Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

1st District: Scontras wages uphill battle against Pingree

But Maine history shows that a GOP challenger can upset a well-funded Democratic incumbent.

By Glenn Jordan gjordan@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

David Emery knows what it's like to face an incumbent in Maine's 1st Congressional District.

click image to enlarge

First District Rep. Chellie Pingree says constituent service may be the most gratifying part of her job.

Staff file photo

click image to enlarge

Republican Dean Scontras addresses a tea party rally in Westbrook on Sunday.

Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store

From fundraising to name recognition, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of the person already in office.

As a 26-year-old electrical engineer from Rockland in 1974, Emery went up against Democrat Peter Kyros, a four-term congressman from Portland.

This was the first election after the resignation of President Nixon following two years of a widening Watergate scandal, so it wasn't a great year to be Republican. Indeed, Democrats would gain five seats in the Senate and 49 in the House.

"Even though on the surface, you'd have said a Republican challenger would have no chance against a Democratic incumbent, Congress was extraordinarily unpopular," Emery said. "Incumbents were in danger for a variety of reasons," including high inflation and high unemployment.

Emery spent the summer walking through southern Maine, knocking on doors, shaking hands, conversing outside garages.

"I just worked my tail off that summer and fall," he said. "And as I recall, Peter didn't even have any TV ads. I don't think he was worried at all."

The results of a poll published two days before the election in the Maine Sunday Telegram revealed no hint of what lay ahead. Kyros held a 59 percent to 41 percent advantage, according to the telephone survey of 406 voters, and the three-way gubernatorial race surely belonged to a former aide of Sen. Edmund Muskie named George Mitchell, who led Republican James Erwin by 9 points and independent James Longley by 19.

Instead, on the first Tuesday of November, Maine voters elected both Emery (barely) and Longley (by 3 percentage points over Mitchell).

Wrote Jim Brunelle in the former Evening Express: "Kyros's loss was wholly unexpected and demonstrated the depth of the public's perverse mood at the current state of political affairs, a mood which has also helped to carry an independent candidate into the governorship for the first time in 120 years."

"I think (Kyros) was the most surprised man in the state of Maine on election night," said Emery, who survived a recount that reduced his margin of victory to 432 votes. "And I would have been right behind him."

Emery went on to serve eight years in Congress before losing a Senate bid in 1982 (to Mitchell, who seems to have shrugged off that '74 loss). Now 62, Emery emceed a fundraiser two weeks ago in Falmouth featuring former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

Their aim? To help another underdog Republican, Dean Scontras of Eliot, in his bid to unseat Rep. Chellie Pingree, the Democratic incumbent from North Haven who won office in 2008 after four years as head of Common Cause, a national nonpartisan government-reform lobbying group.

"I think he's made a favorable impression," Emery said of Scontras, who lost the Republican primary to Charlie Summers of Scarborough for this same seat two years ago. "Just looking at his growth over the past couple years, I'm impressed with the organization he's built. He's focusing on change in Washington and on economic issues."

PINGREE WELL KNOWN

Pingree's story is well known in Maine. She grew up in Minnesota, moved as a teenager to an island in Penobscot Bay, spent some time at the University of Southern Maine and eventually earned a degree in human ecology from the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.

After graduation, she returned to North Haven -- located about 12 miles off the coast of Rockland and boasting a year-round population of about 400 -- and farmed.

She raised pigs and chickens. She sold vegetables from a stand, and later added sweaters knitted by island women. She started a company, North Island Designs, that employed about a dozen local women, selling sweaters, sweater-making kits and knitting books, mostly by mail.

"Knitting started my political career," she told satirist Stephen Colbert, on whose television show Pingree appeared last August, as Colbert threw his head back in mock boredom after raising the subject.

That political career began at the municipal level, on the school board and planning board and as the island's tax assessor.

Voters in Knox County sent her to the state Senate, where she became majority leader and spearheaded Maine's first-in-the-nation law aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drugs to state residents.

After term limits ended her state Senate career at eight years, Pingree lost a 2002 U.S. Senate bid to unseat Collins and was appointed president of Common Cause.

At 55, Pingree is a divorced mother of three adult children, has one grandchild and another on the way -- courtesy of her eldest daughter, Hannah Pingree, who is currently speaker of the Maine House and nearing the end of her fourth and final term.

"It's been an interesting year to be a member of Congress," Pingree said Friday from her Portland office. "There have been so many issues to tackle, from finding ways to bring jobs to the state of Maine, to exploring ways to develop renewable energy, to cracking down on credit card companies and banks, to working on the health care bill and trying to bring down the cost of health care."

She said the most gratifying aspect of the job might be the daily interactions with constituents, helping them with a variety of issues, large and small.

"We get a lot of calls," she said. "You get to dig in and solve problems."

Two she mentioned were helping navigate red tape for a Maine vessel loaded with relief supplies bound for victims of the Haiti earthquake and intervening on behalf of veterans with claims being denied by an insurance company, thanks to a tip from a former Togus accountant.

"To me, it's the problem-solving end," she said. "Those sometimes feel like the biggest accomplishments, even though they're not the things you see on the nightly news."

A member of the Armed Services and Rules committees, Pingree is also Maine's lone representative in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a coalition of 80 Democrats and independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders that advocates, among other things, universal access to health care, an increased minimum wage, legalization of same-sex marriage, strict campaign finance reform, an increase in welfare spending and cuts in military spending.

An independent poll conducted a week ago by the Portland firm Critical Insights for MaineToday Media showed Pingree with a lead of 24 percentage points over Scontras -- 53 percent to 29 percent -- with 17 percent of 1st District voters undecided.

Pingree also holds a significant advantage in campaign funds. As of the latest reporting period at the end of June, she had raised nearly $700,000 and spent less than half of it. Scontras, whose only previous political experience was the unsuccessful primary bid in 2008, entered July having raised $152,320 and had a little more than $67,000 on hand.

"She raised a lot of money from outside the state," Scontras said. "I've tried to do this organically, homegrown, with as many Maine supporters as I can."

Indeed, an analysis of Pingree's totals by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics shows that 85 percent of her contributions of more than $200 have come from away. The largest percentage originated from the New York metropolitan area.

The breakdown for Scontras is 74 percent of such contributions coming from Maine, which is to be expected for a challenger without wide name recognition outside the state.

CHALLENGE FOR SCONTRAS

Building such name recognition, even within the state, is the challenge facing Scontras, who turns 41 next month. He grew up in Kittery as the youngest of seven children, the grandson of Greek immigrants, starred in two sports at Traip Academy and played football at the University of Maine, which won a share of two Yankee Conference titles during his years in Orono. He still wears a championship ring.

After graduating in 1991 with a degree in public management with a minor in political science, Scontras moved to Washington and embarked on a series of sales and marketing jobs with several high-tech companies.

In 1997 he enrolled in a masters of liberal arts program at Georgetown University, concentrating on public policy, and completed 24 of 30 credits required for a degree.

Married, with two young children, he returned to Maine in 2005 and is head of business development for the alternative-energy company Ra Power Solutions, based in Cape Neddick.

The company is involved with a variety of energy-related ventures including wind farms, refrigerator-sized turbines that run on natural gas, and co-generation of power.

"Trust me, my little stint with alternative energy has not won me a lot of fans in the Republican Party, but I believe in it," he said. "I was with some oil folks the other day and it got very contested."

Even so, Scontras opposes cap-and-trade legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gases, and on the issue of global warming, describes himself as "agnostic."

"I think we've all got to be good stewards of the environment, but to say we have to pass cap-and-trade to get us there is not right, either."

Pingree voted last summer in favor of cap-and-trade legislation.

On economic issues, the candidates differ widely. Scontras supports elimination of the federal estate tax. He supports extending the Bush tax cuts due to expire at the end of this year for all income groups.

What he'd really like to do, however, is replace the income tax with a flat tax on consumption. His view, based on that of former comptroller general David M. Walker, is that lower taxes result in higher revenue.

"Think about it," he said. "The income tax taxes capital and labor. The harder you work and the more money you make, the more you get taxed. ... I will always work with the principle that, if it increases revenue to the Treasury, then that's where we need to be to cut deficits and reel in the debt. As a business, that's how you'd operate: Where am I getting my most revenue?"

Pingree opposes elimination of the estate tax and support's President Obama's plan to extend the Bush tax cuts for individuals making less than $200,000 per year and couples making less than $250,000.

She cited the view of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that "extending tax cuts for the wealthy is a $700 billion addition to our deficit" over a decade.

Pingree thinks the health care reform law doesn't go far enough, whereas Scontras would work to repeal it. He favors incremental changes rather than "something so broad, so encompassing and so sweeping, that it changes the entire industry."

She favors gun control. He does not. She supports a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. He is against granting amnesty.

After speaking out strongly on social issues in the 2008 primary that saw Republican voters opt for the more moderate Summers, Scontras deflected questions on abortion and same-sex marriage, saying the former already has been decided by the Supreme Court and the latter is a states-rights issue.

"I am pro-life," Scontras said, "but I'm also a realist that (a woman's right to choose) is the law of the land."

Pingree is strongly pro-choice and an outspoken proponent of gay rights.

More nuanced descriptions of their positions are available on the nonpartisan Web site votesmart.org, although both candidates declined to fill out a questionnaire from the site despite repeated requests.

WILL HISTORY REPEAT?

In the six weeks remaining before the general election, Scontras will continue to tell his story, continue to rail about the rising national debt and continue to preach fiscal restraint.

He may be trailing in the polls, but incumbents aren't unbeatable in the 1st District. Since redistricting after the 1960 census reduced Maine's contingent from three representatives to two, incumbents seeking re-election have won 16 out of 18 times, with former Portland Mayor Tom Allen's 1996 defeat of James Longley Jr. after one term joining Emery's 1974 upset.

"It was a long time ago, but it was a year not unlike this year," Emery said. "You just have to work as hard as you can to put yourself in position to win. Against a well-funded incumbent, it's always an uphill battle."

Staff Writer Glenn Jordan can be contacted at 791-6425 or at:

gjordan@pressherald.com