Blue Anchor Project Endorsement Questionnaire - Tucker Favreau
(Candidate responses are in white and italicized)
1. Healthcare
Recognizing that healthcare continues to be among the most pressing issues for American families, will you commit to supporting single-payer legislation that brings down costs, separates healthcare from employment, roots out waste and fraud, and ensures everyone has access to quality care?
Yes. I believe that healthcare is a human right and that we must pass Medicare for All as a starting point for addressing the healthcare crisis in this country.
2. Housing
The current housing crisis is impacting both renters and first-time homebuyers. What is your strategy for using federal policy to address housing affordability in your district? Please detail how you would balance the need for new housing construction with the need to protect communities from exploitative corporate landlords and short-term rental services.
A. We must support new building technologies that allow for the rapid creation of new homes. These technologies include new modular home designs that enable the rapid onsite construction of a home using prebuilt pieces. While this type of home building has existed for some time, new advancements are quickly being made, allowing for substantial improvements in home building speed and design. At the federal level, we should focus on allocating funding for such programs in areas that are severely lacking in housing stock. We must also eliminate or at least significantly reduce tariffs affecting the most common materials for home construction. Increasing the cost of building materials is increasing the costs of homes and making them too expensive for many first-time homebuyers.
B. Building new homes matters little if we don’t implement controls on corporations purchasing those homes instead of families that will actually use them as primary residences. I support caps on how many single-family homes corporations may own in a given region. The exact numbers will depend on region but there is also a possibility that capping ownership by a percentage of homes in a given region (for example, corporations may own no more than 5% of single-family homes in a region) will better protect families. Short-term rentals should also be subject to higher tax rates particularly if a corporation or individual owns a substantial number of rentals within one area.
3. Education
From public schools to higher education, our education system is struggling to meet the needs of all students. How would you work to ensure that every public school is fully funded and that all students, regardless of their socioeconomic background, have access to a quality education? What is your plan to address the student debt crisis, and how would you ensure that a college education remains an affordable and viable path for future generations?
A. The Department of Education plays a large role in ensuring that the needs of all students are met. Funding education through property taxes alone automatically results in deeply unequal budgets for schools across districts which means that other sources must exist to ensure that each school is fully funded and providing quality education. Those sources can come from qualified programs at the federal level.
B. Voucher programs continue to siphon away much needed resources from public schools which actively undermines them. We must focus on improving public schools and stop taking away money from their budgets via voucher programs. Improving public schools has far more impact on the country than giving up and sending money to private schools that few can attend.
C. The student debt crisis is out of control. While it is important to repay your debts, we must also acknowledge the existence of predatory loans that exploited young adults. I support a combination of solutions to the crisis through income-driven repayment plans and forgiveness plans for those in critical industries or roles (e.g., teachers and medical professionals). In some cases, we must also look at interest rates and ensure that they are not predatory, particularly for those who have already been paying back the loan for 10 or more years.
D. Finally, we must ensure support for non-profit schools that actually work to support their students and provide meaningful financial aid. The federal government should also work with state level governments to assist in providing free community college to qualified students. Some states already have such programs, but they can be short lived if not properly funded. We must also increase technical schools across the country that offer alternate education specifically suited to jobs that may not require college degrees.
4. Jobs
As our economy continues to transition, what is your plan to create good paying, sustainable jobs in your district? How will you use your position in Congress to support the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, and what is your position on policies that would strengthen labor protections and fair wages?
A. Maine has two major shipyards (Bath Iron Works and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard) that create a lot of good paying jobs in the state. It is important that we continue to secure contracts for these shipyards in order to maintain the associated jobs. But we also need to look at increasing jobs through increases in renewable energy technologies and businesses across the state which will also help lower energy costs. With infrastructure improvements, Maine could also be a good destination for remote workers who positively impact the economy by generating more demand for other daily services in their local communities. But I must stress, once again, the need to improve Maine’s infrastructure first.
B. I am a supporter of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act which will greatly expand the power of unions as well as the ease of creating unions. I also support the Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act and the Raise the Wage Act of 2025 which both work to further improve the wages of everyday workers across the country regardless of their union status. In addition, we must reform and empower the NLRB in order to better protect workers from greedy corporations who ignore the well-being of their own employees. These are basic first steps in returning power to unions and workers who have been exploited by corporations for far too long.
5. Party Accountability & Democratic Integrity
A growing number of voters feel the Democratic Party has become disconnected from their concerns, and that democracy itself is under threat from within. How do you plan to rebuild trust in the party’s ability to deliver for working people, stand up to authoritarianism, and protect democratic institutions? What legislative and political actions will you champion to safeguard voting rights, end dark money, and ensure a government accountable to the people?
A. Democrats must actually listen to the concerns of their constituents and show up at protests in person. Actions always speak louder than words. Saying that you support a cause is not nearly as effective as actually showing up to support that cause and talking with people in-person. That, and actually writing legislation that supports that cause where applicable.
B. As an Army veteran, I have no qualms about calling out the authoritarianism currently on display in this administration. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are clear in expressing the unalienable rights of human beings and the purpose and structure of our government. Anyone who has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution should be unrelenting in their criticism of this administration and unrelenting in their efforts to hold these people accountable for their undemocratic actions.
C. We must overturn Citizens United. Every democrat should be fighting in pursuit of this goal. But in the meantime, we must also continue to pass transparency laws for money in any part of politics so that everyday Americans can have clear, easy access to candidate financial reports and the financial reports of sitting elected officials. We must also ensure that we protect voting rights across the country by fighting against gerrymandering and laws that seek to remove the ability for Citizens to vote in a timely and convenient manner. Absentee voting has a long history in the United States, and we know that it works. We should not be talking about imposing substantial limitations on it now.
D. I am also a proponent of making it law for every member of Congress to hold at least one town hall per quarter with at least two in-person town halls per year. With our current technology, elected officials should be closer than ever to their constituents and there is no excuse for not holding consistent town halls.
6. Public Accountability
Do you commit to prioritizing the concerns of your constituents over corporate lobbyists and to holding at minimum two in-person town halls or public forums per year to maintain direct accountability to the people you represent? (Yes/No)
Yes
7. Perspective
Tell us about a moment, personal or professional, when you changed your mind about something important. What did you learn from that experience, and how does it inform the way you would serve in office?
I was an active duty Army officer when January 6th happened. At the time, I strongly believed that despite the fact that many veterans and servicemembers supported Trump, they would never actively participate in illegal activities in support of him. As the investigation into that event deepened, I learned just how wrong I was and that many individuals interpreted their oaths to the Constitution very differently than I did. That moment truly made me realize that the military could strive for political neutrality, but it would never actually achieve it in practice. I realized that I had to be a voice for the Constitution and an advocate for what I believed the oath actually meant. It also made me realize that I could not be a bystander in the political process. As for how this informs the way I would serve in office: I would always operate under the idea that a subset of people are almost always willing to betray their oaths to serve at the whims of authoritarians and to gain power. We must be on constant guard for such people and ensure that we pass legislation that fights back against corruption and the abuse of power to the greatest extent possible. And this fight certainly includes stopping the usage of the American military for political theater in American cities.