Let’s focus on what’s important

For more than 30 years, my dad has collected tickets at the back gate of Cobb Stadium in Sanford before every home football game. He never misses a game. And for more than 30 years, Imelda Larouche never missed a game either.

Imelda graduated from Sanford High in 1976 and had severe physical and learning disabilities. But she was a huge Sanford High sports fan and attended all the home football, soccer, basketball, baseball and field hockey games. She was Sanford's resident "Super Fan." My Dad knew Imelda was on fixed income and although she always offered to pay for admission to the games, he never accepted her money.

Last winter Imelda was found dead in her apartment. She was living without heat and hot water.

In response to Imelda's death, the Town of Sanford formed an energy task force named in her honor to help low-income residents afford to heat their homes this coming winter. Last weekend they had a "toll booth" fundraiser on Main Street.

Stories like this are going on all over Maine. Towns and cities are trying to figure out ways to cope with this winter's heating costs. It's an open secret that we're facing a potential crisis in this state that could make the Ice Storm of ‘98 look like a Thursday night beano game. The fact of the matter is, Mainers are going to be burning furniture to keep warm this winter. It's that bad.

With this as a backdrop, I can't help but be frustrated with the tone and tenor with which our presidential debate has been relegated. Name calling and sound-bite one liners have triumphed over the substantive debate that should be going on right now over the future direction of our country.

Our economy is in terrible shape - from the collapse of the financial sector - to the staggering increases in energy, education and health care costs. Working families and those on fixed income have been hit especially hard. Meanwhile, our treasury continues to be drained by the war in Iraq. Yes indeed, President Bush has left this country in quite a mess.

So while for some, the name-calling may make for great entertainment, most people are wondering when they're going to stop arguing about lipstick on a pig and start talking about what's happened to our country over the last eight years.

Mainers are certainly more independent than most, but this independence streak has always been accompanied by the sense that our state is really just one big small town where we look out for each other. Indeed, Sanford's citizens are pulling together to try to prevent the deaths of its most vulnerable citizens, like Imelda Larouche, this winter. There is a sense of urgency because the stakes are so high.

Similarly, what we need in our presidential debate during these last 48 days until the general election, is a retreat from the name calling and instead, a focus on what should be the fundamental question of this campaign, namely: How are we going to change the damage that has been done to our country over the past eight years?

The Imelda Larouches of this country deserve some answers.

Adam Cote, born and raised in Sanford, is a former Democratic candidate for Maine's 1st Congressional District and is the president of the Maine Young Democrats. He served in the Army in Bosnia and Iraq and is a member of the Renewable Energy and Governmental Relations Practice Group at the law firm of Pierce Atwood LLP in Portland, where he lives with his wife and three young daughters.