Terry Hayes (politician)

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Terry M. Hayes (born May 5, 1958) is an American politician from Maine who served as the Maine State Treasurer from 2015 to 2019 and ran for Governor in 2018. She has been an Independent since 2014, and was a Democrat who represented part of Oxford County, including Buckfield, in the Maine House of Representatives from 2006 to 2014.

Hayes could not run for re-election to the Maine House in 2014 due to term limits. She had previously served as Assistant Minority Leader of the House Democrats after her 2010 re-election, and won a very close election in 2012 by 42 votes.

Education and early service: Hayes earned a BA in government from Bowdoin College in 1980 and an MBA from Thomas College in 2014. She served on the MSAD 39 School Board (Buckfield, Hartford, Sumner) from 1991 to 2004, including a term as chair.

In 2014, Hayes endorsed Eliot Cutler, an unenrolled candidate for governor. On December 3, 2014, she was nominated by Republicans to be Maine State Treasurer and defeated the Democratic incumbent Neria Douglass with cross-party support, becoming the first independent to hold the office. As treasurer, she pursued transparency by proposing an online tool to show how state bond money is spent.

In 2017, Hayes announced her candidacy for Governor in 2018, presenting a plan for a collaborative policy approach and running as a taxpayer-funded "Clean Elections" candidate. If elected, she would have been the first state treasurer to become governor since 1889. In the 2018 race, she finished third with 5.9% of the vote (37,268), behind Democrat Janet Mills and Republican Shawn Moody.

After the election, the Maine Legislature chose not to re-elect Hayes as State Treasurer, instead electing Democrat Henry Beck.