Two longtime employees of the firm spoke at her Lisbon Street headquarters to lash into U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, the first-term Republican whom Cain aims to unseat in Tuesday’s voting in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Poliquin is under fire for saying he’d helped manage the pension fund years ago when he actually had no role in its investment decisions.
John Portela, a 42-year worker at the company, called it a huge revelation that showed Poliquin’s “so-called experience was an invention, and he has been taking credit for work he didn’t do.”
But Republicans have a different take.
“This is a desperate last-ditch effort by Emily Cain’s flailing congressional campaign,” said Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine Republican Party.
He said Cain “is paying the price of tying her hopes to the corrupt Clinton machine, which is a common problem around the country for Democrat career politicians.”
“Just like at the start of this campaign, Emily Cain has nothing to run on and her entire strategy is ‘smear Bruce Poliquin,’” Savage said.
Another longtime Bath Iron Works employee, Ralph Hilton, said the congressman “may not have managed the pension plan but he did use the management skills he brags about to analyze the pension plans available” to the company and came up “with a way to avoid contributing to the people who worked there, like me.”
Hilton said Poliquin’s recommendations at Avatar Associates, where he was a principal until stepping down in 1993, left the Bath Iron Works “severely underfunded.” It was replaced with a new retirement plan in 1994.
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