Republicans sounded hopeful about winning this seat. Lately, they seem less confident.
It’s turned into a bruising battle between former Senate President Kevin Raye, cast in the establishment role, and former State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin, tea party stalwart and enthusiastic supporter of Gov. Paul LePage.
Each has run twice before, and neither has excelled. Raye lost to Michaud in 2002 and again in 2012, when his Senate term ended.
Poliquin ran for governor in 2010 and finished sixth in the primary, far behind LePage. In the 2012 U.S. Senate race won by Angus King, he came in second behind four-time also-ran Charlie Summers.
But there’s also drama on the Democratic side, with two new faces. Former House Minority Leader Emily Cain opposing current Senate Majority Leader Troy Jackson.
Cain was a recent graduate of the University of Maine when first elected to the House. She expected to be House speaker in her final term, but settled for minority leader after the 2010 Republican sweep, and moved to the Senate in 2012.
Jackson, a logger, has lived in far northern Maine all his life, and came to Augusta in 2002. He served three House terms before switching to the Senate in 2008, succeeding the legendary John Martin.
This is a classic matchup between the show horse and the work horse. Cain has a Harvard master’s degree and advanced rapidly in the Democrats’ influential women’s caucus. She can check off prescribed Democratic positions on the environment, reproductive rights and same-sex marriage.
Jackson has worked with his hands all his life, until injuries took their toll, and often apologizes for his unsophisticated speech. His blue collar loyalties earned him the ire of LePage, who stood by his unprintable remarks about Jackson while “apologizing” to anyone else offended by them.
During LePage’s first State of the State address, Cain applauded his remarks on domestic violence, and there were smiles all around as LePage signed her bill into law.
But the differences run deeper than that.
The budget was the critical vote of the 2011 legislative session It included a $500 million tax cut, largely unpaid. Cain voted for it; Jackson against.
As party leader, Cain had important responsibilities. If she’d opposed the tax cut, it might not have happened. Democratic votes were needed for enactment by two-thirds; she had leverage.
Cain now says she voted for the tax cut because the budget protected other important spending. She forgot that Republicans could make the same cuts the following year by majority vote, which they did. That’s why 28,000 Mainers lost health coverage in January.
Jackson isn’t “right” on all issues important to Democrats. He was the only Democratic senator to vote against same-sex marriage in 2009, though he later met with a delegation of Aroostook County supporters and pronounced it “the worst vote I ever took.”
But on fiscal, lunch-pail issues, he understands something Cain does not. Cooperate with a tea party stalwart like LePage, and you’ll get rolled. Lines should have been drawn, and Cain didn’t draw them.
A curious new development suggests that Cain, who has far more money and led early polls, is in a real race. The League of Conservation Voters, which endorsed Cain in March, decided to spend $150,000 on the race, and placed Jackson on its “Dirty Dozen” list.
It’s curious because, while Cain has a lifetime LCV rating of 90%, Jackson’s is 64%. He took only one more “anti-environment” vote than Cain this session; both opposed mining regulations that would hamper Irving Corp.’s bid to open a mine in Jackson’s district.
LCV never before applied the “Dirty Dozen” label to a candidate scoring above 40 percent. Why Jackson? In its own words, LCV reserves the designation for candidates “who consistently side against the environment and are running in races in which LCV has a serious chance to affect the outcome.”
LCV surely wants to affect the outcome, but there’s no way Jackson is “consistently against” the environment.
Show horses often win, but not always. In 1986, Julian Bond, Georgia state legislator and golden tongued narrator of TV documentaries, faced off against fellow civil rights leader John Lewis, who was beaten senseless by Bull Connor’s troops at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Ala. Lewis surprised many by winning the congressional seat representing Atlanta.
Nearly 30 years later, he’s still there.
DOUGLAS ROOKS is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 29 years. He can be reached at drooks@tds.net.
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