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Andover businessman running for governor

Kevin Scott throws hat into ring

By Ethan Wilensky-Lanford ewlanford@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

Although Kevin Scott knows it isn’t going to be easy to win the governor’s race as an independent candidate without deep political connections, he wouldn’t run any other way.
“I believe that, for too long, the governor’s office has been occupied by either an extremely wealthy individual, or a career politician with extensive Washington contacts,” he said. “The legislators that we have — part-time, friends and neighbors — they need a peer.”
Scott turned in more than 4,000 valid signatures May 21, qualifying him for a place on the November ballot.
This spring, he has logged 3,500 miles around the state, he said, and is hearing a constant refrain from voters fed up with partisan politics and what he calls “the political class.” He believes that Maine voters want to see somebody in office they can have confidence who’s had success in business and remains approachable and has the capacity to work with the state departments and agencies.
“Call it a citizen governor,” he said.
Scott runs a business that matches high-tech clients with different types of engineers for specific projects or as permanent hires. He started the business in 1998, and runs it with his wife in tiny Andover, where the biggest industry caters to Appalachian Trail hikers.
He grew up in Mexico, and went to George Mason University in Virginia for college. He paid his way through school, he said, taking jobs in concrete construction, brickwork, as a waiter, and conducting telephone surveys.
He has paid for his own campaign thus far, too. Scott did not pay workers to gather qualifying signatures. He began accepting donations when he officially became a candidate last week, and received about $2,000 in the first two days, he said.
His campaign has personally cost him slightly more than $2,000 so far; and though he said he is prepared to spend significantly more, his fundraising goal is a modest $20,000 a month between now and the election.
“We’ve had people coming forward to donate money, and I haven’t even been soliciting it,” he said.
Scott has minimal experience with politics, and has never run a statewide campaign. He has served as an elected member of his town’s water district and was appointed to a three-year term on its Planning Board. He has also been elected moderator during the two previous town meetings.
Scott said that accommodating people with different perspectives would be key to his governing if elected.
“You have a movement on the right, you have a movement on the left, and Mainers would like someone who is a moderate thinker,” he said. “That’s how I’ve led my life, that’s how I’ve succeeded in my business, and that’s how I’ve succeeded in my local community — by building consensus among opposing groups.”
Scott said that, as governor, he would seek to bring Mainers predictability in terms of taxes and regulations for businesses, and a clear funding mechanism for education.
The goal of the state funding 55 percent of education, as approved in a 2004 referendum, is proof of an idea that was not working, he said.
“If our best solution is the state meeting 55 percent, and we haven’t yet achieved it, then we need to find a better best solution,” Scott said. “We should have competitive solutions in the mix.”
He said that Maine should emulate the work of other states that have successfully met challenges, such as lowering utility rates and raising the education level of their work forces to attract new businesses.
“It’s not that great an idea to sit in a room and try to figure out a solution while the answer’s out in the hallway,” he said.
While Scott was serving on the Andover Planning Board, he often approached the Bethel town manager, Scott Cole, for advice, Cole said.
Cole — now Oxford County administrator — said Scott learned the ins and outs of local government quickly.
“Kevin is highly intelligent, energetic, and not bashful,” Cole said. “The kind of questions that he will ask need to be asked and not swept under the rug.”