Mr. Moody has made his reputation and character a part of the campaign because of how much he leans on his biography in his race against Janet Mills, the Democratic state attorney general. Opinion polls show a tight contest to succeed the pugnacious term-limited governor, Paul R. LePage, whose lieutenants are guiding Mr. Moody’s campaign.

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And to be competitive, Mr. Moody is drawing on his fortune earned from his repair stores in cities like Biddeford and Scarborough.

It was in those two Portland-area Moody’s shops where Ms. Hayward worked a few years after graduating from college. By her late 20s she was an expediter, spending more than two years coordinating with vendors and processing orders. Ms. Hayward said she received no written complaints from her superiors and earned a raise during her time there. (Mr. Moody would not address Ms. Hayward’s work history.)

It was a collegial environment and she gave as good as she got from “my boys,” as she called her co-workers. They ribbed her about the oil spill pads laying around the shop, joking that she could use those in case her water broke when she was pregnant. But Ms. Hayward said her colleagues were also tender: Two of them helped build her crib, and they chipped in to get her a gift card from Wal-Mart as a baby shower gift.

But shortly after she gave birth to her son, she said, Mr. Moody sent her life into a tailspin from which she only emerged after more than a decade. As Ms. Hayward sees it, he fired her because he did not think she could do the job as a single mother.

Sharing her story with a reporter for the first time, Ms. Hayward, 44, said that in November 2005 Mr. Moody visited her apartment while she was on maternity leave after having an emergency C-section. As she sat feeding a bottle to her weeks-old son, her boss explained to her that she could no longer work for him because of her duties as a mother, she said.

“My heart was in my throat or at my feet, and I’m looking at him like, ‘You’re kidding,’” said Ms. Hayward, who remembered “bawling” as it became clear there was nothing she could say to keep her job.