Hay Bright U.S. Senate campaign gears up for fall victory
June 14, 2006
Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Jean Hay Bright begins a full-time campaign schedule Thursday after a review of the primary election vote showed she has won her party's nomination.

Unofficial tabulations of the Tuesday primary election, provided by the Bangor Daily News, show that with 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Hay Bright won 50.68 percent of the vote - a margin of 600 votes out of 44,120 votes cast. The remaining towns that had not reported by Wednesday afternoon do not collectively have enough enrolled Democrats to change the outcome of the election.

The Dixmont writer and organic farmer carried 12 of Maine's 16 counties.

"I'm pleased with the breadth and depth of our support across the state," Hay Bright said, noting she carried Waldo County with more than 66 percent of the vote, Somerset County with 60 percent, Knox at 56 percent, and Washington at 55 percent. She also won in Lincoln, Franklin, Hancock, Kennebec, Oxford, York, Sagadahoc and Piscataquis Counties.

"I'm grateful to all those Maine Democrats who voted in the primary," Hay Bright said, "and to our hundreds of volunteers and supporters who made this victory possible. Now we move beyond the primary and begin the task of unseating Olympia Snowe and increasing the Democratic margin in the United States Senate."

Hay Bright congratulated her primary opponent, Eric Mehnert of Orono.

"Eric ran a quality campaign," she said. "Our combined efforts during the primary, where we both focused on the destructive record of the Bush Administration and Olympia Snowe's complicity in that agenda, will serve as the foundation of our fall campaign."

"We understand the size of the task in front of us and we are prepared to meet that challenge," Hay Bright said of her campaign team.

Hay Bright will meet with some of her advisors on veteran's affairs on Thursday, and also attend the monthly meeting of the Hancock County Democratic Committee. Over the weekend she will attend the Maine AFL-CIO convention and the Southern Maine Pride Festival, both being held in Portland.