Speak Up with Laurel Libby

Mike Quatrano was in the foster system as a teenager. Today he runs Maine Civic Action, training everyday Mainers to run for office, knock doors and get out the vote. On this episode of Speak Up, Mike tells the story of the uncle who looked him in the eye and said "you need to work to eat," and of the grandmother who dragged him to rallies and told him to become a preacher or go into politics. He...

I sat down with Carla Lobley, a Maine teacher who has homeschooled her own kids, taught in a Christian school, worked in public-school gifted education, and now helps lead Avodah, a Christ-centered K-12 school in Auburn. Carla has seen education from almost every angle. Public school, she says, was a boot camp: policy, process, paperwork, and how hard it is to move a gifted kid who is already a ye...

Eight states now have ZERO income tax. Thirteen more are on automatic paths to zero. That's 21 out of 50 states moving aggressively to lower taxes and attract business, talent, and families. Meanwhile, Maine has the 5th highest tax burden in the nation. If you earn under $100,000/year (the vast majority of Mainers), you pay the HIGHEST income tax rate in all of New England. This is not acciden...

Amy Sussman is back. Her nephew Max Hathaway was killed in the October 2023 Lewiston shooting, on the day he graduated high school. Two years ago she learned what donors were never told: of the $6.6 million raised for victims and survivors, $1.9 million went to 29 outside nonprofits instead, while victims and survivors split $4.7 million, an average of $29,000 a person. In this bonus episode, Amy...

Brayden Nadeau started following his grandfather around a Maine farm basically from birth, and farming it for real at nine years old. By sixteen he was running his own vegetable stand, farming 10 to 15 acres, raising 18 head of cattle, and turning a Facebook page into national attention from Rachael Ray and Lester Holt. On this episode of Speak Up, Laurel sits down with Brayden, his grandfather Da...

How fraud becomes your tax bill...What if the reason Augusta keeps asking you for more money is that no one stopped the money it already lost? Dr. OJ Oleka, CEO of the State Financial Officers Foundation, shows exactly how fraud takes root in a state budget, and what Maine could do about it. In this episode you'll hear: What treasurers and auditors actually do, and why an elected officer can s...

Mike Miles took over Houston ISD (170,000 students, the largest district in Texas) in June 2023. The district was broken: 121 D and F schools, 1,900 chronically absent teachers, zero focus on instruction quality, financial chaos, and worst of all, kids failing year after year. In just three years, HISD transformed. From 121 D and F schools to nearly 200 A and B rated schools 13 of 20 state exams:...

Owen McCarthy grew up in a trailer on his grandfather’s land in Patten, Maine, the son of a logger and a school lunch worker. He became the first in his family to finish college, co-founded the Maine health-tech company MedRhythms, and this spring ran fifth of seven candidates in the 2026 Republican primary for governor. Owen McCarthy sat down with me in-studio for a post-primary look at why he ra...

Maddy Curtis is in her early twenties, a homesteader in training from Washington County, and she came to politics through history, not headlines. In this conversation, we talk about why no single election decides everything, finding common ground across deep divides, and what a grounded life looks like in modern Maine. What you'll hear: Why Maddy believes Maine is turning around over the long...

Maine spends $1.4 billion a year on MaineCare, one of every four dollars the state spends. When a provider overbills, the state often calls it an "improper payment"... even if there is fraud involved... and lets the provider pay it back out of future claims. Steve Robinson of The Maine Wire explains how that works, and the two rules Lead Maine is asking DHHS to put in place. In this epis...

What happens when a Maine mom who doesn't follow politics sits down with her state rep and just starts asking questions? Libby Fotter, a homeschooling mom of four daughters from Auburn, joins Laurel for a conversation that covers how the Maine Legislature actually works, from the inside, for anyone who has ever felt like Augusta was happening to them without their input. No political experienc...

Government surveillance... creepy, intrusive, and unconstitutional! Automated license plate readers are spreading quietly across Maine towns, scanning and logging every car that drives past, innocent travelers included. Laurel sits down with two leaders from the ACLU of Maine, Policy Director Michael Kebede and Policy Fellow Alicia Rea, to unpack how Flock cameras work, what they actually capture,...

Maine's June 9 primary will use Ranked-Choice Voting (RCV), and a lot of voters are still not sure how it works. Here's the solution! We recorded our in studio Lead Maine event, "Ranked Choice Voting Decoded," where Trent England, founder and executive director of Save Our States and co-chairman of the Stop Ranked-Choice Voting Coalition, and Maine GOP Executive Director Jason Sa...

The same week the Maine Legislature passed the data center moratorium (which would later be vetoed), American Energy Institute dropped a report showing $39 million in foreign funding behind the groups pushing for the policy. That's not a coincidence. Jason Isaac has spent years tracing the money behind America's energy debate, and what he's found connects your electricity bill, the attempted shutd...

Rohen Brown was 18 years old, running the last race of her high school career, when she stepped onto the Western Conference Championship podium in second place. The athlete in first was a male who had been competing in her races for years. Rohen is 19 now, studying political science at the University of Southern Maine, and serving as Lead Maine's first intern. This November, Maine voters will...

What happens when a doctor has time to actually know their patients? Dr. Zev Myerowitz has spent over a decade in Maine's healthcare policy debates. But his real argument is practical, built from years running one of New England's largest integrative musculoskeletal practices. In this conversation, Dr. Zev walks through the economics that broke primary care, why direct primary care clinics...

I met Parker Brownrigg on a flight. He's 26, grew up in Lewiston, graduated Maine Maritime, and paid off over $100,000 in student loans before his 27th birthday. He also can't buy a house in Maine. We talked about why ‒ and what it says about where our state is headed.

Mississippi policymakers prioritized science-based reading over the last decade and saw the nation's greatest gains in reading scores as measured by the National Assessment for Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation's Report Card. Meanwhile, Maine has been spending more and more on K-12 education, not empowering families, losing student enrollment, and falling to some of the worst N...

Amy Sussman is a wife, mother, longtime Mainer, and aunt of Max Hathaway, a victim of the tragic October 2023 shooting in Lewiston. Max was 35 at the time, a father of two with another on the way, and that day received his business degree from the University of Southern Maine. Amy has spent much of her free time tracking down how the money was spent that was raised for the Lewiston shooting victim...

Laurel brings on Jason Snead to discuss the absurdities of Ranked-Choice Voting, how the national movement for RCV has stalled (thankfully!), and what Mainers can do to push back on this extreme form of election manipulation in our state. Maine is one of only two states (with Alaska) that use RCV for any statewide elections. Jason Snead is the Executive Director of the Honest Elections Project. He...

Who spent all the money?? Dr. Vance Ginn joins Laurel for a discussion on the good, the bad, and the ugly of state budgets, what makes for real economic prosperity, and what Maine can learn from states that are cutting taxes and enabling people to flourish. Vance Ginn is a free-market economist, founder of Ginn Economic Consulting, and host of the Let People Prosper Show podcast. He served as chie...

Laurel and special guest, Mary Katharine Ham, discuss the issues that hit close to home, and how the government that's closest to us affects us the most. From the cost of energy to the state of education, the answer to the question, "How can we CHANGE the future?" has a surprising answer... tune in for the inaugural episode and simultaneous Lead Maine launch!

Join Laurel and Nick, Lead Maine's new Policy & Comms Director, for a preview of what's around the corner with our upcoming launch and beyond!