In his April 3 column, “Just who the heck is this new columnist?” Steve Collins wrote, “I’ll do my best to be truthful and fair.” His Aug. 3 column, “Maine gubernatorial candidate spreads hate on campaign trail,” shows that Steve needs to try harder. Responding to Republican gubernatorial candidate Bobby Charles’ call for Somali-born legislator Deqa Dhalac to either apologize or resign for referring to “our country, Somalia,” Steve Collins labeled it a “nativist barrage … using the same playbook that the Ku Klux Klan employed a century ago.”

Really? Shouldn’t the benefit of the doubt attach to someone who grew up poor, worked in the villages of India with Dalits, has every color of person in his family, served three presidents and was selected as assistant secretary of state by the son of Jamaican immigrants, Colin Powell? Does he not deserve respect for defending the sanctity of the citizenship oath, rather than a ghoulish comparison to long-dead white-hooded cross burners?

Former Sen. George Mitchell, a back cover endorser of Bobby Charles’ inspiring new book, “Cherish America,” has said that his favorite duty as a federal judge was administering the oath of citizenship to newly minted Americans, an oath similar to that taken by Bobby Charles when, after 9/11, he volunteered for duty as a naval intelligence officer.

For Bobby, upholding such oaths is not about hate, it’s about love of country, something that even those who’ve not served should feel in their bones but, sadly, sometimes don’t.

Charles Todorich
South Portland