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Maine Independent Senator Angus King is running against two challengers this election year in his bid for a third term.
He debated Republican Demi Kizunis and Democrat David Costello, focusing on Social Security benefits, border security, and abortion.
The debate was hosted by WGME-TV in Portland.
It's just under an hour.
Hello and welcome.
I'm Greg Lagerchrist.
I'll be your moderator tonight, but of course, you're going to hear a lot less from me and a lot more from the candidates over the next hour.
So a warm welcome to, of course, all of you.
We'll get to you in just a moment.
But first, I do want to welcome in my longtime debate colleague, the political editor from the Bangor Daily News, Mike Shepard, who's going to join me in asking questions tonight.
Great to have you once again, Mike.
Hey, thanks for having me, Greg.
All right, let's get a quick word on this.
First, though, before the questions, we do want to acknowledge that there is a fourth candidate on the ballot, Independent Jason Cherry.
He did not qualify for our debate based on our long-standing debate criteria, but he is on the ballot.
We want to acknowledge that.
We also want to give you at home a quick word on the rules.
We'll begin with some opening statements.
Those will be followed by questions and answers.
Each candidate will have a chance to answer each question for one minute.
Then there will be a rebuttal and a discussion period.
And our format actually encourages that discussion.
We do think it's a really great way to get out where the candidates stand and where they differ.
And then at the end of the debate, of course, we'll have closing statements as well.
All right.
So if we're ready to go, let's go ahead and get to it.
Based on this random drawing that we had before our debate, they're standing in the order based on that drawing.
And based on that as well, we're going to begin our opening statements with David Costello.
The floor is yours for one minute, sir.
Thanks, Greg.
For those of you who don't know me, I cut my political teeth on picket lines in Bangor and Old Town as a boy.
And I'm running for the United States Senate because I believe that Washington is broken.
And to fix it, we need to do a lot more than simply change whom we elect every two to six years.
We need to substantially reform our governing practices and institutions.
And we need to eliminate the excessive and corrupting influence that money, wealth, and disinformation have over our politics and government.
Having grown up in a working-class family in Old Town and having served for more than 25 years in senior-level government positions both in the United States and abroad, I believe that I have the broadest and most fitting experience of all of the candidates in this race for the United States Senate.
For more information, check out my website at CostelloForsenate.com and I look forward to the debate.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And Senator King, the floor is yours for one minute, sir.
Well, I guess it's a coincidence, but here I am in the middle, which is where I often find myself in Washington.
I want to thank Greg and Mike for moderating us tonight.
I want to thank our viewers for joining us and being engaged in this campaign.
We've made some real progress, some bipartisan progress in the United States Senate over the last several years.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the Great American Outdoors Act, the PACT Act for Veterans, a series of other important bills.
But there's still plenty left to do.
Reproductive rights, border security, inflation, housing costs, all of those things need to be addressed.
And I'm ready to go back to Washington to continue the work that I've been doing on your behalf and on behalf of the people of Maine and the people of this country.
I'm looking forward to getting after those issues in Washington next year.
Thank you very much.
And Demi Kizunas, the floor is yours for one minute, please.
Hi, I'm Demi Kazunis.
I was a born Mainer, born to hardworking legal immigrants.
I'm a veteran mother, grandmother, dentist, educator, and small business owner.
Early on, I learned the values of hard work working in my parents' restaurant starting at the age of 14.
Those values carried me through my life and while I was serving in the U.S. Army in Germany during the Cold War.
But today, the American dream is slipping away.
Our state has got too high inflation, housing issues, broken border policies, and failed leadership in Washington, D.C. Senator King has been in politics for nearly two decades, and things are not getting any better.
I think it is time for change.
I am running to be a new Maine voice in Washington.
I look forward to this debate.
Let's make sure the American Dream is there for our children and grandchildren and their children.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And now let's go ahead and get to the questions.
Four out of five voters surveyed say they believe the economy is extremely important to them in this election nationally and in the state of Maine.
Do you personally feel better off than you did four or six years ago?
And why should voters put their trust in you to help them feel better off than they did now and maybe how they can feel better off in six years?
And again, based on our alternating format, let's start with David Costello.
And if you would, please tell us, are you feeling personally better off?
I am feeling personally better off.
And I think if you go back, if you go back to 2008 and the Great Recession, you'll understand how bad the economy was back in 2008 and what a wonderful job the Obama administration had done to actually pull us out of the deepest recession since the Great Depression.
And I think if you look at that economy as it rolled into the Trump administration, unemployment was down, inflation was below 2 percent.
So actually, and the job creation numbers were quite significant.
And so I think as you look, the problem we had obviously most recently is the pandemic.
If you want to look at one single cause, the simple explanation of the economy, I mean of economics is supply and demand.
And obviously because of the pandemic, we had a major, major supply chain problem.
And you had the, we continue to have demand.
So obviously a lot of Americans now feel the effects still of that great pandemic.
And so what obviously the Biden administration has been able to do is we've, because of what the Fed has done, we've brought the inflation level down to under 3%.
So that's been calmed.
And many of the actions they've taken to provide the right kind of resources for families to address the cost of living, much of that has taken place as well.
All right.
Thank you very much, David Costello.
We'll have a chance maybe to come back to you on this, but to give a chance to everyone to respond.
Same question to you, Senator King.
First of all, again, do you personally feel better off and why should people trust you on the economy?
Well, I think, number one, there are indicators that we are better off.
Whenever I have businesses come to me, when I talk to businesses around the state, the number one problem they have is workforce, not enough workers.
It used to be we were worried about how many jobs.
Now we're worried about how to fill that workforce.
That's a sign of a strong economy.
On the other hand, you asked how I feel every time I go to Hanford Brothers and have to pay three or four bucks for almost $4 for a gallon of milk.
That's not good.
And that's something that people are really focused upon.
I've got kids here in Maine.
They're talking about buying houses.
And the high cost of housing is also a tremendous problem.
I think it's one of the most serious problems Maine's facing.
So yeah, there are indicators that the economy is doing much better.
Inflation is down.
Unemployment is down.
The stock market is at record levels.
But I don't think people are feeling that in their daily lives.
And that's something that I think we've got to continue to work at.
All right.
Thank you very much.
And same question.
Demi Kazunis.
The floor is yours.
One minute, please.
Absolutely.
I think the opposite is true.
If you talk to the average Mainer, the people that are struggling every day, you're going to find that they're not doing any better.
Inflation is not down.
The rate of inflation is slowing down.
We're still at 20, 21 percent.
That has not diminished.
We have energy costs that are going through the roof, and we're subsidizing now solar and wind.
That is affecting a lot of the folks in the state of Maine.
Housing.
Prices of housing is up 40 percent.
That is due to a lot of issues, but one of the reasons is because we're having a lot of people come into our state.
We haven't kept up with the building of housing because of regulations, because of interest rates and other problems.
Workforce.
I think that's a great issue that we need to deal with.
We have 4 percent less people working in the state of Maine than pre-COVID, but the people that we need to bring it to Maine, which is health care providers, and I would know about that, are not being able to find housing, so they're not being able to come in.
Our doctors, our dentists, our hygienists, assistants, they haven't got housing and not able to come to the state to fill in that workforce.
And if I can follow up on you, Demi Kizunis, you mentioned we're at 20 percent.
What we're specifically referring to, the inflation rate or the current?
Sorry, the inflation rate, yes.
You're talking about the cumulative impact of the inflation?
The inflation from four years ago to now is up 20 percent.
Four years.
Yeah, okay, good.
I just want to make sure it wasn't an annual where you're talking about the four-year impact since COVID.
Again, Senator King, again, you've talked about the economy and how you feel like there are elements that are doing better.
But how about the follow-up part of that was why you?
Why trust you on this issue in particular?
Well, it's an issue that I've been involved in, and I've been criticized here for having been involved in politics for some time.
As governor, it was an issue that I was involved in every day.
It was all about job creation and building the Maine economy and increasing salaries and jobs and the availability of the capability of our economy.
So it's something that I've continued to work on.
I think, and I agree with my colleague here, that housing is one of the major problems, and it's something that we have to really work on.
The problem is the Maine State Housing Authority says we're down 84,000 housing units in Maine.
That's the shortage.
When there's a shortage, prices go up.
That's why what I'm working on is a whole range.
I think I'm now a co-sponsor of something like 12 bills.
I'm leading three or four, all on housing in order to increase the supply and thereby bring down the price, the price of housing, and the cost of housing.
Mr. Costello, I feel like I cut you off during your first answer.
It was another point you wanted to make.
No, I would certainly agree with what Senator King has said in terms of how the public feels about the cost certainly over the past year and a half in terms of where inflation has been over the past couple of years.
What I would say about housing, he's absolutely right about the supply.
And one thing I would say as well, I would hope he would support Senator Warnock's and Senator Warren's bills.
He talks about 12 bills.
They've got a very significant bill because the federal government needs to be in the position to help local jurisdictions in the state by providing more resources.
There's a significant amount of tools at the federal level.
So I would hope that Senator King would support, for instance, the Housing and Mobility Act, which Senator Warren and Senator Warnock have submitted.
And I guess I'll just stop there.
I'll go ahead and send it to the Senator.
The specific legislation he's talking about, do you support it or not?
I'm not.
I've learned not to jump on a bill on the fly without having read it.
So I want to wait and see what that bill actually does.
And a final word for Demi Kizunas, if we can, please.
Yes.
Senator King, even when he was governor, left us with a deficit of $1 billion in 2003, which today you can only imagine how much that would be.
We're spending too much.
We have inflation increasing.
There hasn't been a bill that Senator King has not signed on to, which has now spent $10 trillion, which has caused inflation to rise.
We have to slow down all these bills, and we need to really take a look at what's happening to our economy.
Otherwise, we're going to continue with inflation.
Thank you very much.
And Senator, based on our rules, since she mentioned you by name, would you like to respond?
Well, I think what we've got to talk about is targeting the bills that will do good work and create results.
For example, a bill I introduced just a month ago, and I hate it when people in Congress say I introduced a bill or an amendment, but a month ago, Jerry Moran, a conservative Republican senator from Kansas and I introduced a bill called Farmhouse to Workforce.
And the idea is to support usually elderly people living in these big houses with three or four bedrooms in renovating for a couple of workforce apartments.
They get some income.
We're not having to build a new roof and a new foundation, so it's more economical.
And that's an example of what I'm trying to talk about in terms of increasing the housing supply.
I can go on for longer than you want me to, but that's an area that we really have to pay some attention to.
I appreciate that.
We can certainly come back to this issue as we continue to talk tonight.
I'd like to move on, though.
The issue of age did historically reshape, as we all know, the race for president this year.
Angus Kaye, you are 80 years old.
And should you be re-elected, you will become officially the oldest senator ever to serve the state of Maine early in your next term next year.
So let's go ahead and ask this directly.
What do you say to any voters out there who are concerned about the issue of age in the elections of 2024?
First thing I say is that I'm a year younger than Mick Jagger.
The second thing is people age differently.
Mary and I last week or two weeks ago spent two hours with George Mitchell, who's 92 years old.
He is as sharp as he's ever been and just coincidentally I've seen him speak twice in the last month.
He's totally with it.
There are people who are younger who, for whatever reasons, it's probably genetic more than anything else, who are starting to falter.
My grandmother lived to 102, my mother to 96, and I feel great.
And if I didn't have the energy and the engagement and the dedication and the commitment to solve these problems that we're talking about, I wouldn't be doing this.
There are easier ways to make a living.
Demi Kazuna, the same question to you.
Do you believe age should be an issue for voters as they vote on election day?
I'm not an ageist.
I agree with the senator that I think it depends on how healthy you are, good genes.
We see it every day.
The problem isn't the age.
The problem is term limits.
We have people going into government and just making it a home.
And it's a comfortable job.
And they live down in Washington, D.C.
They forget about us here in Maine.
I know when we had the storm in January, Senator, you didn't come back to Maine to take a look at the havoc that the storm caused.
And that, you know, you need energy.
The other thing I believe in is having more youth, more representation of the people in the state of Maine.
If we have the same people stay on over and over and over again, we're never going to get new ideas.
We're never going to have, you know, fresh perspective on what's going on.
And so it's not about age for me.
It's about term limits.
I can tell you if you elect me, I will serve two terms.
And then I think at that point I need to retire and let somebody else come in.
All right.
Thank you very much.
And same question.
The issue of age.
I would certainly agree with Demi about the churn in government.
I think it's important to get more people, the younger people involved, more voices involved in government.
And so what I would recommend for people who want to serve beyond 80, for instance, I would recommend that we establish a commission, an independent, nonpartisan, totally unencumbered commission that would review all of the government programs and policies.
It would be larded with a lot of experts from scientists, doctors, lawyers who are totally unencumbered by politics.
They have an independent funding source, those kinds of things.
And if people want to serve beyond 80, then I think that's the perfect place for them to go because what they could do, they'd be free of politics.
They could evaluate and grade government programs' budgets.
We'd have a much more effective government.
And we'd certainly be able to start balancing the budget.
We'd start eliminating wasteful programs.
So that's what I think we should do with people who want to serve later in life.
And also, as Demi said, I support terminal.
It's at least give people 20 to 24 years.
If they haven't done what work they need to do in 24 years, they should probably step aside.
All right, thank you.
I think we can move on to our next topic, if you will.
The next question is about Social Security as projected to start running in the red in about a decade or so from right now.
A lot of seniors, frankly, are worried about this.
Last year, Angus King worked on a bipartisan plan to raise the age limit for Social Security up to 70, gradually raise the retirement age, the full retirement age to 70 to address this, among other changes that he proposed.
The question to the three of you is something like that, should that be on the table?
And what is your plan?
Let's start with Demi Kizunis, please.
Sure.
I agree.
Social Security is a huge issue, especially in the state of Maine, because we have the oldest state in the country, so we have a lot of seniors in our state.
I think the personally, I think Social Security is a promise that was made to the people.
You pay into this, and the money will be there when you retire.
I am not for changing the age, 100% not.
What I am for is maybe raising the limit of your taxable income instead of $175,000, maybe going up a little higher to get more money into Social Security.
But I personally feel that talking about limiting Social Security, it should not be happening.
Finally, we're spending tons of money everywhere else, other countries.
What we should be doing is spending the money on our seniors.
We should be doing a better job supporting our seniors.
They deserve that.
It was a promise we made to them, and it should be kept by the government.
Thank you very much.
David Costello, same question.
I'm swear I disagree with both Senator King and Demi.
The Republican caucus wants to raise the age to 70.
Raising the retirement age to 70 is a 6% reduction in benefits, so it's an 18% reduction overall.
And I know the senator will probably explain he wants to raise revenue elsewhere.
I want to not only raise more revenue to protect, because we would never abandon seniors or abandon Social Security.
It's too important.
It's a foundational program for the United States.
What we need to do is raise the payroll tax cap.
We just need to take it away altogether.
Doing so, we'd raise sufficient revenue to protect Social Security, as well as to give seniors more money.
Social Security, over 70% of retired Americans and certainly Mainers rely on Social Security as their primary source of funding in retirement.
It's insufficient.
We need to raise not only the cap to ensure and protect Social Security, we need to raise it to give seniors more so that they can enjoy the kind of life that they should be allowed to enjoy for having worked for so long.
And one thing else I'd say about the cap, right now, the way the CAP's established at $168,000, all workers who earn less than that amount pay the full tax.
Those who earn over $168,000 get a cut, basically a cut.
So it's a tax, a higher tax on lower-income workers.
So I think we need to do a lot of work.
And I don't think raising the retirement age is the right way to go.
All right, thank you very much.
Angus King, same question to you, sir.
Greg, I want to correct one thing.
Please.
I didn't support raising the retirement age.
I was involved with a group of about a dozen bipartisan senators looking for solutions.
And the stark reality behind all of this is in 2033, Social Security goes broke.
And by law, all current benefits would have to be cut 20 percent.
That can't be allowed to happen.
Now, there were all kinds of issues on the table that have been mentioned here.
Retirement age, although I don't think 70 was ever the number, it was something like 69, and raising the cap on income.
The other thing that we talked about was finally developing a trust fund for Social Security, which is what the state of Maine has for its retirees, is what railroad retirement has.
That Social Security has always been money in, money out.
There's never been a real trust fund.
And that's one of the things that Bill Cassidy, Republican senator from Louisiana, and I were talking about.
That's the big idea.
The other things, there may be other things that we should be discussing, but I don't want to be said that I support raising the retirement age.
What I support is saving Social Security.
Go ahead.
Demi King.
I believe Mike Shepard actually had a follow-up question.
Let's jump in on a couple of these things.
So we haven't seen much of this plan since last year when it was leaked to a national news outlet.
There was a lot of discussion after that.
So Senator King, I just wanted to see if closing the deal on this plan a priority of yours in the next Congress?
Not closing the deal on this plan, but facing the crisis of Social Security, the problem, Mike, is historically we don't do these things until we have to.
The last Social Security crisis, Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan made a deal, but it was like six months before we hit the wall.
I think it's responsible to start addressing this problem now when we have more options.
The longer we wait, the harder it's going to get.
And Demi Kizunis, I just wanted to have you jump in here.
Your answer seemed to indicate that you support scrapping the cap on wages subject to the tax, which is something we normally hear from Democrats.
Is that the extent of the proposed solutions you're seeing?
Well, I think we need to look at all issues.
For one thing, we all believed, I think, is that all the money that was taken from our paychecks for Social Security was put into a little cup, and there was the money for you later on.
But what happens is when the federal government is spending like crazy and takes money from every place it can, it took the Social Security money too that was in the general fund and spent it.
And so now we're trying to figure out how we're going to replenish while we get this humongous deficit going on and we're spending a trillion dollars just paying the interest.
I think we need to look at all avenues.
The other thing is the COLA, which is the adjustments for Social Security, has not kept up.
It's only going up 3% per year for the last four years, so it's up to 12%, while interest rates and inflation has gone up 20%.
And then this year, it's only going to be 2.5%.
So it's not keeping up.
So we've got a lot of issues.
We need to look at it.
We need to get fresh ideas and not be afraid to maybe make some adjustments so we can make sure our seniors are always protected.
When you've been in politics for a long time, you're afraid you're going to ruffle a few feathers.
You need to be able to go in there, fix a problem, and if you don't get re-elected again, that's fine.
Our seniors deserve that.
And David Costello, you were signaling you'd like to jump in.
Yeah, a couple of things.
One is this is a needless political football.
There is no way the United States is ever going to come close to not providing sufficient Social Security for seniors.
And if we're worried about revenue, what we need to do is we need to raise taxes on the wealthy who've been given trillions of dollars in tax cuts over the last decade and a half.
The only reason why Social Security is in any way endangered mathematically, it's not endangered politically.
There is no way that the Democratic Party will allow Social Security to be cut.
And so there's no need to worry about it being protected.
We just need to be smart about where we get the revenue.
And the easiest way to raise the revenue is to raise that income, that payroll tax cap, get rid of it altogether.
And also, if we need to, if you want to establish a sovereign wealth fund, that's probably not a bad idea, which Senator King has suggested.
We can do that, but we can also use general revenues if we, again, start to claw back those tax cuts of the Bush and Trump years, which were handouts to the wealthy on the backs of hardworking Americans.
So I would just add that as well.
Thank you.
I'd like to move on.
Final points on that?
No, we're good.
Looks like we're good.
Let's move on.
All sides seem to agree right now that we have an immigration system that's frankly broken.
There's a crisis at our border right now as well.
Demi Kizunis, you actually have an ad out right now that features the border, which you recently visited as well.
Angus King, you have obviously voted multiple times on issues affecting immigration, refugee status, and border security.
And David Costello, you've also expressed opinions on this.
Let's get at it.
Where do you guys stand on the issue of this, and what do you prioritize first and foremost?
And I believe based on our rotating order, we're going to start with David Costello on this one.
First, I would agree with Senator King's comments as it relates to Senator Langford's bill and that Trump torpedoed a bill for political reasons.
That was a decent bill.
It wasn't as good a bill or as comprehensive a bill as the Gang of Eight back in 2014.
I'd rather, I certainly would have supported that bill, passage of the bill, as I think Senator King did as well.
But again, I think a couple of places where it falls short, it doesn't do enough to deal with the DREAMers.
I mean, there are a lot of, there are over 11 to 12 million immigrants in the United States.
Many of those would want to become citizens.
And as Senator King has said, we need more workers.
So we need to establish a much better, smarter, comprehensive immigration system.
And that's why I would look back to the Gang of Eight bill, which included over $40 billion for border security.
Also, as part of a comprehensive plan, immigration is a global problem.
It's just not an American problem.
So we really have to take a look at how internationally we do a much better job of stabilizing the country.
The countries where immigrants are fleeing, they're fleeing for various reasons, and mostly reasons related to their life chances and often their lives itself.
So I think we've got to take a much more holistic and comprehensive approach.
And that's what I would recommend that we do in the Senate.
Thank you very much.
Angus King, same question to you, sir.
Border security is very basic.
If you don't have borders, you don't have a country, and I believe that.
And that's why I've supported border security going back, it was 2013, not 14, but that bill, that comprehensive bill in the Senate, which by the way got 68 votes and dealt very specifically with border security, Speaker Boehner in the House wouldn't bring it to the floor.
If he had, it probably would have passed and we wouldn't have the mess that we have today.
Then in 2018, Mike Rounds and I, we had, again, a bipartisan group of 10 or 12 senators.
We met in various senators' offices.
I remember meeting in Susan Collins' office.
And Mike and I ended up leading the bill that came to the floor that would have built the wall and dealt with the DREAMers.
That was the deal.
That was the compromise.
We had the votes as of Tuesday night.
Late Tuesday night, the Trump White House threatened to veto the bill.
They said it was going to destroy the country and all these kinds of things.
Our Republican support melted away.
We ended up getting 54 votes.
Then come this time, and we had the strongest border bill in 40 years negotiated by James Langford, who I think is one of the smartest guys in the Senate, most knowledgeable about the border.
And it was endorsed by the Wall Street Journal and the Border Patrol Union, not exactly liberal organizations.
And yet, former President Trump sent the word out to the Republicans, I want this issue to run on in November.
I don't want Joe Biden to have a win.
Don't vote for it.
And the votes disappeared.
That's not a way to make good policy.
We should be trying to solve problems, not saving them for the election.
We'll continue the conversation in a moment.
Kazunis, I want to give you a chance to respond.
You have one minute, please.
Yeah, I went to the border three months ago.
I saw it firsthand.
Fentanyl's coming across.
It's a number one leading cause of death now from 18 to 40 years old for our young people addiction.
It's a humanitarian crisis.
But let's talk about that bill that you just mentioned.
It would have allowed 5,000 people a day crossing or 8,500.
And then, of course, then they would then close the wall because they couldn't do that before.
And when it came back around, all Republicans, six Democrats and two Independents, Bernie Sanders and Senator Sinema also went along with a no on that bill.
Senator, you have never signed onto a bill and approved a bill to close the border.
Not only that, you didn't go along with the Lincoln-Riley Act and you didn't go along with Kate's Law, which were unbelievable.
Why would you be okay with women being killed by illegals coming across?
We want more immigration.
Let's do legal immigration like my parents.
Instead of $1 million a year, let's go $3 million a year.
I'm fine with that.
At least we vet the people and they come in and they're ready to work.
What we're having now is completely illegal immigration.
We'll continue the conversation.
Mike, I believe I have a follow-up question.
Under that bill, the president will be required to activate the new shutdown authority whenever average daily migrant arrivals hit 5,000 for a week.
It's not an allowing 5,000.
5,000 per day.
5,000 for a week.
But that's the, or 8,500 on a single day is where that trigger is in the law.
So I just wanted to flesh out your thinking on that.
Do you still think that law is, you know, it just wasn't enough?
Or just wanted to flesh out your position?
I don't understand why do we have to have a quota of how many illegals come in here?
It was an adjudication bill.
It was to pay for more judges and lawyers to adjudicate the people.
It was never closing that wall.
If you can close it after X amount of people coming across, why couldn't you close it before?
Adjudicate all the people that are here already, decide if they should be in our country or not, and then get them ready to start working or get into providing instead of having our government do it for us.
What I seem to not understand is there is a perception that people can just decide one day, I'm going to leave my country with my family, we're going to walk all the way across Mexico, come through a hole in the wall and come across.
That's not what's happening.
What's happening is they have to pay money to the cartel.
And they're paying anywhere between $10,000 and $20,000.
If you don't pay the cartels, then you're in servitude.
Women are being raped.
Children are being enslaved.
What is going on?
Why is this comfortable to the American people?
We should shut that wall, open legal immigration, and process these people if they need to come into this country.
We're here.
We're a welcoming country.
We all know that.
Senator King, they sent it to you.
She made some specific references to you and whether or not you supported some things.
I want to send it to you.
One of the problems we were discussing here is these huge numbers of people that are coming to the border aren't illegals.
They're asylum seekers under our law, under our law for 75 years, under international treaties.
The problem is the asylum process is being abused.
And the cartels that Demi mentions are, in fact, assuming that.
Here's one of the figures that I've talked with my friend James Langford about.
Only 15% of those who are led into the country with making asylum claims at the border end up getting asylum.
In other words, 85% fail.
One of the big things that this border bill did that we voted on last year that would have solved this problem to a large extent was to limit the test at the border.
And so these aren't people that are coming over the wall or swimming the river.
These are people who are presenting themselves at ports of entry saying, I have a credible fear of persecution in my home country.
That's being abused.
And I agree that I'm delighted to hear openness to legal immigration because that's what's built this country.
All of us here are descendants of immigrants.
But let's not talk about all these people are criminals and that kind of thing.
These are people that are presenting themselves for asylum.
I believe that the standard is too low at the border, and that's what the bill that we voted on last year would have changed.
It would have made a huge difference.
The asylum process is supposed to be you're fleeing for persecution reasons, political reasons, not economic reasons.
And yet, so our law right now says you enter the country, you immediately declare yourself, say you're doing it for persecution reasons, and you're automatically granted legal asylum seeker status at that point.
You're still waiting for the adjudication to happen.
Demi Gizunas, you wanted to jump in.
You have a concern, though, as well that this is being abused.
How did you want to respond to that?
First of all, the cartels just in Yuma County, Arizona, is making ready $15 billion a month.
This is a humongous problem.
I was there, I saw it.
These children are being abused.
I was at a hospital.
It's in the hold $28 million right now, Yuma Regional Hospital, because it's treating a lot of the people that are coming across that have been raped, children that have been horribly abused.
They go to the NGOs for food.
They have food, according to the USDA, for migrant workers, but not for these poor, undocumented people that are presented.
And Senator King is right.
75% of these people should not be in our country.
But we're now letting them in a country for 10 years.
By the time they get adjudicated, now we've got to round these people up and decide what we're going to do with them because they have failed the process.
And I'm very aware that David Costello has the least amount of time to speak on this.
I'd like to send it to you for the final comment, please.
Well, I think the subject's been covered significantly.
But I would say again that the comprehensive approach, I think we can build on, I suspect the next Congress, the next Senate, will take up Lankford's bill again.
And it'll likely be tweaked.
If we've got a Democrat in the White House, it may be a more comprehensive bill.
But it's certainly going to be a bill that deals with the asylum system.
The immigration system is broken.
And so I think the bill, whatever it comes about in the next Congress, if there's any area where there's likely to be significant bipartisan support, it's coming up with a credible bill to address the broken immigration system.
And I feel we can talk about this for the remainder of our hour, but let's move on if we may.
Now to reproductive rights and abortion, since the Supreme Court did overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, the issue of reproductive rights and abortion has been handed largely at the state level at this point.
Some argue that's exactly how it should be.
Others say, no, that's not how it should be.
And actually, most of those folks also pushing for federal laws at this point.
It's a complex issue, but let's ask a simple question.
Where do you stand on all this?
We start with Angus King.
You have one minute, sir.
I think we should codify Roe v. Wade, which basically protects a constitutional right to abortion before viability.
And I don't think it should be left to the states.
I don't think a woman's right over her control over her body should depend on her zip code.
And fundamentally, these are medical decisions.
And I think a woman and her physician should be the one making those decisions.
I said to someone the other day, there's no room in the examining room for the government, along with the woman and her physician.
These are very intensely personal, difficult decisions.
And I just don't think it's the government.
I'm always surprised that my conservative friends say we want small government, we don't want government to be intrusive, and yet they want to step in to the most private kind of decisions a person should make.
I believe that the choice should be left to women and their doctors, and it should not be left up to an individual state to decide what goes on there, because then you have people fleeing those states, people coming to other states in order to have this procedure.
Again, I've always been pro-choice.
It's pretty straightforward for me.
Same question to you, Demi Kizunis.
Where do you stand?
I'm pro-choice too, and I agree with the senator on this one.
I do think viability is a concern, and I think we need to look at this issue a little bit deeper, but I agree.
But let's give women true choice.
Let's give women better economic opportunities, free birth control, VIBF, improved child care.
We haven't done enough of that to give women the right choice.
I was assaulted in college, never told my family because I didn't want to be pulled away from college.
And I've often wondered what would have happened if I became pregnant.
And I struggled with infertility.
I was in the hospital for a month trying to save the last pregnancy, my son.
So I've been on both sides of this.
I agree.
Government doesn't really belong in the doctor's room with the family, the patient.
But I do think that we need to also strengthen adoption laws, talk about viability of the fetus, and also use that for only extreme situations.
But I'm with the senator on this one.
I agree.
All right.
Thank you very much.
And David Costello, this is an area that you're going to find a lot of agreement here.
I would just say that I certainly would have voted to codify Roe v. Wade.
I would certainly support even going further with providing more federal assistance on contraceptive care as well as support for organizations like Planned Parenthood, for instance.
And I think, again, as Senator King says, this is an American issue.
It can't be left to the states.
If you're a citizen of the United States, a female citizen, you should not have government intruding on such a personal medical decision as reproductive, as reproduction is.
And so I think that's enough said other than to say that we need to certainly look at other things.
As Demi said, for those women who do go through with a pregnancy, we've got to provide much more assistance.
So I support universal childhood pre-K as well as aftercare, those kinds of things, as well as other family supports.
And we need to provide more resources in that regard.
We're all agreeing with each other here.
We are all in the past.
And that's a big note of that right now.
But I think that's a good thing.
And that points out something about Maine, that we differ on issues, but we're not disagreeable with each other.
But I want to emphasize something Demi said, which is child care.
That's a real crisis in Maine.
And if you have a child with little children, finding child care is really tough and it's really expensive.
And that's something that I think is a priority for me in the next Congress if I'm fortunate enough to be sent back.
But that's sort of a hidden issue, but boy, it's not hidden for the people that are trying to find it.
I see.
David Costello is a little bit more interesting.
I was going to say the most cost-effective way to do that is again to have universal pre-kindergarten and aftercare within the schools, community schools.
We can provide a lot more federal funding to absolutely do what the senator said.
As he has said, it's almost like you're paying the first tuition year of college to send a child to daycare.
So it's almost impossible for working families to afford.
And that's why the federal government needs to do a lot more.
And cost-effectively, the best thing to do would be universal pre-K and aftercare as well as paid family medical leave would be another area where the federal government needs to step up.
I believe Mike wanted to jump in.
Yeah, while we're agreeing, I wanted to nail you all down on something.
One of the biggest restraining effects on Congress is the, on this topic and others, right, is the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.
When Donald Trump was in office, he wanted Republicans to scrap it.
Kamala Harris has said Democrats should bypass it to pass abortion rights legislation.
Do you support ending the filibuster under any circumstances?
Start with you, Senator King.
No.
When I first went to the Senate, I did.
It was something that I thought, you know, it was undemocratic.
I can make all the arguments.
It's not in the Constitution.
But what I've learned is, and I learned this from some of my senior colleagues, what goes around comes around.
And the problem is if it's abolished, for example, to pass reproductive rights, which I would support, passing the reproductive rights, then the Senate could switch, the presidency could switch, and you'd have a national abortion ban.
You'd have abolishing the Affordable Care Act.
You'd have union busting legislation.
So one of my friends, the line that really convinced me, one of my friends in the Senate said, today's obnoxious obstruction is tomorrow's priceless shield.
And I think we have to be very careful about taking away something that can be annoying when it stops you from doing what you want, but it also could be very important in the future.
The other thing is, as my friend Joe Manchin would say, it forces us to work together.
It forces us to find bipartisan solutions, and that's not a bad thing.
What I do favor is what's called the talking filibuster, which is requiring senators to actually go to the floor and talk.
Now you just call up Mitch McConnell or Chuck Schumer and say, I object, and it's 60 votes.
I think that's too easy.
It ought to require some work in order to stop legislation that's supported by a majority of the body.
I think there was a Jimmy Stewart movie to that effect.
Yeah, we ought to bring back Mr. Smith goes to Washington.
Demi, let's have a chance for both of you to quickly respond as well.
Demi, I will make up some time.
I'm in agreement with the senator on this one.
We should not get rid of the filibuster.
When we do that, you're going to get more partisan politics.
We have to work together to do what's best for our country, for our state.
And that requires sometimes collaboration and working through a problem.
I'm in agreement.
We don't get rid of the filibuster.
David Casillo, say about that.
This is where we disagree.
I certainly think, well, first of all, I think the U.S. Senate is one of the most obscenely undemocratic institutions in the world, in that a state like California, 70 times larger than Wyoming, has the same clout leverage as Wyoming, which is, as I said, 70 times smaller than California.
I think we need significant reform in the Senate.
This is one instance where it's an easy reform.
The filibuster is not a Democratic instrument.
There's a lot of legislation that's been killed because of the requirement that you get closure, that you need 60 votes.
And as I understand, and Senator King can correct me, actually we could have codified Roe v. Wade with a 51-vote margin, but he, as I understand, didn't, was against removing the filibuster rule on that particular piece of legislation, so we didn't codify Roe v. Wade.
That's an example of where the filibuster has failed.
And as I said, we've got a Supreme Court today that's representative of less than 20% of Americans because states like Wyoming have tremendous clout leverage in the United States Senate.
The United States Senate needs significant reform, and easy reform is doing away with the filibuster Senate holds and those kinds of things.
And then we can get on the real work of making the Senate much more democratic and responsive.
And if you do that, you'll get a lot more done, and you'll have a lot more real bipartisanship, not getting a couple of senators on a bill to co-sponsor something.
You'll actually get work done.
Mike, did you have a quick question?
Senator King, just real quick.
After Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic voting bill in 2022, you said, and I quote, I've long opposed changes to the filibuster, but there's nothing more important than ensuring all Americans can access their constitutional right to vote.
So, have you changed your mind on the filibuster since then?
Is your position consistent?
To go further, I don't know if it's in that particular quote, but my position on that debate was a talking filibuster.
It was making the use of the filibuster more difficult.
And I lived this experience.
In 2013, the Democrats got frustrated because Mitch McConnell wouldn't allow circuit court judges to be brought to the floor.
He was blocking all of them.
So, they changed the rules and said it only has to be 51 votes.
Three years later, Donald Trump is elected, and we have Supreme Court justices, which used to require 60 votes, get through with 51 votes.
We got Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.
And so, you know, I think that was a good example of why you got to be careful what you wish for.
All right, I'd like to move on if we may.
Next, we want to move on to foreign policy.
It's something that perhaps in a different year we might not talk about it, but this year it feels apropos, specifically the Middle East right now.
Israel did retaliate over the weekend against Iran's missile strikes and what looks like an escalating regional conflict at this point.
You've each expressed support for Israel, but have differed strongly on the response in Gaza and where we go from here.
So, where do you stand right now on this issue?
And I believe we start with Demi Kizunis.
You have one minute right now to respond to the situation.
I'm sorry.
Go ahead, sir.
I'm the only veteran in this group, and I've served during the Cold War in Germany.
And I do believe peace through strength.
Israel right now is trying to defend itself, and it has a right to do so.
We still have 101 hostages, four of which we think are American.
They are still alive.
We need to get them back, and we need to, Israel needs to show strength.
This all happened because we appeased Iran.
We lifted the oil embargo, we gave them pallets of money, and we allowed them to then sell their oil to China and make boatloads of money, which they then gave to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthis, who are now causing all this terrorist situation and destabilized the area.
Senator King was part of basically allowing the appeasement of Iran, and I think we can see what's happening today.
I think we need to go back to the table, sit down, but we need to do this with strength.
That's the only way we're going to have peace.
Like I said, I served in the military during the Cold War, and I'll never forget when we had 250,000 troops in Germany when Russia wanted to come through.
And, you know, Reagan at the time said don't, and they didn't, versus Biden says, don't, and they do.
So, this is where we have to be strong.
We have to be strong militarily and put a foot down and say this is not going to continue.
Iran is a problem.
Thank you very much.
David Costello, same question to you.
Yeah, the unfortunate thing, it's like a never-ending horror show.
And, you know, what we have there, it's obviously we need to do a much better job.
Demi's right, and certainly Senator King's right.
Israel had the right and obligation to defend itself.
What Hamas did is horrific.
It can't be countenanced in any way.
However, the way that the Netanyahu government has responded is indefensible in many respects.
The fact that so many innocent Palestinians have died, over 42,000 now, not all of those are innocents, but at least half are women and children, is indefensible.
And it's also counter to Israel's long-term security.
The good news is the United States government has helped and will continue to defend Israel.
It's our strongest ally in the Middle East, but we've got to do a much better job of supporting Israelis who want a credible two-state solution because that has been a big problem.
We've got right-wing factions in control of hardliners in control of each side, whether it's in Iran or Israel.
And we've got to find a way, and it's hard to imagine how we'll be able to do that, to work with progressive Israelis who want significant, who want peace, who want a credible two-state solution.
And that's what we need to focus on, as well as once we've done that, working with Arab allies in the region to help stabilize Gaza.
Thank you very much.
Angus King, same question to you, sir.
Well, I'll start where everybody else did, which is: Israel has a right to defend itself, has a responsibility to defend itself.
And what Hamas did was this terrible massacre on October 7th.
The question then is: what does defending yourself mean and where does it stop?
I believe we're at a moment now where peace could be in prospect because Israel has killed the leader of Hamas, they've killed the leaders of Hezbollah, which are the two Iranian proxies, and they've retaliated against Iran for their attacks back a few weeks ago.
So if we can try to bring people to the table, and I know the administration is doing this as we speak, but I do have serious reservations about the way Israel is pursuing this.
For example, just today, Israel has indicated they're going to continue to limit humanitarian aid coming into Gaza.
I don't think there's any excuse for that.
And as David Costello said, I don't believe these actions are in the long-term best interest of Israel, of Israel itself.
They're endangering their own country by inflaming the Middle East.
I know, for example, Saudi Arabia would like to have a deal with Israel.
They can't do it because Israel has been so over the top in terms of their attacks in Gaza, but also limiting humanitarian aid.
I think this is a moment where a little restraint on all sides and we do have a possibility of peace.
The other alternative, of course, is a wider war.
We have a choice at this point in our debate, and that's to continue this conversation for a few more minutes and then go to closings or continue the conversation.
Demi Kazunis, I see you've already voted, I guess.
You'd like to respond to that.
What would you like to say?
Well, when Netanyahu came to the joint session in Washington, D.C., I believe Senator King, with Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and Elizabeth Warren decided not to show up.
You don't negotiate if you don't show up, I think it was a little disrespectful personally.
And then when they did go in and attack in Lebanon and take out those leaders, we were happy about that.
So which way is it?
Second of all, there was a two-state solution until Hamas came across and slaughtered 1,200 people.
I mean, that was unprovoked, no need for that.
We bring aid into the Gaza Strip, and what we see is Hamas and a lot of these other bad actors taking the supplies, not giving it to the women and children.
If we want to go in there and really help the women and children, we open the Rafah gates, allow these folks out so that they're not in harm's way.
But Egypt won't allow them in, which is a complicated situation.
But Israel isn't the problem here.
It's all the other bad actors in the area that are basically given free reign by Iran.
And Iran is our problem, and we've appeased him and gave him a lot of money.
I'd like to go to David Costello last.
I'm going to go to Angus King next.
Would you like to respond specifically to your decision to not attend Prime Minister Netanyahu?
I've met with Prime Minister Netanyahu probably three or four times.
I was in Israel, met with him in a room.
We were actually as close as this and discussed these issues with him.
I just felt that he was continually ignoring the reality that this is harmful to his country.
And I just couldn't, I just, I didn't, I didn't talk to Nancy Pelosi or anybody else.
I just decided for myself I couldn't go.
And if you've watched that speech, it was like a pep rally, and there was a lot of cheering and jumping up and that kind of thing.
I just didn't want to be a part of that because I think this man is harming his country.
And he's not listening.
And he doesn't seem to be listening to anybody other than the members of his cabinet which want to just go further and further in terms of stoking violence in the West Bank.
This is one of the most complicated, long-term, deepest issues in the world.
And it goes back hundreds of years.
It certainly goes back 50 years or back into the 50s into the founding of Israel.
But now's the time to start talking about self-determination for the Palestinian people.
If you don't get there, October 7th will keep happening over and over.
The Palestinians need hope.
And this is a time to start.
And final word to David Costello.
I want to say certainly not excusing Hamas or Hezbollah and what they've done as terrorist organizations.
But I certainly agree with what Senator King just said.
I mean, if Netanyahu has not been a serious negotiator, he's not been interested as many on the right in whether it's Iran as well as within the terrorist factions.
He has been as hardlined and as difficult.
And quite frankly, he seems to be benefiting from the violence.
He's worried about being indicted, so he's putting his political interests against, quite frankly, against the interests of not only the Israeli people, but also the region, and even against the United States.
He's not listening to the United States, and I'll stop there.
Well, I appreciate that.
I appreciate all your answers on all these topics.
We obviously did have several more as well.
Preparing for them, should we get to them?
We are not going to, although we're up against the hour here.
We are now going to move on to our closing statements.
Again, based on our random drawing and the order in which they appear, we're going to begin our one-minute closing statements with David Costello, please.
Like many of you, I believe that Washington is broken.
And as I mentioned earlier, for me to fix it, we've got to do a lot more than simply change whom we elect every two to six years.
We need to substantially reform our governing practices and institutions.
And we need to eliminate the excessive and corrupting influence of money, wealth, and disinformation.
And while I appreciate that Senator King has been a very thoughtful senator, I believe he's been too hesitant or too reticent to support the kind of reforms that we really need to make a difference and truly fix Washington.
And I don't believe he's going to, I continue to believe he'll continue to be overly cautious going forward.
Doing more of the same isn't working in Washington.
If you agree, check out my reform agenda at CostelloForsenate.com and mark me as your first choice on Maine's ranked choice ballot.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Angus King, you have one minute for a closing statement, please.
Well, I think what I've learned and what we've been discussing tonight is we can only solve these problems when we talk to one another.
And one of the reasons I decided to run again, which I didn't intend to two or three years ago, is that the middle in the Senate is literally shrinking.
The people who worked on all those bipartisan bills that I mentioned, Rob Portman from Ohio, who was key to the infrastructure bill, Richard Burr from North Carolina, Roy Blunt, and this year we're losing Sinema Manchin and Mitt Romney.
The people who were getting together to talk, to listen to each other and solve problems, there are fewer and fewer of them.
I want to continue to try to work, and it sounds sort of corny, but I want to continue to work with both sides because that's the only thing, the only way we get things done.
The other thing I've learned, Greg, is bipartisan bills last longer.
If a bill is passed by a simple majority of one party or the other, once the thing flip, that law is going to go away.
Bipartisan work is more permanent and more important to the American people.
There's a lot left to do.
I look forward to working with the people of Maine and the people of this country to solve these problems that we all know we have, whether it's housing, inflation, the general cost of living, the border, all of those things, reproductive rights.
That's my job, and I'd like to continue to do it if the people of Maine give me the honor of allowing me to do so.
Thank you very much.
Demi Kizunis, the floor is yours.
One minute for a closing statement.
Thank you.
I know some of you have voted for Senator King in the past.
He's been in politics for 20 years.
But the question we should be asking ourselves: are we better off today than we were five or six years ago?
Well, while Senator King has been in Washington as a career politician, by the way, voting 98.5% of the time with the Biden administration, so he's not bipartisan or independent, Maine has been struggling with high cost of energy, high cost of housing, shortages, and small businesses that are really barely getting by, and a lot of them are closing.
As a veteran, as a mom, as a business owner, I can tell you we need common sense back in Washington, D.C. Elections are not about partisan politics.
Elections are about the people like us.
And by the way, Maine has had a history of electing strong women senators to Washington, starting with Margaret Chase Smith.
My name is Demi Kizunis.
What I'm asking humbly today is that you would consider to vote me in as your next senator so I can bring in sensibility, true bipartisanship, and fresh ideas to Washington, D.C.
And with that, thank you so much for today.
Thank you very much.
Our big thank you to all three of our candidates tonight.
It's been an enlightening, we hope, a conversation we've had over the course of the past hour.
Again, our partners at the Bangor Daily News, we'd like to thank them as well.
And we'd like to thank you, our viewers as well.
If you missed any part of tonight's debate or just want to see it again, you can scan the QR code that we have on your screen or go to our website, WGME.com.
Also, you can follow along with the Bangor Daily News' website as well for complete election coverage.
Now through Election Day, which is at this point only eight days away, hard to believe at this point.
Thank you so much for tuning in tonight.
Have a great night.
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