Helen Hanson

I’m a common, ordinary, working woman,” says 44-year old Helen Hanson of China.

Maybe, but she’s attempting something out of the ordinary with a run for the State House of Representatives from House District 55.

Hanson is a home health care worker and a former typesetter. She grew up in Waterville, is a graduate of Central Maine Vocational Technical Institute (now Central Maine Community College) and got the public policy bug while doing advocacy work for her union, the MSEA-SEIU Local 1889, Local 771.  “We’d been working on the health insurance issue,” she points out. “This work force has no insurance. Can you imagine that? We’re providing health care for people with insurance and we have none.   That’s one thing I am really heated about. The direct care work force still doesn’t have health insurance.”

Her activism started her thinking about getting involved in politics. Soon a friend urged her to apply for the Emerge Maine program and she started to learn about the nuts and bolts of running a campaign.

“The comradery, the support, the companionship was so important in the Emerge program,” Hanson observes.

Hanson is a member of the current Emerge class and faces a three-way race from a Republican conservative district in the fall general election.  (She has no Democratic opponents in the June primary.) Her opponents are incumbent Republican David Cotta and China Town Selectman Neil Farrington, an Independent.  She’s using Clean Election money to finance her campaign and says that even though she is somewhat reluctant to take public money to run for office, she knows she couldn’t afford it otherwise.  Right now her 18-year old daughter Jeanne is college-bound and her husband William, a state worker, is on a seasonal lay-off.

As this Democrat gears up for her primary run, she wants to talk about things she’s committed to working on if elected: bringing good jobs to central Maine, luring manufacturing back to the state and ensuring that kids in the state can acquire the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.

And, she’s not giving up on her push for more accessible health insurance.  “We’re making a lot of noise now. People in the legislature know me but I want a crack at it from the inside instead of talking as a citizen on the outside,” Hanson insists.

But before she does all that, Helen Hanson plans to knock on a lot of doors and talk to the voters in her district. She’s confident that once they get to know her, they will vote for her.   As she puts it, “It’s scary running against an incumbent but I think I have a good shot at this if I work hard.”