Rick Bennett climbed to the top of Maine's Republican Party - President of the Senate - and now he's running for governor without a party at all. His reasoning is blunt: the parties themselves are a major reason government stopped working.

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Chad and Cara sit down with the independent candidate for Governor of Maine to talk about why a lifelong Republican with the credentials to play the party game decided to walk away from it. Rick lays out Maine's affordability crisis, the endorsements rolling in from Republicans, Democrats and independents alike, and why he thinks the "spoiler" question is the wrong argument entirely. From there it goes places most election-reform conversations don't: no-bid contracts, a state auditor's report on MaineCare violations, spending up nearly 80% in a decade, and a legislature that hasn't held a public hearing on the budget in six years. Then Cara and Rick get into the federal lawsuit they're both intervening in - and what the other side actually argued out loud in front of the First Circuit.

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