As expected, House Speaker Sara Gideon won a three-way Democratic primary race last Tuesday to take on embattled U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who has served four terms but may not make it to a fifth.
Backed by national interests, Gideon raised an astonishing $23 million, shattering all records, and will undoubtedly raise tens of millions more before November. At some point the numbers become unreal, if not irrelevant; there are only so many ads and messages one can run before voters throw up their hands, and tune out.
Back down where politics still proceeds more along traditional lines, the news was mostly on the Republican side – with eight contested Senate primaries in the chamber where the GOP has a slim hope of regaining control, though Democrats now have a 21-14 edge.
After a decade of party dominance by former Gov. Paul LePage and his allies, Republican voters appear ready to move back to the middle. While LePage did endorse Dale Crafts, apparent winner of the 2nd District primary to oppose first-term Democratic Congressman Jared Golden, he struck out in three attempts to shift state Senate races further to the right.
The highest-profile contest was one eked out by three-term Sen. Kim Rosen in District 8 (Hancock and Penobscot), who defeated four-term Rep. Larry Lockman by just 78 votes, with 4,000 cast. Rosen is a thoroughly decent person, a one-time hairdresser, whose husband, Richard, once held the seat and later served as LePage’s finance commissioner.
By contrast, Lockman is – well, let’s just say that recent references to a “war on whites” were among the milder statements of his checkered political career.
Doug Thomas, LePage’s candidate in deeply rural District 4, which includes Piscataquis County, was shellacked by the incumbent, Paul Davis. Thomas, who matched LePage’s rhetoric perfectly, was ousted from the seat by Davis in the 2014 GOP primary, and was attempting a comeback.
LePage claimed he didn’t know Davis was running again – peculiar, because Davis had already served three terms, two while LePage was governor, and is seeking a fourth, and final, stint.
In District 7, the rest of Hancock County – once the most Republican county in Maine, now trending Democratic – former Sen. Brian Langley easily bested John Linnehan, another LePage favorite. Langley will undoubtedly have a better chance against first-term incumbent Democrat Louis Luchini, but the headwinds may be strong.
Linnehan is best known for running one of the most expensive Senate campaigns up to that time in 2004 against Democrat Dennis Damon, featuring giant billboards around his Ellsworth car dealership. Damon won easily, and 2020 wasn’t any friendlier for Linnehan.
Lest anyone think Republican voters are now back in the camp of famed moderates such as Bill Cohen and Olympia Snowe, who collectively held U.S. Senate seats from 1978 to 2012, that’s not the case – or at least not yet.
Paul Davis and Dale Crafts are in the same mold as former Senate President Mike Thibodeau – very conservative, but honorable and not inclined to bend the truth with every utterance. Crafts, at least in his own fall campaign against Golden, is unlikely to begin hurling the grenades that every day will fly between Gideon and Collins.
In a time of pandemic, Mainers do want change, but – in either party – they’re not going to fall for the “reopen at any cost” mindset that’s already doing grave damage around the country, and possibly tipping the national economy back into deep recession.
Perhaps the most reassuring election result, from this perspective, is the likely return of Rick Bennett to the state Senate seat he held from 1996-2004, District 19. Bennett is probably best known today as Republican Party chair under LePage, where he spent four years, at times uncomfortably, trying to carry out the governor’s stranger ambitions, such as abolishing the state income tax.
Yet Bennett’s most important role came after the 2000 election, when, due to the election of an independent, the Senate was evenly split between Ds and Rs. The caucuses were led by Bennett and Mike Michaud, the Democrat who later served six terms in Congress and unsuccessfully opposed LePage’s re-election in 2014.
After relatively courteous negotiations, the two decided to share the Senate presidency, with each serving one year. Michaud went first, and then – even though the Democrats had by that time won a special election, and had the majority – he honored the agreement and Bennett led the 2002 session.
As an example of constructive bipartisanship, it seems like ancient history. But if the voters insist, that spirit could come back.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, reporter, opinion writer and author for 35 years, has published books about George Mitchell, and the Maine Democratic Party. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
