Support Senator Rick Bennett

Candidate for Maine State Senate District 18

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Meet Rick

Senator Rick Bennett is a Maine native and has family roots in Oxford County going back over two centuries.

Rick, a former President of the Maine Senate, has 14 earlier years of public service in the Senate and House, where he earned a reputation as a reformer and staunch advocate for fiscal discipline, balanced budgets, term limits, governmental accountability, and Maine’s precious outdoors heritage. Rick was also instrumental in the creation of the Maine University and Community College Center in South Paris in 2002 and the Western Maine Veterans Home in 1993.

Rick was newly elected in 2020.  Rick earlier represented western Maine for four terms in the Maine Senate, from 1996 to 2004. In 2000 with a partisan tie in the Maine Senate that many said would mean gridlock, he was unanimously elected as President of the Senate in a unique power-sharing agreement that gave a voice to every member, regardless of party. From 1990 to 1994 he served two terms in the Maine House of Representatives.

As a business innovator, Rick has led the turn-around of several Maine-based enterprises.

• From 2006-2014, Rick 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 Rick’s leadership, the firm grew from a money-losing start-up to a profitable global enterprise employing approximately 50 people in its Maine offices.​

• As Co-Chairman of Quoddy, the storied footwear brand based in Lewiston, Rick led a restructuring that saved local shoe making jobs and created a platform for the company’s growth.

 

• For the past 20 years, Rick has served on the board of directors of GWI, the leading telecom and internet company based in Biddeford, where he has helped that business adapt and grow in a volatile, fast-moving market. The company is now building miles of high-speed fiber direct to homes and businesses in Western Maine.

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• Rick is currently President and CEO of ValueEdge Advisors, a firm he formed in summer 2014 to hold big companies accountable to their stakeholders.​

Rick served for several years on the boards of the Maine Heritage Policy Center and the Maine Conservation Voters. From 2010 to 2019 Rick was a trustee of Hebron Academy. In 2005 Rick was appointed by President Bush to the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, on which he served until 2009.

​​Rick received his B.A. with honors from Harvard University in 1986 and his M.B.A. from the University of Southern Maine in 2000. He is an active member of the First Congregational Church of South Paris and currently leads the Church Council. At home, he enjoys long-distance running, having completed thirteen marathons and two ultramarathons. He lives in Oxford, Maine, with his wife Karen, who works in the community as a home health therapist. Together they have two adult children, Abby and Nathaniel, and one dog and one cat.

District 18 Towns

​Bridgton
Brownfield
Denmark
Fryeburg
Harrison

Hebron
Mechanic Falls​
Minot
Norway
Paris

Otisfield
Oxford
Sweden
Waterford

 

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