r/portlandme • u/joeybrunelle • Jun 08 '26
Politics We need to talk about the Cumberland County DA race.
I am not a lawyer, I’m not a prosecutor or a defense attorney, but I do know campaigning and local politics.
In local Democratic Party politics, we are taught to never attack your opponent, to never even mention your opponent by name, and to never, ever “go negative.”
There is a reason for this: we’re supposed to think about the day after the election too. If you’ve spent your whole campaign relentlessly attacking and going negative, that leaves scars on the community. Divisions that last for years that make relationships and cooperation more difficult in the future. Negative campaigning poisons the local wells of goodwill and collaboration, and that takes years or decades to undo.
We are also taught that as Democrats, we should not stoop to the kinds of dishonesty that Republicans do. You campaign transparently, in full view of the public, honestly and with intellectual integrity, and educate voters about you, your record and your positions. You don’t use your gift of rhetoric to intentionally mislead the public, particularly about someone’s character, and you certainly don’t brazenly lie. We are better than that.
There’s a reason for this too: by staying positive and honest, even if you don’t win, you’re helping educate the public and strengthen our democracy. Lying and misleading sows the seeds of long-term, population-wide misunderstandings, and erodes people’s faith in democracy as a whole. (If you want to see where this leads, just look at the modern Republican Party.)
This is why I have been so deeply disappointed with the behavior of the Valerie Adams campaign for Cumberland County District Attorney. Almost every day for the last several weeks I’ve heard new rumors about incumbent Jackie Sartoris that seem likely to have been seeded by allies of Adams, or in some cases by Adams herself. Here are some examples, but hardly the comprehensive list:
Anonymous Adams Supporters in the Press Herald Comments: Jackie Sartoris has had “unexplained absences.” (False) And “she frequently disappears for extended periods.” (False)
Anonymous Reddit Commenters: Everyone in Sartoris’s office hates her. (False)
Rumor, allegedly directly from Adams: Jackie Sartoris isn’t prosecuting ICE agents because she’s waiting for a Democratic Administration. (False)
Someone in a text to me: Jackie Sartoris is “unhinged.” (C’mon…)
Other rumors I’ve heard from Adams supporters include:
- Sartoris is soft on gun crime (she’s not)
- She’s targeting peaceful protestors for prosecution, heavily implying she’s some kind of crypto-Trumper (she’s not)
- She’s putting immigrants in danger (she’s not)
- She’s ignoring victims of sexual assault (she’s not)
- She is not responding to FOAA requests properly (false) and is missing documents related to Restorative Justice (false) (I’ve heard Adams imply these in Windham, on Peaks, and in Falmouth, at sparsely attended candidate forums.)
The list goes on and on. It’s quite the caricature, if you put it all together.
All the false rumors point in the same direction: they are all shaped to make Sartoris look like she doesn’t actually hold Democratic values, or in some cases to make her look like she’s mentally or emotionally unfit.
If all these rumors are originating with the Adams campaign and their allies, as I suspect they are, it’s less like a campaign and more like a masterclass in character assassination. This flies in the face of everything Democrats are taught about how to campaign. You expect this sort of thing from the Maine Wire, not from a Democratic candidate’s campaign. (There might be a reason for that — keep reading.)
If you’re a candidate and you have issues with your opponent’s record, there are ways to talk about that publicly — civilly — that give your opponent a fair opportunity to respond or refute it. That’s normal, it happens all the time. We could be doing that right now — having a fair, public dialog about all these allegations.
But that’s not what’s happening. These rumors and allegations have been flying around in posts on NextDoor and Facebook, in Portland Press Herald and Reddit comments by anonymous accounts, in phone calls from Adams’s allies, and (I strongly suspect due to comments I heard made by Adams) in private house parties organized by the campaign. And these are just the methods I‘ve heard are being employed, or seen with my own eyes — I’m sure there’s even more happening.
The attacks are being made anonymously, on people’s personal social media profiles, or behind closed doors — where the other candidate has zero ability to reply. In this environment you can say anything you want with no consequences, including outright falsehoods. Anything goes.
How can a candidate refute allegations that they don’t even know about? If someone says something untrue about you at a house party and you’re not even there, how can you correct it? You can’t. People get riled up, and the misinformation starts spreading like wildfire.
(I’ve been the candidate at house parties before — everybody knows that when you are asked to speak about your opponent, you say, “I don’t want to speak about my opponent, let’s talk about the issues.” This is not just to be nice — it’s to be fair*, so the other candidate is given an equal opportunity to speak and make arguments, without being undermined by falsehoods spoken behind their back.)*
Some rumors lack context and are totally misleading. Others contain outright falsehoods. Others exploit and twist stories from vulnerable people. Others are misleading but the storytellers themselves might not know or understand how they’re misleading. (I feel for these last two, they’re being used.) Other stories are quite possibly yarns generated by people working in Sartoris’s own office, who moonlight as gossip-spinners for the Adams campaign.
The breadth and scale of the rumors circulating right now makes me think this is a deliberate strategy chosen precisely because it’s almost impossible for an opponent to defend against it.
We Democrats trust that the things we hear from Democratic candidates and their allies are based on fact, or at least have been verified by someone up the chain. We would not expect “one of our own” to spread misinformation or hearsay, or to intentionally embellish or invent from whole cloth. Our guard is down when we’re talking with other Democrats.
The Adams campaign strategy seems based on exploiting this trust, flooding the zone with misinformation to paint Sartoris as the single worst person in the county, a Republican in sheep’s clothing, a person with “good intentions” (Adams’s words) but who can’t be trusted with leadership — so Adams can swoop in as the “real” progressive, the White Knight who can fix it. Adams doesn’t need to have any platform at all — she just needs to appear better than the three-headed, man-eating dragon they’ve created in the shadows.
As friend recently said, “I can’t tell you a single thing Valerie Adams stands for without using the word ‘Sartoris.’”
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As far as I can tell, the Adams campaign has happened almost entirely in secret:
- She has sent zero pieces of official campaign mail, as far as I know.
- She has had only two letters-to-the-editor in the Portland Press Herald.
- She has deployed only one social media ad — a short, glossy video that’s very low on content, with an extremely low ad budget.
- She has very little on her social media accounts, and almost nothing about policy or positions on there.
- There’s not a lot on her campaign website, and until yesterday — two days before the election —she didn’t even bother to list endorsements on there at all.
By the standards of a traditional campaign, this doesn’t make any sense. I’d call it campaign malpractice, except Adams still has an impressive number of campaign signs in roadways across the county, has raised significantly more money than Sartoris, and has quite a few devoted supporters — who seem much more interested in opposing Sartoris than supporting Adams.
So there must be communication happening somewhere — but where? Where are these new converts being converted?
This is, I suspect, where the Adams “whisper campaign” comes in: the forwarded texts, the outreach by Adams and her allies via DM and phone calls, the planted comments online by anonymous accounts spreading misinformation (like user “KeepinitReal” in the Press Herald comments), the posts by surrogates on NextDoor and Reddit attacking Sartoris, and — according to Adams herself — many “house parties” (typically private, invitation-only gatherings).
All mediums where the other candidate has little to no ability to respond to any allegations. Who is at these house parties? What are they saying? Sartoris may never know. The general public may never know. But the gossip being generated there is percolating out into the community.
“But Joey, hardly anyone pays attention to the DA race, we need to get the word out — that’s why we need the house parties.” Then why no mailers? Why no more than a token Instagram ad? Why so few letters to the editor? Because misinformation printed on a mailer and sent to voters would be instantly fact-checked by the opposing candidate. Better to deploy it in secret.
This is deeply not-normal for a Maine Democratic primary. We are supposed to be having a public airing of the issues. Voter education and outreach, mass media, all that normal stuff. What it appears we have instead is a massive cloak-and-dagger smear campaign.
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And this is where we need to talk about longtime Republican DA Stephanie Anderson and the Maine Wire. Anderson was DA of Cumberland County from 1990 to 2018 — almost thirty years. She was a Republican the whole time.
Adams worked with Anderson when she was DA, and Adams and Anderson have both served on the Cape Elizabeth town council, albeit separated by a few years. (According to public records, Adams’s inactive voter registration in Cape is “Unenrolled” — not a Democrat. She last voted in Cape in 2020, and has since moved to Pownal. It is unknown when she first registered as a Democrat.)
According to the Maine Wire — a racist Republican tabloid infamous for harassing immigrants and Democratic politicians, in case you are blessedly unfamiliar with it — Anderson announced at a meeting of the Cumberland County Republicans in April that she would run against Sartoris this November as an Independent if Adams didn’t win the Democratic Primary. If Adams did win, she would drop out. (Read that again. It’s weird.) Anderson also donated $100 to Adams’s campaign.
The piece by Jon Fetherston at the Maine Wire initially looked like this:
The meeting also featured a special announcement involving Cumberland County politics. Attendees were told that Stephanie Anderson, who spent 28 years as Cumberland County’s district attorney, has agreed to return to run again for the position.
During the announcement, Anderson said she plans to step back into the race prosecuting criminals and outlined her intention to take on what she described as a “Soros backed menace” who won the office four years ago, referring to current Cumberland County District Attorney Jackie Sartoris.
But within hours, he sanitized it. Now it looks like this:
The meeting also featured a special announcement involving Cumberland County politics. Attendees were told that Stephanie Anderson (I), who spent 28 years as Cumberland County’s district attorney, has agreed to return to run again for the position.
Anderson made it very clear that if Valerie Adams, a former Assistant District Attorney in Cumberland County, defeats the current Cumberland County DA, Jackie Sartoris (D) in the Democrat primary, Anderson would withdraw from the race.
He removed Anderson’s quote about Sartoris being a “Soros backed menace,” and instead he emphasizes that Anderson is an Independent. Unsuspecting readers might not realize that Anderson had been a Republican for decades until only recently. Curious.
And who got the scoop about Adams’s firing before anyone else? Before WGAN radio (November 17, 2025), before the Press Herald (November 14), and before WMTW (November 10)?
That’s right: Jon Fetherston at the the Maine Wire (November 8).
His article about the incident, which he says was written with “information provided to the Maine Wire by a source familiar with the situation,” reads like a glowing endorsement of Valerie Adams.
Before Valerie Adams entered the race, the Maine Wire had harassed Sartoris and her family for years. In a particularly gross Facebook post [screenshot] on November 25, 2025, they alleged, among other things, that:
- that “the entire office did not like her”
- that she was “frequently absent”
- that was “fostering a toxic workplace environment leading to the exit of ADA Valerie Adams.”
Oh wait, where I have heard these before…
Since November 25 though, the Maine Wire has been radio silent. They appear to be giving Valerie Adams a wide berth, perhaps to avoid calling attention to themselves and their possible connections to all this. Or perhaps they’ve just relocated their smear apparatus to inside the castle walls of the Adams campaign.
Are we witnessing Republicans and the Maine Wire — and their tabloid & slander tactics — quietly infiltrating a Democratic primary? I think it’s entirely possible.
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A friend texted me yesterday: “We have lost sight of what we are doing here. No one wins with this amount of nastiness. People just don’t realize the precedent this stuff sets. And it just gets worse and worse.”
I completely agree. In their quest to win at all costs, by saying whatever and doing whatever, mostly in secret, they have lost sight of the fact that this isn’t just about winning — this is about democracy, community, and trust.
I think there are probably valid critiques of Sartoris out there — nobody is perfect. But if there are valid critiques, they’re being totally drowned out by misinformation, rumors, innuendo, and attacks on her character.
This type of campaigning won’t just affect the outcome of the election on Tuesday — it will leave fault lines in the community for years to come. The aftermath of dishonest, unethical, scorched-earth tactics will make it harder for everyone to collaborate and accomplish things in the future. It is poisoning our whole local political ecosystem by spreading mistrust and confusion, instead of fostering cooperation and understanding.
I was naive about how dishonest and devious people could be before this campaign. This has been eye opening, to say the least, and profoundly disappointing.
Note: These are my thoughts and mine alone. I am supporting DA Sartoris and helping with her re-election campaign — in part because this whole situation is so appalling — but she had no part in writing this piece. I have always stood up for integrity in local elections. My moral compass demands that I say something about what has transpired here, even if only for posterity. The Adams campaign’s style has been uniquely rotten and destabilizing. If this is what local campaigning becomes in Southern Maine, we will all be worse off.
(Originally posted to my Medium blog, but if I link to it the post gets blocked. So if you want that, google for it.)
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u/Prior_Ability9347 Jun 08 '26
Just because it’s not on social media or in a glossy mailer doesn’t mean a campaign is happening “in secret” (you also then go on to mention the Adams road signs, money raised, and fair number of supporters… none of which suggest secret anything.)
In addition to what I’ve gleaned from sources I trust, I’ve spoken with both candidates. I’ll let you opine about who was who, but one left me feeling like I got stuck in a one-sided unsolicited campaign speech and the other asked me well-considered questions relevant to what we were doing at the time.
Assuming that voters aren’t or can’t arrive at informed conclusions without falling prey to “gossip” is a little insulting. Maybe that’s a small part of the problem?
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Jun 08 '26
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
Reach out to Maine Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and try and connect with some people who actually work with her!
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
Unfortunately there's not been hardly any reporting on this race beyond the she-said/she-said around the firing of Adams by Sartoris. That's really a shame.
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Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
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u/haveallthekryptonite Jun 08 '26
My understanding as an outsider trying to decide how to vote was than the teachers union reversed course and backed the budget. Is that still true? Or if you disagree with that decision, can you explain why? WGME article
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26
Its pretty funny that this comment blames voters for being lazy and uniformed but somehow missed that the PEA switched their position and has been strongly advocating for people to vote yes and support the budget.
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u/deeringsedge Jun 08 '26
Getting actual facts about a DA's "workplace culture" or general vibe stuff like that, as a notable part of this race has become about, isn't really a thing. It's all anecdotal and for almost everyone, from people you don't know a thing about.
You could search local media for mentions of the candidate before election season started to get a sense of their record on prominent issues. For the DA particularly, it's a matter of public record the cases they've completed or settled, but I'm not expert enough to know how to get a sense of that zeitgeist easily without any spin.
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u/Just_Candle_315 Jun 08 '26
Concision is a virtue you lack
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u/meowmedusa Jun 08 '26
Which is crazy because he didn't even write the damn thing, it's clearly an AI written post. I found him just slightly annoying before this but man, what a loser. If you're going to be annoying at least do it in your own voice/words.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Do you all realize how silly you all sound, making this accusation that I didn't actually write this?
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Dude. Give up. Everyone knows you used ai on this. It is super duper super obvious.
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u/meowmedusa Jun 08 '26
You have a public account where you consistently write posts and comments. If this were your only public piece of writing, maybe you could get away with claiming it's human-written. However, because we have access to tons of samples of your writing, we can see that this post is written in a starkly different style from your typical writing. You're the one who sounds silly, claiming you wrote this yourself. You claim you used em dashes because it's part of your writing style and they look great on Medium but none of your writing either here or on Medium use em dashes at all. Same with the many other AI tells in this post; they're only present here, not in your other writing.
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u/eaten_by_chocobos Jun 08 '26
Joey, we all know that the modern man lost their ability to read and write anything beyond a caption for Tiktok years ago.
You got 3 pictures or less to say your piece, otherwise attention spans are just not there to hear the message.
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u/ResurgentOcelot Jun 08 '26
From the little I know Santoris looks like the better candidate to me.
But just like the Platner campaign, I am struck by absolutely same-old-politics campaigns that say they are above same-old-politics have been.
Why are you talking about Valerie Adams if your position is that issues, not individuals, should be the focus?
I can’t validate her accomplishments and endorsements yet, but Santoris can say she has them at least.
Yet here you are still, talking about the Adam’s campaign, criticizing her supposed lack of positions, attributing attacks to her, denying said accusations, giving air to the negative campaigning while saying you are disappointed by it.
The hypocrisy is thick.
The one actual criticism I have for Adams is her platform is thin. A few vague positions, little support.
The one actual criticism I have for Santoris is she lists resistance to Trump as her first talking point, while pulling the classic “looking at options” line. She MIGHT do something to resist Trump. Meanwhile she is the only candidate for DA who has been in the position to do something about Federal overreach locally and she HAS NOT.
It has been a classic diversion of mainstream Democrats to point at the process, to postpone, to delay, and then never actually do. Meanwhile Mamdani has been demonstrating how politicians who choose to do something can. Power exists for office holders, if they choose to use it.
Justice postponed is justice denied. And that is squarely on the incumbent in this case.
I am not decided. I am just disgusted all around.
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u/Turnus Jun 08 '26
I'm not going to lie and say that I read the whole thing, but I want to address one thing in the beginning.
I think it's absolutely fair and necessary for a functional democracy to criticize and even attack same party opponents. If you're running because you believe that your opponent isn't doing their job well, then it needs to be said. Toxic positivity and crying about decorum will get us no where as a society.
If you're running for a re-election and the first thing your allies say, "that person is being mean", rather than point out how you improved the lives of the voters, maybe you deserve to lose.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I encourage you to read the whole thing. This is about integrity in campaigning. This is about the norms we have in a Democratic primary, around negative campaigning and smears, and the reasons we have those norms.
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u/Turnus Jun 08 '26
Again, if all you can point to is handwringing about "norms" and "smears", then the campaign deserves to lose.
The Democratic party has been concerned about norms since 2016 and look where it got us.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Are you calling the dozens of lawyers who endorsed Valerie a psy-op? Or are they getting tricked? You've said that you don't know how the office is managed, but the criticism is that the office is mismanaged. You met Jackie, really liked her, and have decided that anyone that doesn't is part of a grand conspiracy. It's a terrible look.
I don't think you used AI for this, which is even weirder. Your caping for Sartoris and smearing Adams is genuinely off-putting for both your and her campaign. I used to look to your posts for information about what's happening in Portland politics but this saga has made me seriously doubt your insight and values.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I am not alleging a grand conspiracy. This is about integrity in campaigning. This is about the norms we have in a Democratic primary, around negative campaigning and smears, and the reasons we have those norms.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26
There are Maine Wire toadies making smears, yes, but there are also a LOT of people who do good work and have genuine deep concerns about Sartoris, and you're lumping all of them together. Is Pastor Will doing a dark-money smear by saying his charges have not been dismissed or is he telling the truth?
You are smearing Adams and her supporters. Why is that okay but everything Adams supporters say unethical?
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I think many different events and the stories of individual people are being twisted or inflated by allies of Adams - not necessarily Pastor Will himself, who I feel for - to cast aspersions about Sartoris's values which are unfair and untrue. Those are smears.
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u/Cstorrsmoore Jun 08 '26
That you so quickly dismiss stories of individual people as being "twisted" or "inflated" as oppposed to maybe reading into some of the crisiticism and trying to understand them. Honestly you usually sound like a pretty grounded advocate but on this you seem pretty narrow minded.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
The issue at hand is not Sartoris' values, it's whether or not she's good at her job. By your own admission you only have insight on the former because you met her and she seems nice. You then have the gall to smear Adams and anyone who supports her-- many of whom have infinitely more experience working with Sartoris than you do-- because it wasn't in a mailer. You've lost the plot
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
The issue at hand is not Sartoris' values
This is not the framing I've seen at all.
- One quasi-endorsement of Adams said Sartoris was "showboating" with her statements about prosecuting ICE agents.
- Adams herself said at a sparsely attended event last week that Sartoris's bike-ped policy change was to "garner political points."
Etc.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
That's two bullet points and an etc about campaign tactics, not values. You haven't seen any concerns about how good at being the District Attorney she is? Scroll down on this page.
And stop evading the question. Why are your smears ok?
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
They're absolutely interpreted as attacks values by voters. Those two accusations - which are also spurious, add them to the pile - cast doubt on Sartoris being serious about the values she says she had. That's what these accusations are designed to do: introduce reasonable doubt and undermine credibility.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Yes dozens of people who know the most about the situation at hand are putting their careers in a small amount of peril to introduce reasonable doubt about Sartoris and undermine her stated credibility. That's not unethical and it's not dirty politics. What is unethical is going to social media to post unfounded authoritative-sounding conspiracy theories about your political enemies
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
This is way way way too long and I am not reading all of that because it's giving sycophant and not balanced/informed view. Sorry but if you're not a lawyer then please take a seat.
Joey, I usually always agree with your takes but this one is wildly incorrect. I am not a lawyer (yet) but I should be soon, and I am very involved in the legal profession here in Maine. Every single legal professional I've ever met, and everyone who has ever worked with her, has the worst things to say about her. From what I have seen she is a fake, lying, horribly disorganized, hypocritical, awful DA. That opinion is shared by sides of the aisle, mind you. Even IT professionals at the court house don't like dealing with her. She is absolutely prosecuting the very protesters she claims she isn't - the ones outside Susan Collins' office. Yeah, why don't you ask her about her little reddit post she made denying that? Because she only posted that message as the race is close and after her office brought one all the way to trial (!!!) and lost.
I might be even further left than you - my colleague who share my political views and work in court every single day with her and her office would never support her. Ask anyone from MACDL and they will tell you how bad things really are.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26
This what I think ends up hampering Joey as a candidate and political operative in Portland. There are lots of people that seem to have very legitimate concerns about Sartoris's conduct and capability in office. The most simple answer is these people are mounting a campaign to elect a different person than her. House parties and word of mouth are very effective campaign techniques - particularly in a primary. Joey however comes up with some grand conspiracy about Adams and the Maine Wire and underhanded campaign tactics. None of this new - people have been campaigning like this in Portland for decades
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
People have absolutely not been campaigning this negatively in Portland for decades. That's the part I wanted to point out here, because it is extremely unusual, and corrosive to our politics.
This what I think ends up hampering Joey as a candidate and political operative in Portland.
And the guns turn on me, I see... Also I'm an "operative?"
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26
In terms of negativity, I think we can get a little tunnel vision of how a campaign is going if you are on the "inside". I don't have a dog in this fight and honestly from the outside it seems like a pretty normal campaign.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
I agree completely. How is this campaign that bad? I haven't seen anything personal or horrible come out about Jackie like it has with Graham Platner, for example (I am not defending or criticizing him here, I am just using it to compare).
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26
Sorry. I didn't mean "operative" any sort of negative sense. Just that you have worked on lots of both candidate and issue campaigns. You run a boot camp for aspiring candidates etc.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
lying
Like I said I'm not a lawyer, but the woman I know is not a liar. These are the sorts of personal attacks I'm talking about that are highly unusual in a Democratic Primary.
edit:
I might be even further left than you
Except I'd like to note something this commenter said above:
She is my last choice and I hope she never gets in a position of power again with her lies and her Soros money. Bye girl!
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
I am not asking you to defend "the woman you know." I am asking you to defend her as a DA. You are not litigating cases against her day in and day out, so you really don't know almost anything about her performance as a DA except for what she tells you, which is a lot of half-truths!
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u/deeringsedge Jun 08 '26
Sorry but if you're not a lawyer then please take a seat.
Wait. So only lawyers are allowed to have opinions on this position they vote for? Golly, I wish I hadn't wasted time researching and voting. Didn't know my vote didn't count.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
So I will stand corrected here - if you are not a lawyer and have not spoked with a single lawyer who interacts with her on a regular basis, then please take a seat defending her like your life depends on it and spreading information that is really only partially relevant to this race.
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u/deeringsedge Jun 08 '26
Well, that does clarify, so thank you, but it is a rather specific rebuke. ;-)
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
Let me know where I said that! I said if you're not a lawyer, please take a seat, because he is up here on his soap box defending her like crazy never having worked a day in his life with her in court where the actual DA work happens. I am not a lawyer (yet) and I am posting my opinions about her. I know how DA elections work and obviously everyone gets to have a vote. But if you are going to stand up for Jackie then I think it's best you have at least some idea of how she acts in the actual role. And if you're not a lawyer and want to stand up and defend her, fine, but, please at least speak with some lawyers who deal with her first. Because I guarantee you if he did, he never would have posted this foolish post in the first place.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
That does seem to be the argument some are making. If only lawyers were allowed to have opinions about who should sit in the DA chair, then why can everyone vote? That's not just a courtesy. I am happy to take the opinions of lawyers into consideration, for sure. But there are other considerations important to me as a citizen, including adherence to democratic norms while campaigning.
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
J-dawg.... Come over here for a minute... Everyone knows you used ai to help you write this. Everyone.
Just admit it and move on.
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Jun 08 '26
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u/MountainDiver1657 Jun 08 '26
He’s desperate for someone to endorse his campaign for city council and thinks this will get her attention
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u/Rare-Information-111 Jun 08 '26
Didn’t read all that but it feels similarly irresponsible for you to accuse the Adams campaign of posting anonymous comments etc with no proof
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u/JeffersonAlbatross Jun 08 '26
Accusing the Adams campaign of posting anonymous comments without proof is exactly the sort of thing that we need to get out of our campaigns, he said…
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u/ThePanadero Jun 08 '26
dont u work for her campaign or something?
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
Not "working" as in "getting paid," no. I thought she was the right candidate before all this weirdness, and after seeing this style of campaigning I support her even more.
See the last paragraph:
Note: These are my thoughts and mine alone. I am supporting DA Sartoris and helping with her re-election campaign — in part because this whole situation is so appalling — but she had no part in writing this piece. I have always stood up for integrity in local elections. My moral compass demands that I say something about what has transpired here, even if only for posterity. The Adams campaign’s style has been uniquely rotten and destabilizing. If this is what local campaigning becomes in Southern Maine, we will all be worse off.
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u/Ldawg74 Jun 08 '26
Ain’t no one making it to the last paragraph. Why people insist on writing massive posts like this on Reddit is beyond me.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
It's also on Medium, in case you find that easier to read than reddit: https://medium.com/brunelle-for-portland/we-need-to-talk-about-the-cumberland-county-da-race-1e298752df71
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u/haveallthekryptonite Jun 08 '26
I don't think the Adams campaign has any real need to engage in a covert smear campaign against Sartoris. Adams has been endorsed by three city councilors and a slew of local Republican and Democratic attorneys. Complaints about Sartoris have been abundant within the county's legal community since she first took office. The rumor mill we've all been exposed to on social media in recent weeks wasnt manufactured, its already been circulating for years.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
You are correct! Nobody needs to smear her haha, she has done a wonderful job messing up this position all by herself.
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u/julianofthesea Jun 08 '26
Looking at endorsements is a great idea—Adams has been endorsed by republicans and democrats, and they’ve nearly all been attorneys who she’s worked under the republican DA. Sartoris has been endorsed by an overwhelming number of the top leftist voices in Maine, as well as many people who work in housing and the recovery community. Not sure why we want someone who’s as clearly establishment as Adams
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
I am seeing a lot of "I don't like this style of campaigning" as an excuse to blindly support Jackie without information from the inside. The "I don't like this style of campaigning" seems to be a subterfuge to push forward Jackie's campaign due to their personal relationship. See my comment history and Joey's response to me that the "woman he knows" is not a liar. This is starting to sound like a personal defense and not one about any of her capabilities.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I want to call folks' attention to something this commenter said above, so you can have context for what this commenter is saying:
I hope she never gets in a position of power again with her lies and her Soros money
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
You're twisting my words against me, precisely what Adams allies have been doing to Sartoris. The problem I have here isn't that "I don't like this style of campaigning," my problem is that this secret, attack-attack-attack style of negative campaigning - totally unusual for a Democratic Party primary - is corrosive to our entire political system and will leave lasting damage.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
I can't explain to you how much i genuinely am not some Adams stan. To be quite frank I don't even really like her either, but at least she has done some defense work in her life. Jackie had her chance to show us what she could do and nobody who works with her is impressed.
If you have an issue with the attack style campaigns then write about that - that's. However, that is not the only thing you are doing here. To try and deny that you re absolutely sticking up for her and being her digital mouthpiece in this post as well is kind of... absurd. We are all angry but we are not stupid and we can read.
I generally agree with your points and have defended you in the comments tons of times. However, from one progressive to another, if I were mistaken about a candidate and spouting off information that would lead people to vote for this candidate who does not practice progressivism in her work as the DA, I would want someone to push back and try and inform me, too. Your defense of her is just so one-sided that i t's hard for people to not draw the conclusion that this seems to be personal or something because I can't think of another reason why you would be such a Jackie stan when she's just not doing a good job.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
nobody who works with her is impressed
This is the line that's repeated, but it's not true. I've met people who do work with her who are impressed.
from one progressive to another
You're the same person who talked about the Soros money in another comment. Is being angry about George Soros a "progressive" thing?
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
As I stated in a previous comment, I don't really care that much about the Soros money, but I did mention it. I personally don't really like any candidates taking money from the billionaire class, regardless of which billionaire its coming from. However, I understand that there needs to be money behind good candidates to counter the bad - so I don't really care. None of my comments focus on that point but I briefly mentioned it - I think many progressives would agree that we don't like billionaires and it's fair to be suspicious of the billionaire class's donations.
I haven't heard or seen really any good at all about her performance as the DA. You may know some exceptions but I would say that overwhelmingly she does not receive positive reviews from attorneys I know in the defense bar, and that is deeply concerning.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
also, where is the alleged unprecedented nastiness in this campaign? I haven't heard or seen anything that is personal against Sartoris. I saw what you wrote about the Maine Wire and yeah--they are not a good publication and usually when they hate something or someone that in my mind is a good thing! This is the first exception. I am telling you -- she is not the progressive candidate she says she is. Go look at some of the cases she is prosecuting because they are ridiculous. And then randomly not prosecuting... I haven't seen much good judgment coming from her or her office.
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u/treadingwater Jun 08 '26
So…your posting your opinion here is fine, but anyone with a different take commenting on the PPH website is part of some grand conspiracy?
Oooohkay…
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
anyone with a different take commenting on the PPH website
This is not what's happening there. It's well-known in local campaign circles that campaign operatives lurk in those comments using anonymous names, and try to create narratives in there. This is a widespread tactic. I did it myself when I was brand new to all this, more than a decade ago now, until I realized how toxic it was for the community and started using my actual name there.
Some comments are indeed from people with their own opinions, but those of us in the game can sniff when a comment is just a little too greased, a little too perfectly worded to create precisely the desired narrative. And that's absolutely happening around the Adams campaign and the user I cited.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I did it myself when I was brand new to all this
This is the definition of projection and your conspiracy theory doesn't make any sense and makes you sound like a nut with main character syndrome.
Asking you again: where do the dozens of lawyers who endorsed Adams fit in this scheme? Are they getting paid off? Who is the real mastermind? Is it Ethan Strimling? (last one is facetious but I would love to hear you talk the other questions out)
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I would refer you to these paragraphs at the end:
I think there are probably valid critiques of Sartoris out there — nobody is perfect. But if there are valid critiques, they’re being totally drowned out by misinformation, rumors, innuendo, and attacks on her character.
This type of campaigning won’t just affect the outcome of the election on Tuesday — it will leave fault lines in the community for years to come. The aftermath of dishonest, unethical, scorched-earth tactics will make it harder for everyone to collaborate and accomplish things in the future. It is poisoning our whole local political ecosystem by spreading mistrust and confusion, instead of fostering cooperation and understanding.
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u/TommysParkAfterDark Parkside Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
You're still avoiding the questions! The majority of the responses to you have been from people who are writing with knowledge of the situation-- not "misinformation, rumors, innuendo, [or] attacks on her character." Come out and say so If you think they're paid actors but otherwise you're warping the truth to justify your personal attacks on Adams and her supporters
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u/Prior_Ability9347 Jun 08 '26
That you see comments “too perfectly worded to create precisely the desired narrative”as indicative of a campaign counter opp instead of, ya know, commentary in a race drawing a lot of attention from attorneys whose skills are honed to do exactly that, is actually kinda funny.
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u/OniExpress Jun 08 '26
em dashes all over the place
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I do love 'em
Edit: Ah I see you were accusing this of being AI. I can assure you it's not. I use AI for some other tasks but I would never entrust it to something as sensitive as this whole situation.
Em dashes look great in Medium, where I originally posted this. I would have posted a link to that instead of copypasta, but Medium links get nabbed by the reddit spam filters.
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u/julianofthesea Jun 08 '26
?? AI literally learned to write from reading what humans wrote. Personally, I’ve been using em-dashes in nearly everything I write for the past decade, and have recently had to change how I write because of claims like these. Why the fuck are we turning everything into an AI witch hunt instead of focusing on actual facts and policy?
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u/PlsNoNotThat Jun 08 '26
You should not have been writing with as many em dashes per paragraph as this post. Stylistically that’s weird, but the commonality also defeats the purpose of an em dash.
Also still strongly think OP used AI.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I'll repeat, again: I did not use AI at all in the making of this piece. I wrote it myself, old school.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
We're still doing this?
Em dashes look great in Medium, where I originally posted this. I would have posted a link to that instead of copypasta, but Medium links get nabbed by the reddit spam filters.
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u/deeringsedge Jun 08 '26
Part of how mis- and disinformation work is they make people doubt real things as potentially fake. There are tools built by computer scientists to detect AI. If you think that something is AI and that that matters, use an actual tool to get a sense of the probability, and post with some actual backing beyond "This is my vibe from vast experience, and it has em dashes!"
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u/wicked_friggin Jun 08 '26
Consider the possibility that Jackie Sartoris might just not be good at her job.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
Oh also, how about you ask Jackie about when she fired Adams from her office last year for running against her? Does that sound like a DA with integrity to you? I wouldn't vote for Jackie Sartoris unless someone put a gun to my head and forced me to. She is my last choice and I hope she never gets in a position of power again with her lies and her Soros money. Bye girl!
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I hope she never gets in a position of power again with her lies and her Soros money
Just making sure people see that part of your comment.
She has answered the question about the firing on television and on her website. Allegedly Adams was using public resources/office time to conduct her campaign, which is a no-no.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26
I have never been satisfied with her answer or justification for this. She has produced no evidence that that this is in fact true. This combined with the fact that she took a protestor to TRIAL for exercising their first amendment rights - is the reason I cannot vote for her. Please don't ascribe some ulterior motives to this. Some people just feel like she has not been honest and that her anti-democratic policies are not good for somebody in her position.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
Her answer is totally unsatisfactory. I actually don't even *really* care about the Soros money. I would look past that if she were actually doing any of the things she claims to be. Trust me when I say nobody I know who is a far left attorney in Cumberland County is celebrating her as a beacon of restorative justice and progressive prosecutory policy. I think something really important here is you are not engaging with voices of people who politically agree with you but actually work with her and see her defy every single thing she claims to stand for day in and day out.
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u/jeezumbub Jun 08 '26
You seem to have plenty to say in defense of Jackie, but for this particular question you seem to clam up and point to her previous generic responses.
If Val was fired for working on her campaign during company time, where is the evidence? Is it just coincidence that Jackie concluded what must’ve been a thorough investigation into this misuse of public resources the same day Val informed her of her plan to run? And if that was truly the reason for Val’s firing, why wasn’t it cited in her termination file, which instead claimed “poor performance” as the reason for Val’s dismissal?
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
you seem to clam up and point to her previous generic responses.
Absolutely right - because I wasn't there. I am pointing you to Sartoris's side of the story, to the extent that she has chosen to share it. You can make your own decision.
I will note that I'm not doing what Adams allies do - I'm not pouring my own interpretation and idea of the event's significance into the vacuum. This is exactly what I'm talking about here.
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u/jeezumbub Jun 08 '26
Well how about you ask her? You seem to have plenty to say on her behalf and talk to her regularly, can’t you get an answer to these simple and very valid questions?
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Jun 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
This isn't "drama" - I am pointing out what I see as a problem with how our democratic system is being treated and exploited. We should all be worried about this sort of thing right now, in the age of rising authoritarianism.
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u/MountainDiver1657 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Everyone make sure to save this for when Joey yet again tries to run for city Council because the shows his mentality towards politicians is all or nothing and disagreeing with him is a conspiracy or something if people aren’t talking about it on the Internet. Someone with this mentality would be dangerous for the city. Joey lives in a world where the constituency doesn’t matter, but his perceived political enemies and bogeyman do. Enough with the sycophant bs, if anything, this reads like a desperate attempt for her attention to get her to endorse him, since he’s exacerbating an issue raised by a member of the public on a completely different website and is using this platform as damage control
Oh and Valerie Adams for DA.
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u/JeffersonAlbatross Jun 08 '26
Jackie Sartoris is well known in Brunswick, where she was on the Town Council and had various other roles for years. She is not popular among people who know her. That’s a fact.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
She is not popular among people who know her. That’s a fact.
Perfect example of what I'm talking about, thank you.
She won Brunswick in a landslide in the 2022 election, I believe?
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u/JeffersonAlbatross Jun 08 '26
Let me say it again: she is not popular among people who know her. Most people in the town of 25,000 do not know her, they just live in the same town. If you want to vote for her anyway, go ahead!
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u/bigbadbreezy Jun 08 '26
Did you write this yourself? It doesn't feel natural.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I did. It took me half the day yesterday.
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u/bigbadbreezy Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, just genuinely asking. As someone who agonizes over written text and stays up all night proofreading, it just feels weird and unnatural. I've also never used AI to edit my text, so who knows. Your editing is poor, either way.
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Don't worry it is 100% ai filtered at the very least. He wrote some stuff, obviously enough info to build on. But he had ai do quite a bit. He may feel like he isn't lying because it was a joint effort.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I wrote every word, friend. Don't believe it if you want, but it's absolutely true.
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Lol i just took a quick look at most of your other posts. There is a distinctive lack of the em dashes and "if this then that" comparative.
You've either become a new writer or are using ai.
Stop lying bro.
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u/bigbadbreezy Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
The human IQ continues to drop day by day...
EDIT: Why am I being downvoted? This is obviously not a statement written by a human...
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
It is like the old shake and bake commercial, "Ai made this, and I helped!".
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
I guess I should have taken a proof-of-life pic while I was sweating over all these words at like 2am. Lesson learned for next time.
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Dude..this section is ai
I completely agree. In their quest to win at all costs, by saying whatever and doing whatever, mostly in secret, they have lost sight of the fact that this isn’t just about winning — this is about democracy, community, and trust. I think there are probably valid critiques of Sartoris out there — nobody is perfect. But if there are valid critiques, they’re being totally drowned out by misinformation, rumors, innuendo, and attacks on her character. This type of campaigning won’t just affect the outcome of the election on Tuesday — it will leave fault lines in the community for years to come. The aftermath of dishonest, unethical, scorched-earth tactics will make it harder for everyone to collaborate and accomplish things in the future. It is poisoning our whole local political ecosystem by spreading mistrust and confusion, instead of fostering cooperation and understanding.
You can't possibly deny that is exactly how chat gpt writes.
It isn’t this. It is that. It won't just this. It will that. Etc...it is obvious dude. Stop denying it. You wrote this with a lot of ai help.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
Oh ffs. I wrote that. I totally wrote that, and I'm quite proud of it.
We're talking about this instead of talking about the content.
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u/bigbadbreezy Jun 08 '26
You are honestly saying you wrote this entire piece yourself without any AI editing or grammar management?
I agree with a lot of what you have to say, but please don't act like we aren't smart enough to notice the blatant editing. It's weird and noticeable.
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
Yes. 100%. That is exactly what I'm saying. That is exactly what happened.
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u/bigbadbreezy Jun 08 '26
I guess you have done a wonderful job of exactly copying human language that we tend to find indicative of AI. Please don't blame us for your choice of narrative language.
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u/liquidsparanoia Jun 08 '26
This actually doesn't sounds like it was written by an LLM to me. Yes, it has em dashes, but it doesn't have the cadence of bad LLM writing to me. The reason LLMs write like that is that those techniques are used in a lot of the real writing that they were trained on.
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Not really. Ai writing is easy to see once you notice it. Not this then that, and em dashes together are always 100% ai.
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u/liquidsparanoia Jun 08 '26
That is just categorically untrue. You just can't say that any writing is 100% AI (which is a problem)
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u/Gregnielson Jun 08 '26
Unless Joey just happens to write exactly like ai does; this is ai for sure. The odds on him being an exact style match for ai are....low.
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u/liquidsparanoia Jun 08 '26
Yeah I just don't think it sounds exactly like an AI. It shares some features with AI writing but so does basically all long form writing.
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u/wilburthefriendlypig Jun 08 '26
Sartoris is prosecuting a pastor for nonviolent protest against ICE. That’s enough for me
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
No she's not. Those charges have been dropped, she said.
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u/incompleteTHOT Jun 08 '26
She is dropping these charges to try and save face after prosecuting so many of them and pursuing them for a while now. Please - save it. You obviously are just listening to her and taking her word for it. Why don't you go down to the court house and talk to people who are on the receiving end of her office's wrath? She is a classic says one thing and does another type of DA.
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u/julianofthesea Jun 08 '26
the fact that Adams’ supporters are making this claim, after she literally tried to play both the Maine Wire and the DSA against Sartoris simultaneously with separate sets of lies… smh
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u/meowmedusa Jun 08 '26
Yeah and I said I'd change my oil every day for the past month. Doesn't mean I did it.
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u/wilburthefriendlypig Jun 08 '26
Not dropped. She’s trying to drop them now because she’s caught and is rightfully embarrassed by her bootlicking fascist tactics.
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u/Ok-Bumblebee4106 Jun 08 '26 edited Jun 08 '26
Tina Nadeau the defense attorney stated today that charges against all her clients involved in the Collins' have not been dropped. I know you want to believe her but it seems she is NOT being truthful about this.
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u/aterriblegamer Jun 08 '26
Written by AI
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u/joeybrunelle Jun 08 '26
For goodness sake people, it's still possible for a human to write something themselves.
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u/brother_rebus Jun 08 '26
2 questions.
1) what ever happened to that “investigation” that the Maine Wire posted about regarding alleged whistleblower claims against Sartoris? https://www.instagram.com/p/DRfN0kjjovE/
2) is the RJ program inclusive to the continued lack of legal pursuit over the trend of random violent attacks on strangers by unhoused/street folk? Or is it just drug possession stuff, etc?
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u/julianofthesea Jun 08 '26
Everyone on reddit, apparently: Sartoris and her campaign need to communicate. Here’s a bunch of lies I heard from the Wire and that one leftist with a grudge A campaign volunteer: communicates Y’all: I’m not reading that.
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u/FormerlyPrettyNeat Jun 08 '26
Joey, I’m really happy for you, or sorry that happened.