The lineup: Commentary from local columnists

Dan Billings is an attorney at Marden, Dubord, Bernier & Stevens in Waterville where his practice focuses on civil litigation and criminal defense. Dan was born in Gardiner and grew up in Bowdoinham, where he continues to live. He has been engaged in local and state politics for more than 20 years. He served two terms on the Bowdoinham Board of Selectmen and currently chairs the town's Finance Advisory Committee. Dan has been involved in numerous Republican campaigns, including managing Rick Bennett's 1994 campaign for Congress and serving as legal counsel for Chandler Woodcock's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Before attending law school, Dan worked as a legislative aide at the House Republican Office at the Statehouse, ran a statewide trade association and worked in radio. Dan sees his column in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel as a way to use his varied experience to help readers better understand the political process and issues facing Maine. Read Billings' columns here.

Theo Kalikow has been president of the University of Maine at Farmington since 1994. Before she finally arrived in Maine she was a professor of philosophy and a college administrator in Massachusetts, Colorado and New Hampshire. She loves rowing on Flying Pond in Mount Vernon, gardening, reading and staying in shape for life via sports, yoga and meditation. She has been inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame and received the Maryann Hartman Award from the University of Maine at Orono and the Deborah Morton Award from the University of New England, all in recognition of her contributions to women's leadership development in Maine and across the country. She is an unrepentant feminist liberal with a strong streak of ornery individualism who has been disappointed in every U.S. president since John F. Kennedy. She hopes this will change before she dies. Read Kalikow's columns here.

David B. Offer retired as executive editor of the Kennebec Journal and the Morning Sentinel at the end of 2006, ending a 42-year career in journalism. Before moving to Maine in 2000, he was briefly executive editor of the military newspaper, Stars and Stripes. Earlier, he was editor of the Newport, R.I., Daily News for 13 years and was a reporter and editor in Wisconsin, Connecticut and Washington state. He was a member of the board of directors and treasurer of the Associated Press Managing Editors Association and of the Society of Professional Journalists, where he was also national chairman of the organization's Ethics Committee. He served four times as a juror for the Pulitzer Prize. He is past president of the New England Associated Press News Executives Association. He and his wife, Susan, live in Augusta. Read Offer's columns here.

Kay Rand Kay Rand grew up on a potato farm in Ashland and is a lifelong Mainer who has dabbled in and out of public affairs all her adult life. She was a lobbyist for the Maine Municipal Association, an executive in the administration of former Gov. John McKernan, the campaign manager for Independent candidate Angus King's successful run for governor in 1994, chief of staff for King after he won and now a consultant at Bernstein Shur Government Solutions. All her life, she has been registered as a Democrat, and, all her life, she has been voting for Democrats, Republicans and Independents. Rand lives in Hallowell. Read Rand's columns here.

Joseph Reisert Joseph Reisert teaches in the Government Department at Colby College, where he has worked since completing his Ph.D. in political science in 1996. He went to college planning to become a lawyer, but after he took his first course in political thought, he knew had found his calling — arguing against liberal professors. His favorite thinkers are those, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose paradoxical arguments can't be perfectly pigeonholed as either liberal or conservative. Reisert lives in Waterville with his two children and his wife, who thinks he's wrong about pretty much everything. Read Reisert's columns here.

George Smith George A. Smith is an outdoors writer, newspaper columnist, television show host and executive director of the Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, or SAM, the state's largest sportsmen's organization. He writes monthly columns for The Maine Sportsman magazine and the Northwoods Sporting Journal, a weekly opinion-page column for central Maine's two daily newspapers -- the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel -- and the monthly SAM News. He is co-host of a unique weekly television show called Wildfire, a talk show focused on conservation and environmental issues and seen on commercial and cable stations throughout the state. Smith was part of the team that successfully defended Maine's moose hunt in 1983, and managed a winning 1992 campaign that placed the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife in the Maine Constitution and protected its revenues. He also led a successful campaign in 2004 to defeat a referendum to stop Maine's bear hunt. Smith conceived of the Maine Outdoor Heritage Program, funded by an instant lottery game, that has provided more than $13 million for wildlife conservation and outdoor recreation projects in the state. Read Smith's columns here.

Liz Soares Liz Soares has been writing for publication since age 12. After a career in journalism that included stints as a reporter, copy editor and editorial writer, she "retired" to library work and freelance writing. Liz has written columns and feature stories for the Kennebec Journal since 1987 and, in 2007, her column began to appear in the Morning Sentinel as well. Her work has appeared in numerous regional and national publications, including the Christian Science Monitor, and she is the author of a young adult biography of Maine Gov. Percival P. Baxter. Liz and her husband live in a Victorian cottage in Augusta with a chocolate labrador retriever and four cats. Read Soares' columns here.

Denis Thoet started farming six years ago on 28 acres in West Gardiner. Beginning with a three-member share (Community Supported Agriculture) in 2004, he and his wife, Michele, have expanded the farm operation to 75 members in 2009. Before that, Thoet worked for 25 years in non-profit development as development director for the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine Audubon Society in Falmouth, Maine Center for Economic Policy in Augusta, and executive director of The Friends of the Maine State Museum. His experience in politics includes running a successful 2009 write-in campaign for Heidi Peckham for excise tax collector in West Gardiner. He also worked as a commercial fisherman out of Stonington and Newington, dragging and purse seining, from 1978-83. He was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and lived in suburban New York and Washington DC before spending his high school years in Paris, France. He is a graduate of Georgetown University with a bachelors degree in international affairs and a masters degree in journalism from Syracuse University. He worked as a journalist for 10 years in New York and Maine. He has twin daughters, Eliza and Eleanor, and two grandchildren. Read Thoet's columns here.

Gordon Weil moved through government starting at an international organization, then the U.S. Senate staff, Maine state government and finally as a town selectman. He has led an energy consulting firm and has headed several publishing enterprises. The author or editor of 14 books, he reported for the Washington Post and Newsweek and was a television commentator on public broadcasting station WNET in New York. Holder of a Columbia University Ph.D., he was nominated for the Polk Journalism Prize and a New York-area Emmy. He arrived in Maine in the 1950s to become a Bowdoin College student, and he and his wife, Roberta, raised their children in Harpswell. He is a committed boater and hockey fan. Out of all this experience, he writes his weekly column. Read Weil's columns here.

Today's columns:

PREVIOUS WEEK'S OPINIONS