A 501(c)(4) advocacy organization
Socialism is not coming to Maine.It is already here.
The rise of socialism in Maine and America, and what it will cost you.
What socialism actually is
The label changes. The mechanism does not. Socialism is government ownership or control of the things people need to live: housing, energy, health care, wages, credit. Prices get set by councils instead of by buyers and sellers. The cost gets hidden in taxes, shortages, and the people who leave.
"Democratic socialism" is the same program with a friendlier name. It still ends with the government deciding what you may earn, charge, build, and keep.
Every socialist program starts as compassion and ends as control.
The record
Venezuela had the richest economy in South America. Its output fell by about three quarters in less than a decade, and more than seven million people fled.
Britain in the 1970s nationalized its industries, capped prices, and ended with a three-day work week and a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.
The Soviet bloc ran the experiment for seventy years with unlimited power and unlimited excuses. It ended in empty shelves and a wall built to keep people in.
The countries that walked away from it, from Poland and Estonia to Vietnam, got richer the moment they let people own, build, and trade.
The rise, in America
Ten years ago socialism was a punchline. Today it is a governing program in the largest city in the country.
15x
The Democratic Socialists of America grew from about 6,000 members in 2015 to more than 90,000 by 2021. Its members now sit in Congress, in state legislatures, and on city councils.
4 in 10
Roughly four in ten Americans tell Gallup they have a positive view of socialism. Among adults under 40 it is about half.
2025
New York City elected a self-described democratic socialist as mayor on a platform of a rent freeze, city-owned grocery stores, free buses, and higher taxes on business and on the people who create jobs.
The program is the same everywhere
Rent control, which has shrunk the housing supply in every city that tried it.
Government-run health care, paid for with a payroll tax on everyone who works.
"Free" services that are paid for by someone else, until there is no one else.
Wealth taxes and business taxes that send the wealth, and the businesses, somewhere else.
Defunding the police, then calling the results a housing problem.
Why it spreads. Socialism sells hope on credit. The benefits arrive first and the bill arrives later, usually after the people who wrote the program have moved on.
The rise, in Maine
It does not announce itself. It arrives one ballot question, one payroll tax, and one budget at a time.
Portland passed rent control by referendum in 2020 on a slate organized by the Democratic Socialists of America, and the same organizers came back two years later with more. Landlords sold, builders left, and rents kept rising.
Every paycheck in Maine now carries a new state payroll tax for a government-run paid leave program that started collecting in 2025, before it paid a single benefit.
Pine Tree Power asked voters in 2023 to let the state seize the electric grid. Seven in ten said no. Its backers have not gone away.
Government-run health care bills are filed in Augusta every session, and each one gets closer.
State spending went from about $7 billion for the 2018-19 budget to more than $11 billion for 2026-27, while the population grew only a few percent.
Maine's tax burden is among the heaviest in the country, and the top income tax rate of 7.15 percent starts at about $60,000 of income. That is not a tax on the rich. That is a tax on a nurse.
Closer to home. In Bangor, the answer to every failure is a new program and a bigger budget. The encampments grew anyway. Spending is not the same thing as solving.
What to do about it
Socialism advances because the people who pay for it are busy working. Mainers First is the organization that shows up when you cannot.
We lobby in Augusta and at city hall against the next payroll tax, the next rent control ordinance, and the next government takeover.
We fight ballot questions that put the state in charge of things it has no business running.
We put citizens in the room: hearings, council meetings, testimony, petitions, and public records requests.
We tell the truth about the numbers, in plain language, before the vote instead of after.
Three things you can do this month
Show up to one council or committee meeting and ask what a program costs and what it has accomplished.
Ask every elected official you meet whether they believe the government should run housing, energy, or health care, and listen for a straight answer.
Join Mainers First.
Sources
Sources: World Bank and IMF national accounts (Venezuela); UNHCR refugee figures; UK National Archives.
Sources: Maine Office of Fiscal and Program Review budget documents; Maine Revenue Services; Maine Department of Labor (paid leave); Maine Secretary of State election returns (2023 Question 3); City of Portland election results (2020, 2022).
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