Ellis joins Hoffman campaign as manager

The campaign of Independent U.S. senatorial candidate Herb Hoffman (I-Ogunquit) announced Thursday that Lynn Ellis of Brunswick had been hired as campaign manager. The hospice social worker had previously volunteered for the campaigns of Dennis Kucinich, Tom LeDue and Jean Hay Bright and currently serves as the State Coordinator of the campaign to establish a U.S. Department of Peace and Nonviolence.

Hoffman said in a statement that Ellis was his first choice for the position.

“She has good organizational skills, good people skills, and experience in working on the local level in support of national goals and programs,” Hoffman said. “ I'm confident she is the type of leader we need to keep my campaign moving forward."

Ellis said in an interview with PolitickerME.com that her first task in the position is to create a larger volunteer base for the candidate.

“We're getting word from people who want to help and collecting that information,” Ellis said.

She said a major task was spreading awareness of Hoffman's candidacy after it first came to public attention by way of an unsuccessful attempt by the Democratic party to keep him off the ballot.

“We've got less than 16 weeks, so we've got to get the word out.” Ellis said. “Luckily, the media's been very good to us the past few weeks, so that helps.”

The main means of doing this, Ellis said, will be to promote Hoffman in public as frequently as possible. This Saturday, for example, he'll be up in Aroostook county to march in the annual Maine Potato Blossom Festival's parade.

Despite the most recent Rasmussen poll that shows the race at 49 to 42 percent between the incumbent U.S. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Bangor) and U.S. Rep. Tom Allen (D-Portland), Ellis said that she felt that her candidate could play strongly with independent voters and dissatisfied members of both parties. She also adamently denied that Hoffman would play a spoiler role against Allen in the general election.

“We're not looking at it that way, although many in the media seem to see it that way,” she said. “We're confident. We know that Mainers are independent and looking for alternatives.”