Painters’ Union Member Running for Western Maine State House Seat

PHOTO: House District 77 candidate Arlie Hetrick (IUPAT)

Retired Painters (IUPAT) District Council 35 member Arlie Hetrick is running for the Maine House of Representatives in District 77, which comprises the towns of Canton, Dixfield, Hartford, Mexico, Peru and part of Livermore.  Hetrick worked as a union industrial painter for most of his career in West Virginia before coming up to work in New England. He said he was inspired to run for the Oxford County seat because he wants to improve the lives of working class people in his district.

“This is a very working-class district and people struggle to get by. We trail the state for median household income and our child poverty rate is 22 percent, higher than the state average,” said Hetrick. “Families here work hard. 78 percent of adults here are working or looking for work, but many are navigating lower wages, seasonal industries and limited local job opportunities. They don’t have many options and I want to change that.”

Hetrick grew up in a union household in West Virginia. He remembers standing on a picket line as a child with his mother and father, who worked at the local Westinghouse Electric plant. The plant later closed and moved to Mexico due to NAFTA.

“It was rough times, but the safety nets were good then,” he recalled. “We got food stamps, as it was called back then, and the Salvation Army brought us toys.”

Hetrick joined a IUPAT local in Kentucky in 1998 and he’s been a proud union member ever since. He painted the coal-fired Longview Power Plant in Maidsville, West Virginia and several bridges in the region. He later began working up in New England painting bridges with IUPAT DC 35. He and his wife raised three boys on his union wages. Hetrick, a Democrat, mourns how West Virginia transformed from a blue-collar Democratic state to consistently electing anti-union politicians.

“West Virginia has a proud labor history and it's unbelievable what has happened. They like cut their own throat,” he said. “It never made sense to me.”

In 2017, he retired and moved with his wife and bought a 16-acre farm in East Dixfield where they raise cows, chickens and a couple of emus. In many ways, his district in Maine is similar to parts of West Virginia in that it has also suffered greatly from the loss of good union manufacturing jobs and has tilted hard to the right in recent years. Hetrick said he had been very stressed out with the current political situation in Washington and had trouble sleeping, but since deciding to run for office he says he feels a sense of optimism.

“This is not for everybody, but I'm telling you I feel a lot better now. I sleep good at night,” he said. “It’s not bothering me so much because I'm busy with this campaign and with my farm, so it's working out. It's good therapy for me.”