Every gun owner in the state of Maine watched in shocked disbelief at Jared Golden’s campaign ad in which he leaves the parting visual to Maine Voters of a rifle being thrown to the ground. The first and very basic precept of gun safety is to treat every gun as if it were loaded. It would be safe to assume, given the nearly non-existence of accidental gun discharge incidents in our fair state, that the majority of families have passed down this basic tenet of gun safety and that basic knowledge somehow got lost in translation somewhere in the Golden family.

If the disconnect of the Democrat Party was not evident before, it is stark now, blazing and heralded in neon. Americans are fair, just as Mainers are fair. We are troubled, along with the rest of this Nation, that a man can be convicted based solely on hearsay and innuendo, rather than evidence, fact, and corroboration.

We are fair-minded and believe any victim of assault has the right to be heard but so does the accused. Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser has been heard, and heard, and heard, and heard again hourly on the 24 hour news outlets and yet, when the Judge was finally given an opportunity to defend himself, he was openly mocked by the Democrat side of the dais, even to the point of laughing at his emotion when referring to the trauma his wife and daughters have faced. The Democrats and their leftist media allies have gone so far, better yet, so low as to print cartoons mocking Kavanaugh’s 10-year-old daughter for praying for her father’s accuser.

If we as Mainers are fair-minded, and we are, then it is fair question to ask, Why the deafening silence of our local Democrats? I have worked as an activist and writer for some years now and I have witnessed my Senator, Paul Davis, challenge and criticize his own Party on many occasions, but his opponent, Sue Mackey Andrews, has made no such defense of due process and the right of the accused to defend their innocence.

She and Dr. Evans, with their resounding silence, have endorsed and embraced the smearing of a man’s good name based on hearsay, tenuous hearsay at that. The Democrats have gone full throat in attacking our Border patrol, our police force, our military, and still silence from our local Democrat candidates. They have been vocal in their embrace of the anti-2^nd Amendment agenda of the Democrat Party though, saying the defense of our Natural Born Right to self-defense “goes to far.”

It seems our local Democrats live in a different reality, separated from fact, like the overwhelming defeat of Bloomberg’s Q3 initiative at the hands of rural voters, the ones they wish to represent. Rural Maine overwhelmingly approved of Governor Paul LePage’s policies and yet Janet Mill’s is openly campaigning on reversing all that the Governor has accomplished, with more trumpeting silence from Andrews and Evans. The Democrat Party has called the brave men and women of our police force killers, rapists, and racists, and still not one word from our local Democrat candidates.

One of our local Democrat candidates lives in a different neighborhood altogether. With a few phone calls and a little investigation, this columnist was able to verify, with the Addison town office, that Dr. Richard Evans has applied for and received the Homestead Exemption for his residence in Addison, Maine. On the application, the applicant must check that his residency is in the town that he wishes to have the exemption. Dr. Evans declared on the application that his residency is Addison, Maine, which for geographical reference is not in the House District he is currently running for office in.

He has his mail delivered to Dover-Foxcroft in an attempt to appear to have a residency in Piscataquis County so that he can run for office here. Piscataquis County has long enjoyed local representation from Senator Paul Davis, Representative Norman Higgins, and Representative Paul Stearns that was just a call away because we knew that they lived here. We don’t know where Dr. Evans resides.

Whether Dr. Evans wins the election or not, he is most likely assured of an investigation into the ethics and violations associated with his subterfuge and duplicitous campaign. It’s one thing to be all things to all people, it just should be kept in the district to which you are running for office. That’s still the reality in a real world.