves on the government oversight committee. The mission of the Joint Legislative Government Oversight Committee, hereafter called the “Committee”, is to oversee program evaluation and government accountability matters in State government. The Committee seeks to ensure that public funds are expended for intended purposes, and that programs and activities are effectively, efficiently and economically managed. The Committee accomplishes this mission by conducting public inquiries and directing the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to conduct independent, objective reviews of State agencies and programs and other entities receiving public funds or expending private monies for public purposes.
Sen. Bennett also serves on the joint rules committee, which assists in carrying out the responsibilities of the Legislature.
Information for this lawmaker’s biography has been compiled from numerous public sources, including pages maintained by political parties, individual lawmakers and the Maine Legislature.
Contact this lawmaker: Richard.Bennett@legislature.maine.gov or 207-539-9005
ELECTIONS 2024:
This seat is on the ballot during the 2024 election cycle. Running for the seat are Richard Bennett (R) and Linda Miller (D).
View contributions to each candidate, campaign expenditures and campaign filings on the Maine Ethics Commission website.
On Election Night in November, this section will feature live results for this race:
LEGISLATIVE WORK:
The following chart is a compilation of legislation sponsored by Sen. Bennett during the 131st Legislature. To learn more about each legislation and see where it is in the legislative process, click on the bill ID in the first column. View each vote cast by Sen. Bennett.
For those viewing this page on mobile, you can view more columns by scrolling left-to-right through the embedded table. That same material is available by clicking the Bill ID.
AI Disclosure: The bill summaries appearing below have been generated by Claude Haiku, an Artificial Intelligence model from Anthropic, which describes itself as an AI safety and research company. BillTrack50, which has compiled the summaries, has extensively tested the accuracy of the information but does not guarantee that every summary is completely accurate and comprehensive. You should always read and rely on the bill text that is provided by the Maine Legislature, which is accessible by clicking on the Bill ID in the table. (A button to flag AI-generated errors to the BillTrack50 team is available on each bill page.) We encourage readers to view our ethics policy, which includes our policy on the newsroom’s use of AI.
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