Maine governor candidate Bobby Charles proposes eliminating state income tax

Maine GOP gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles, a former assistant Secretary of State in the Bush administration, has proposed eliminating the state income tax.

"Our overall burden in this state is about the second or third in the country, and we're talking about a state where people make maybe $42,000 on average a year," Charles said on the Just the News Not Noise TV program.

"The taxes are through the roof, and I am planning to, frankly, get rid of the income tax. I have conscientiously looked at it. We've got accountants working on it. We will get rid of the income tax," he added.

Charles said he would work to cut the state budget, which he said has grown by two times in about seven years. 

"It's double what it was seven years ago. We will get rid of all of that waste. We will literally set up a kind of DOGE here in Maine, and get back to a Norman Rockwell accountability," he said.

Charles also vowed to eliminate organized crime in the state within 24 months.

"Again, I come back to cut the crime, cut the taxes, cut the nonsense, and just go back to being normal Maine, and frankly, that platform is resonating all over this state, north, south, east, west," he said.

"We're at a bottom point, and I think we're going to bounce off the bottom. We're going to take the House, the Senate and the governor's mansion, frankly, in two years," he added.

Charles served as assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs under former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

Janet Mills, the current Democratic governor, is serving her second term and cannot run again. Charles called Mills a "wing nut" for opposing President Trump's effort to keep transgender women out of women's sports.

"About 95% or 98% of Mainers know the difference between a boy and a girl. They do not want boys in girls sports. They do not want them taking their privacy away, their dignity away, their safety away. They don't want them taking their scholarships away and their podium moments away. It is absolutely absurd," he said. "It's immoral."