Ladies and gentlemen, it is time. It’s time to end Augusta’s attitude that money grows trees. It’s time to end years of rule by those who act only with permission from public unions. It’s time for a Republican governor with the courage to stand up to special interests and hold government accountable to Maine people.

As a young man, I fought hard for my country in the Vietnam War. More recently, I’ve fought hard for my state as a citizen legislator. But I have never fought harder in my life than I am fighting now to build a future for Maine.

I’m fighting because this state that we love is in trouble. We are loaded with debt, with too many people dependent on public services, with too few workers in productive jobs. The roads you drove on to get here today are a mess — and not just because of political signs littering the landscape. Bad roads, burdensome taxes on people who work, and confusing regulations are strangling our economy.

Many of you already know me from my service in the Senate where I’ve worked with businesses large and small to encourage economic growth, where I have defeated reckless borrowing by Democrats, and where I have succeeded in overhauling systems that have saved our state hundreds of millions of dollars. Many of you may not know how I got here…. and I’m not talking about my one ton Chevy truck.

My mother grew up on a potato farm in Ashland and came of age in the Great Depression. She became a school teacher and instilled in me and my siblings a sense of self-reliance that growing up on a County farm teaches you. We learned an approach to life that I have always brought to my business and to state budgeting: pay as you go or do without.

My mother, now 93 years old, still lives in Farmington. Former students often stop her on the street to thank her for getting them off their duffs. She believed in daily exercise to improve student learning, something she tells me I must do when elected governor.

My father’s family fished the Maine coast, split granite in Stonington, and settled the town of Farmington, where I was born. My father was a WW II veteran. He served in the Maine Legislature and he worked as U.S. Attorney for Maine under two Republican presidents. He helped build Maine’s Republican Party with great leaders like Margaret Chase Smith and Governor John Reed.

I started my first business at the age of 9, delivering the Portland Press Herald on my bike. A year later my family moved to Gorham, and I expanded the paper delivery business by hiring my siblings. When my brother, Paul, asked for a raise I told him he needed to pedal faster — and if any of you know Paul, that may explain why he now talks and walks at mach speed.

As a senior at Gorham High School, I was awarded a Navy scholarship to Harvard College. One college summer I came home to work at the Farmington canning factory for $1 an hour. The owner made sure that the “college boys” had the toughest jobs in the plant. We did the set up and clean up in addition to working double shifts, 17 hours a day, six days a week. On Sunday, my one day off, it was hard to rest because of nightmares about failing to turn off the pressure cooker. To this day I can’t look at a can of creamed corn without expecting it to burst.

I graduated college during the Vietnam War. I spent the next 5 years on Navy destroyers. I fought on the Vietnam gun line and later conducted intelligence missions against the Soviets. My tours of duty taught me important lessons of leadership and service to country.

After the military, I returned to Maine to raise my three daughters. I went to the Maine School of Law and practiced in Portland for 9 years. During that time, I served as chair of the Portland GOP, often going door-to-door campaigning with Republican candidates. This was long before I ever considered running for office myself.

In 1982, I moved north to my present practice in Skowhegan. My firm, Wright and Mills, has helped many local businesses for the past 27 years. I also co-founded two economic development groups that brought companies like T-Mobile to Oakland with hundreds of new jobs for Central Maine.

We are now coming off the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Every candidate for governor is pitching his own job growth plan, but I’m the only one with the experience to move forward on day one.

We must reduce the tax on capital gains and income. Businesses cannot afford to locate here when they get 8.5% taken off the top, one of the highest income tax rates in the United States.

Maine also has one of the highest costs for electricity. I have been hard at work to solve this problem. Two months ago, I wrote the terms and conditions by which Maine must benefit before we permit others to build an energy corridor through our state. I also sponsored and passed a bill to require tangible benefits for Maine people in the permitting of wind power facilities.

Recently, I opened another door of opportunity for Maine entrepreneurs. TechMaine came to me and suggested a “Fund of Funds” – a means to attract private venture capital that has succeeded in other states. I studied those successful funds and developed a plan for Maine to induce our public pension managers to invest here in our state, in emerging technologies. The Fund of Funds will attract private venture capital from out of state and turn good Maine ideas into good, local jobs.

Beyond job growth, Maine’s fiscal integrity depends on paying down our debt. A few years ago you joined my Don’t Mortgage ME campaign and together we stopped the Democrats from borrowing $447 million from our children to fund today’s budget.
The bulk of our debt is 6 billion dollars in unfunded retirement benefits for public employees. Pension reform may not be a sexy topic like a new sales tax on lap dancing, but it is critical to our financial stability. In the 90s, I fought the unions to preserve the pension reforms passed by Governor McKernan. More recently, I spearheaded the development of a modern, portable pension plan for new hires.

When the next governor assumes office, his first state budget is due immediately. Maine has neither the time nor the money to do extra audits, to study or reflect on what needs to be done, or to train the new governor in the basics of statecraft.

We need a leader who can step in on day one, who knows where to find savings, and how to manage 13,000 state employees and 7000 private contractors. The governor must have the ability to explain it all to the citizens of our state. And most importantly, he must know how to gain support from his board of directors, the 186 people who are independently elected to the Maine legislature.

I am the only Republican candidate with the right combination of private business experience, military leadership training and the legislative and policy skills to bring it together. It is a formidable task.

All seven Republican candidates agree on Maine’s challenges and opportunities. Where we differ is in our priorities, our experience and our preparedness to lead. Some people say because I’ve served in the Legislature perhaps I’m part of the problem. That is a falsehood and an insult to every Republican who has represented you in Augusta.

We Republicans, while serving in the minority, have had to measure success by how often we can block reckless spending and anti-business legislation. We succeeded, for example, in defeating the so-called “H1N1″ bill in which the Senate President proposed to force businesses to pay people for not working in the middle of this recession.

You may not agree with every issue I’ve stood for; no two people ever do. With more than 4000 roll calls behind me, anyone can nit-pick my record. But I have always fought for what I think is right, regardless of political gain or loss. This is what people expect in a leader.

Republicans are just 28% of the registered voters. It’s Maine’s independent majority who decide general elections — a majority who has supported me in all eight of my elections in Somerset County.

Before my last election in 2008, the public employee unions sent out letters demonizing me because I fought against increasing their pension benefits. Despite their letter, I won with more than 64% of the vote, the highest margin of any Republican Senator who got elected against the Obama tide.

For all the economic doom and gloom, Maine is beginning a long road to recovery. When state revenues start coming back, do you think that money will be used to pay down debt or rebuild roads? Or will it be squandered on new Democratic programs? The real question is — do we want to be governed for the next 4 to 8 years by Libby Mitchell, Steve Rowe or Pat McGowan? I don’t!

Nominate me as your candidate and I will win this general election. I will govern by the Republican principles of good business and sound economics. I will open the door to opportunity and I will report directly to you, the people of Maine — because you are the true governors of our most precious state.

Thank you all. It’s time for us to take back Augusta.