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Former chair of the Maine GOP, Demi Kouzounas, says she was called on to challenge Sen. Angus King.I got a phone call from Senator Susan Collins, who asked me to consider running,” she said. “I thought, you know, I’ve always advocated to be involved, to get involved. If you want to make change, you have to have a seat at the table.”The daughter of Greek immigrants, Kouzounas was brought up in Saco, the town she still lives in today.”I’m the oldest daughter born in Maine to legal immigrants,” she specified. “Not speaking English until the age of 6, where my mom and I went to classes to learn English so my mother could be naturalized.” However, illegal immigration is a major issue she hopes to address.”Illegal immigration, I think, burdens the system,” she said.”The other problem I have is with fentanyl. Fentanyl is killing our addicted. Our veterans are homeless … It needs to stop. We need to secure that border.”Kouzounas served in the military from 1981 to 1984 in Germany and then opened two dental practices in Maine with her husband. She is a mother and now a grandmother, and she says Maine has become a very difficult state to live in.”I think the cost of living and the expenses and inflation has really caused a problem for Mainers,” she said.She said running her businesses and training dental students showed her these problems as well.”The problem is I couldn’t keep all my students here in Maine,” she said. “We’ve made it very expensive for people that have huge school loans to stay in the state … I think we haven’t got enough people in the state of Maine now to work. They can’t find housing, and the taxes are high.”The Republican described herself as “pro-choice,” and she shared personal experiences that shaped her view.”I personally went through an assault in college, which I didn’t even tell my mom and dad about because it would have pulled me away from college,” she said. “At the same time, I struggle with infertility. That’s when my kids are seven years apart in age, and thank God to modern medicine that I was able to have a second child.”She did place some limits on abortion, but she also hopes to help those who want to start a family by improving the economy.”I do not believe in ‘late-term abortion,’ if the baby is viable,” she said. “So I would like to strengthen the adoption laws. I am also for true choice for women by improving the economic situation in the state of Maine … I believe in also offering free birth control, definitely IVF. I support that 100%.”She also says she is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, and when addressing mass shootings, Kouzounas believes we should focus on mental health.”It’s a mental health problem,” she said. “Adding more laws and more mandates, something else, is not going to solve the problem. We need to truly treat these people, treat the mentally ill … How about we follow our laws instead of just adding more laws to the books? All of these people should never have had their guns to do what they did.”Kouzounas thanked incumbent Sen. King for his work, but she believes it’s time for a new voice in office.”I think that it’s time for him to retire,” she said. “We thank him for his service. I know he was governor for two terms and now senator for two terms, and we thank him, but that doesn’t mean because you’ve done all this work there, you should continue. No more than I should continue being a dentist at 95 with a shaky hand. The time has come for him to move on and let younger people come in with fresh ideas and maybe, hopefully, make change that will help Mainers. Which is why I’m running.”