Union Teacher Running for Western Maine Senate Seat

High school teacher and Maine Education Association member Nathan Burnett of Hiram is running for State Senate in District 22, which comprises 13 towns across Oxford, York and Cumberland Counties. The seat, which is currently held by Senator Jim Libby (R-Standish), includes the towns of Baldwin, Naples, Sebago, Standish, Acton, Cornish, Limerick, Limington; Newfield, Parsonsfield, Shapleigh, Porter and Hiram. Libby is running for Governor, so Burnett will face off against Rep. Kimberly Pomerleau (R-Standish) in the general election.

Burnett has taken the Maine AFL-CIO Worker Candidate Training and has previously run three times for the Maine House in a very difficult district. In 2024, he narrowly lost his election in House District 82 by just 45 votes out of 4,506 votes cast. Burnett’s main priorities are supporting education and workers’ rights.

“There are people in Augusta who are telling teachers how to do their jobs and have no idea what our jobs are. I believe that's true for a lot of working-class folk,” he said. “I want to be a voice in Augusta on behalf of labor, labor rights, labor issues, and working people in the state of Maine.”

Burnett was born in Australia, but moved to Aroostook County when he was 14 to be closer to his mother’s family. He graduated from Presque Isle High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Maine. He taught math and computer science at Sacopee Valley High School for 13 years until 2025 when the district had to cut a math teacher due to declining student enrollment. While his job wasn’t on the chopping block, Burnett decided to save his coworker’s job and took the layoff to pursue a masters degree in mathematics at UMaine.

Burnett has chaired the math department at Sacopee Valley High School and served as vice president of the Tri-County Teachers Association, the school’s teacher’s union. He was the statistician for the union’s negotiation team and was elected and appointed to the Board of Trustees for the Maine Public Employees Retirement System where he oversaw the $21 billion trust fund for all state employees.

Burnett said his other main priority is addressing the lack of high-speed internet availability in rural Maine. He said he and his wife still have copper internet with woefully subpar 10 megabit speed.

“Waiting for the private sector to bring the modern world to rural Maine is not going to happen,” he said. “Being in the legislature would give me an opportunity to help work on presenting a program to bring high-speed internet to rural Maine because there are solutions out there.”

He pointed to Washington County-based Down East Broadband Cooperative, the first and only municipal internet broadband utility in the state of Maine, as a potential example to follow. When Burnett ran for the House in 2022, he hit over 4,000 doors, but only had three bad interactions. He believes part of the reason is because he describes himself as a “labor Democrat.”

“There are plenty of things within the Democratic Party that I'm not in support of,” he said, “but working-class issues for folks like you and me, anyone who gets up in the morning and has to go to work, that's what I'm in favor of and that's who I'm running to support.”

With the semester wrapping up, Burnett is ready to hit thousands more doors, but he still needs to collect more individual $5 contributions to qualify for Clean Elections funding. You can contribute to Nate or any other Clean Elections candidate here.