Maine Brewery Owner Runs for State Legislature

Rising Tide's Sanborn is running for Maine's statehouse. (Credit: Kevin Fahrman, Foreside Photography)
Rising Tide’s Heather Sanborn is running for Maine’s statehouse. (Credit: Kevin Fahrman, Foreside Photography)

A well-known figure in Maine’s craft beer scene is running for the state’s House of Representatives.

Heather Sanborn, co-owner of Rising Tide Brewing Company and the former president of the Maine Brewers Guild, is running as a Democrat for House District seat 43, which represents parts of Portland and Falmouth. Sanborn is running against Republican attorney Jeffrey Langholtz.

In an interview with Brewbound, Sanborn said she imagined that she’d run for office later in life — when both her brewery, which opened in 2010 in Maine’s East Bayside neighborhood, and her 13-year-old son were older. But the timing now was too perfect not to run.

“It really was a phenomenal opportunity to represent my hometown and my home neighborhood in the Maine Legislature,” she said. “It’s the type of opportunity that doesn’t come around all of the time.”

Sanborn practiced law between 2008 and 2012 and served as a high school teacher in the early 2000s. As a brewery owner, she played a pivotal role in helping to reform Maine’s outdated alcohol laws, helping to lead a successful legislative effort in 2011 that gave Maine breweries the right to sell beer samples and open tasting rooms.

“We unleashed a wave of beer tourism that has been incredible and driven the growth of breweries in Maine,” she said.

Since launching Rising Tide six years ago, Sanborn and her husband, Nathan, have installed a canning line, grown fermentation space, opened a warehouse in Westbrook and renovated the brewery’s tasting room, which she said has helped boost business.

“Rising Tide has taken a relatively slow approach to growth,” she said. “We are really trying to grow organically.”

By the end of the year, the brewery will produce about 4,500 barrels of beer, she said.

“We’ll grow by about a 1,000 barrels this year,” she said. “It’s hard to plan growth because the tide shifts so quickly in this business.”

Sanborn also played a key role in streamlining the process for alcoholic beverage manufacturers to make in-kind donations to nonprofits for fundraising events. And she helped push through a measure to make it easier to put on beer festivals in the state. But Sanborn said her platform goes beyond fixing antiquated Prohibition-era laws.

“If I was interested in focusing on beer laws, I would have stayed in my position at the Guild,” she said.

So she’s building a platform on getting “Maine’s economy rolling toward the future,” providing affordable healthcare and expanding Medicaid.

“We’re leaving federal money on the table, and people are falling through the cracks,” she said.

While she campaigns, Sanborn said she has begun delegating some of her duties to the brewery’s employees, which now total 21. However, should she be elected to serve in Augusta, she’ll remain involved in the business’ daily operations.

“I expect I’ll be doing a little bit of brewery operations every day,” she said. “I may not be physically at the brewery those days, but I’ll be telecommuting.”