PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — On Thursday, Rep. Harold “Trey” Stewart III, R-Presque Isle, announced he will run for a state Senate seat in the 2020 legislative election — an important change for one of the most powerful representatives in the Maine House.
Stewart will be running for the District 2 seat of the Maine Senate, which consists of Central and Southern Aroostook County, and includes Presque Isle and Houlton. The seat is currently held by Michael Carpenter, D-Houlton.
Stewart said he was running for the seat so that he could be a “more effective” advocate for a larger number of County residents. If elected to the Senate, he said he hopes to maintain the “County way of life” by fighting government regulations and tax increases.
“As a proud ‘County Boy,’ one of my primary priorities is to create a Maine where more young people not only want to stay here to live, work and raise a family, but where they can … prosper while doing so,” Stewart said.
Stewart was first elected to District 147 of the Maine House in 2016, beating out incumbent Democrat Robert Saucier by about 400 votes. Saucier ran for the seat again in 2018, with Stewart expanding his margin of victory to nearly 500 votes.
In 2018, Maine House Republicans elected the then-24-year-old Stewart to the position of assistant minority leader (also known as the Republican whip), putting him second-in-command in the Maine House Republican caucus, and one of the youngest state house leaders in the United States.
Carpenter narrowly beat his Republican opponent Karen Ann Reynolds in the 2018 legislative election, winning by only 207 votes out of more than 14,000 cast. In December, Carpenter said he was unsure if he was running for re-election.
Stewart is a student at the University of Maine School of Law, and expects to soon be a practicing attorney in Aroostook County.
