As the race for the Blaine House enters its final month, the gubernatorial campaigns are preparing for a grueling and expensive fight to the finish in a contest that has so far largely defied predictions.
Just a few weeks ago, Republican Paul LePage appeared to be pulling away from his four rivals. But while LePage is still widely considered the front-runner, one recent poll suggests the race is a toss up between the Republican and his Democratic opponent, Libby Mitchell.
Observers also predict that Mainers can expect independent Eliot Cutler to continue ratcheting up his criticism of LePage and Mitchell in hopes of riding a tide of frustration with both major parties into the governor’s mansion.
While campaign ads are already cropping up with some regularity on television airwaves, Mainers can expect to be bombarded in the coming weeks as the candidates begin to empty their sizable campaign warchests.
As of mid-September, LePage was still sitting on $530,000 in his bank account and continues to court donors aggressively. This past week, for instance, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour — a prominent GOP figure nationally — stumped in Portland for LePage and drew about 80 people to a fundraiser luncheon that cost $750 a head.
On Tuesday, the LePage campaign aired its first commercial. Meanwhile, The Republican Governors Association has spent about $220,000 since Sept. 7 on television ads on his behalf, according to independent expenditures filed with the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices.
Mitchell, the only gubernatorial candidate using Maine’s public campaign finance program, still had $580,000 in the bank, according to financial reports filed last week. Mitchell also has the opportunity to receive additional money from the Clean Election Act Fund in order to keep pace with her opponents’ spending.
The Democratic Governors Association, meanwhile, has so far spent just shy of $500,000 on the Maine race largely on television ads attacking LePage.
Cutler still had $122,000 remaining at the end of the period while fellow independent candidate Shawn Moody had $151,000 left to spend. Independent Kevin Scott reported a cash balance of $3,700 as of mid-September.
During the past month, polls have depicted everything from a LePage rout to a statistical dead heat.
For instance, a Public Policy Polling survey in early September showed LePage over Mitchell 43 percent to 29 percent. A few weeks later, Portland-based Critical Insights put LePage ahead of Mitchell 38 percent to 25 percent.
But the latest Critical Insights poll — released this past week — suggested a dramatic shift in voter sentiment away from LePage, who dropped to 29 percent. That survey placed Mitchell with a slight lead at 30 percent and Cutler still trailing in third place at 9 percent with independent Shawn Moody just behind with 8 percent.
Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine, said he has suspected that LePage’s support was somewhere in the mid-30s and that the earlier polls showing him with a dramatic lead were somehow inflated.
As for the most recent poll showing the race as a tossup, Brewer said he still needed to learn more about the methodology. But he also said anything is possible as more voters begin to truly tune into the race.
“Given what has happened in the race over the last couple of days to a week, there is no reason to think that Paul LePage’s support couldn’t have declined that much and no reason to think Libby Mitchell’s support couldn’t have gone up,” Brewer said.
Mitchell campaign manager Jesse Connolly said he also thought the trends bode well for the Senate president.
“There will be more polls, and some will be up and some will be down, ” Connolly said Friday. “But this is clearly a two-person race.”
With polls currently putting him a distant third, Cutler clearly has to do something to jump-start his campaign, pundits say.
“If it’s not completely dark, daylight is fading” for Cutler, Brewer said.
But the Cutler campaign on Friday said they saw some good news in the recent polls, which showed a growing pool of undecided voters.
“That’s good news for Eliot because it means many people are starting to take a good look at the candidates,” said Cutler campaign manager Ted O’Meara, adding the campaign plans to spend the next month talking about Cutler’s plans to improve the economy and create new jobs.
Asked about the latest poll suggesting a tight race, LePage said surveys do not affect his campaign strategy.
“Polls are polls are polls, and everybody is talking about them,” LePage said during a recent interview. “When I was the underdog, I ran like I was 20 points behind and when I’m the big dog I run like I’m 20 points behind. It makes no difference to me.”
National election-watchers have also been keeping an eye on the race in Maine, offering a variety of predictions.
The New York Times’ election-tracking website, known as FiveThirtyEight Forecasts, gives LePage an 87 percent chance of winning. But that forecast was made before the most recent polls and remarks that his rival campaigns hope will hurt him at the ballot box. That forecast also gives Mitchell a 13 percent chance of winning.
Meanwhile, the University of Virginia Center for Politics, which tracks races nationwide through director Larry Sabato’s “Crystal Ball,” still lists the Maine gubernatorial contest as a toss-up despite LePage’s strong showing in most recent polls.
“It’s too early to lean this to LePage, however,” reads the most recent Crystal Ball forecast, released Thursday. “He’s an untested candidate given to counterproductive outbursts, most recently in his assertion that as governor, he’d be in the headlines a lot telling President Obama to ‘go to hell.’ LePage’s base may love that, but independent swing voters do not appreciate intemperateness.”
LePage will visit three Hancock County towns Saturday: 10 a.m. at the VFW Post 109 on east Main Street in Ellsworth; 11:45 a.m. at Merchants Auto on Route 1 in Hancock; 1:30 p.m. at D.B Rice Fisheries on Pond Road in Birch Harbor.
Moody’s campaign is hoping to capitalize on any dissatisfaction with the outspoken GOP frontrunner.
“It’s like a chess board, and there is a path that’s open right now,” said Moody campaign spokesman Dennis Bailey. The campaign plans an aggressive advertising campaign in the coming weeks, he said, but don’t expect Moody to go negative.
“It’s going to get really ugly out there,” Bailey said of the advertising Mainers are likely to see from the major parties. “Shawn’s going to stay above it all, and we’re going to be talking a lot about honesty, integrity and character.”
With Nov. 2 fast approaching, all of the candidates are going to be doing a lot of talking during their busy public schedules.
Among the major events scheduled are:
• An Oct. 6 forum at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland starting at 7 a.m. The forum will be hosted by the Portland Region Chamber.
• An Oct. 11 live, televised debate hosted by the Bangor Daily News and WFVX Fox 22. The debate will start at 8 p.m. at Peakes Auditorium at Bangor High School. A limited number of tickets are sill available at the WFVX station at Target Industrial Circle in Bangor.
• An Oct. 14 debate at Husson University’s Gracie Theater starting at 6:30 p.m. The debate is sponsored by the Bangor Region Chamber of Commerce. More information is available at www.bangorregion.com.
Jeff Tuttle of the Bangor Daily News contributed to this report.