by Rep. Will Tuell

For the past eight years, I have done my best to serve much of coastal Washington County in the Maine House of Representatives. While there have certainly been ups and downs, successes and defeats, I am honored that so many of you have entrusted me with your support along the way. I love the Maine Legislature and have enjoyed serving there. 

Now it’s time to pass the torch. Not because I’ve lost my passion for serving our area in Augusta. I still have it and would continue to stand up for our small towns, fishing families, and rural way of life if I weren’t termed out of office for the next two years. 

Over the past several months I have been working closely with my House Republican caucus leader Kathleen Dillingham and her campaign team to identify another Republican who shares that commitment to community, who has the experience and dedication to putting good public policy forward, and who shares the values many of us hold closely. Throughout that search, there was one name that was head and shoulders above the rest – one person who can and will represent this area in the Legislature with the same commitment that I have tried to show – Kenneth “Bucket” Davis, my friend and colleague on the East Machias Board of Selectmen for the past twelve and a half years, the man who put me on this journey in the first place. 

Bucket is a lifelong Down Easter with deep roots in our fishing communities. He is honest, direct, plain-spoken, and to the point. On many a spring morning much warmer than this you can find him with a group of seventh and eighth graders stocking and smoking alewives at one of the few remaining fish shacks on the Maine coast. On a cold, ice-plagued Down East morning some twenty years ago, you’d have found him working with the fire department to bring power and supplies to local residents struggling to make it through the ice storm of ’98 without power for two weeks or more. And from the mid-2000s on you would find him in the halls of the statehouse, working with former Senate President Kevin Raye and the Washington County delegation to oppose one size fits all school consolidation. Or following dozens of other bills that impact our area. 

It was Bucket who suggested I run eight years ago, who helped me get my start, and who has been to Augusta on more than one occasion during that time testifying, talking with legislators, department heads, and other policymakers to keep our way of life ours as much as possible. 

So if there is anyone I can pass the torch on to, anyone who will show the same care and commitment to this area, who will represent it with pride, tireless effort, and candor, it is Bucket Davis – who is formally launching his campaign for House District 10 – which includes most of central coastal and interior Washington County. I ask you to join me in supporting and actively campaigning for Kenneth “Bucket” Davis both in the Republican Primary in June and at the general election in November. He will pick up where I leave off, and I will term out knowing our area is in good hands down there in Augusta. 

Rep. Will Tuell represents House District 139, which includes the municipalities of East Machias, Cutler, Machias, Machiasport, Lubec, Eastport, Roque Bluffs, Trescott Township, and Whiting. Tuell’s successor will represent the newly-redrawn District 10, which includes the municipalities of Alexander, Charlotte, Cooper, Crawford, Cutler, Dennysville, East Central Washington, East Machias, Lubec, Machiasport, Marshfield, Northfield, Pembroke, Princeton, Wesley, and Whiting; and the part of the North Washington unorganized territory east of a line described as follows: beginning at the southwest corner border of Grand Lake Stream, then south to the northwest corner border of Wesley.