Nearly 80 percent support parking lot referendum
CARIBOU, Maine — Roughly 4,000 Caribou voters came out on Nov. 8 to cast their votes in the 2016 election.
For national issues, Republican Donald Trump received 2,106 votes from the people of Caribou for United States President while Hillary Clinton received 1,595. Additionally, Congressman Bruce Poliquin received 2,375 votes for U.S. House District 2 while Emily Cain had a total of 1,558. Local voters reflected their national and state counterparts on these positions.
Caribou’s majority shot down a few referendum questions that ended up passing at the state level, like the question to legalize marijuana recreationally. While this question passed in the state, only 1,510 voters supported the issue and 2,523 were opposed to legalization.
Other referendum questions, such as additional taxes on the upper class to support K-12 learning, background checks on firearm sales, and raising the minimum wage coincided with the state results.
The non-advisory parking lot referendum question, specific to the people of Caribou, asked voters if they would like the city to continue maintaining the lots or sell them to an outside buyer. Overwhelmingly, the question passed with 2,971 in support of continued city ownership and only 751 in favor of selling the lots.
For the RSU 39 school board, Tanya Sleeper won with 1,873 votes for a three-year term while Nicole Cote received 1,686. City Councilor David Martin received 2,644 votes for a three-year term and Joan Theriault received 2,405.
Both John Foster, 44, and Kyle Ledue, 24, of Caribou said Question 3 was the most important.
“I don’t think we need any more gun control for the good citizens of Maine,” Ledue said.
As far as comparing this year’s election to those of past years, local voters had mixed reactions.
“In the past I kind of looked forward to the election,” said Gail Solomita, 53, of Caribou. “This year I look forward to it being over.”
“I only voted once before,” said Ledue. “Not too much has changed. I did a little more research this time. I actually sat down and watched the debates.”
Foster said not too much has changed, but he is concerned about the tension between the two political parties.
“Basically they’re 500 feet apart and, when the vote comes in, there’s going to be a riot on one side or the other,” Foster said. “There’s no way around it, and it’s sad that that’s what it’s come to. It used to be that elections were peaceful and fair; there was more honesty and less mudslinging.”
Both Solomita and Ledue said that, in the future, they would like to see less negative political advertisements.
“Something needs to be done about the ads,” said Solomita. “Instead of saying what’s bad about the other guy, let’s talk about what you stand for. Let’s get rid of the ‘he said, she said,’ because that’s exactly what we’re sick of. It makes us look like idiots to the rest of the world. It doesn’t do any good, and probably hurts things more than it helps.”
“I like ads where someone is sitting down and talking about their plan,” said Ledue, “not just verbally bashing their opponent.”
