PORTLAND, Maine — Maine legislators have turned their attention from lawmaking to campaigning with the close of the legislative session and a third of all seats becoming vacant for November’s election.
Even though it’s a short session ending in May rather June, lawmakers were eager to get out of Augusta and get their campaigns going in what’s likely to be a competitive political year.
Republicans who captured both the House and Senate for the first time in decades are committed to holding those majorities. Democrats, not used to being in the minority, are seeking to regain control in the last two years of Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s term.
In the House, at least 50 representatives aren’t running for re-election, the highest number since 2002. Twenty-six of them can’t run because of term limits.
In the Senate, 10 members can’t run this fall because of the state’s term limits law — the highest number since the law went into effect with the 1996 election. At least two others aren’t seeking re-election because they’re running for another seat or retiring.
State elections in Maine, like most places, tend to be won by incumbent candidates. Fewer incumbents running could result in more competitive races this fall, said Jim Melcher, political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington.
“Having more vacant seats means you’ve got a lot more chance for turnover,” Melcher said. “Overall, it’s better in general for the party out of power because some of those incumbents that they just can’t beat are now out of the picture.”
Leaders for both parties say they are confident they will gain ground in November’s elections. The Senate now has 19 Republicans, 15 Democrats and one independent. The House has 77 Republicans, 72 Democrats, one independent and one vacancy.
“We identified 24 seats [in the House] where a Democrat held a seat where we feel they’re vulnerable and can be beat,” said Maine Republican Party Chairman Charlie Webster, who predicts the GOP will gain seats in the House and remain the same, or make a small gain, in the Senate.
“We’ve recruited electable candidates in all 24 districts.”
Maine Democratic Party Chairman Ben Grant said Democrats should benefit from this being a presidential election year.
“This is a year we have a guy at the top of the ticket — President Obama — and Maine will be a blue state for him,” Grant said. “If they’re open Democratic seats, that’s good because we’re more likely to fill them with a Democrat. And if it’s an open Republican seat, it gives us a better chance of flipping it.”
Lawmakers have left Augusta but the session hasn’t formally come to a close. Legislators left the window open to return in the event they have to deal with vetoes on bills the governor could send back.
So while legislators can campaign, they can’t raise money from lobbyists until the session is officially closed.
“People are anxious to get out of here and to start their campaigns,” said House Speaker Robert Nutting, R-Oakland. “It’s one reason we’re anxious to adjourn as soon as we can because there’s a lot of fundraising activities and campaigning that cannot begin until we adjourn for good.”
Associated Press writer Glenn Adams in Augusta contributed to this report.
Here it comes, folks, in stereo.
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American
politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by
conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of
the legitimacy of its political opposition.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html
Unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science?
The whole green agenda is a lie. Humans are not responsible for climate change. A clean earth, air, and water is what is definitely needed. But then, who is responsible for this? Why do we constantly look to government for answers to do things for us? Because what this leads to, is enforcement of green agenda laws!
It’s all about politics; control. You’re being played, for the sake of your vote, to essentially kill off a large portion of humanity based on a lie. This isn’t about sustainability at all.
Charlie Webster predicts??? Oh my, that’s gotta be bad for the republicans! An honest word nor a good prediction hasn’t come out of his mouth since I don’t know when. If any of you republican candidates want to do well at the polls, don’t seek any advice, or utilize any strategy associated with Webster, your opponent will find it out and disclose the fine sponsorship he provides.
Nowadays, when are they not primarily focused on campaigning?
True indeed. Re-election is ever utmost in their minds. They just can’t help it. We live in the foggy Land of Perpetual Campaign, where mad hatters have convinced the masses that they somehow are being well-served by a system of huck$ter-driven sham elections. There are many routes serious democrats – not the party Dems – could take to fix it, but we won’t, nor will the crowd who feed off the system. Practically the only honest elections left are those at the local level, and a very few voters bother to cast ballots in them. Our demand to be entertained and titillated by variations of the old Roman”bread and circuses” theme will could well be our undoing, if it hasn’t already occurred.
It has been this way for 50 years mostly under Democrats. Both sides all they care about is collecting the paychecks paid for by taxpayers. But at least Republicans are starting to do what should have been done and that is kicking folks who don’t belong on DHHS Welfare off the system. When you have folks 55 and under jumping on the WELFARE GRAVY TRAIN and those folks doing better than those of us who work everyday something is wrong with the picture. We need major reforms and a cap to the amount of folks on DHHS. The programs that were designed for the elderly and truly disabled . Well the Democrats went totally bonkers by trying to put everyone on it and bankrupt our state in the process. When folks think business and working everyday is bad you know we are in trouble. Maine was a state that if those in Augusta would have done their jobs would be thriving. Instead when you only care about buying votes you shouldn’t be in office. Democrats don’t deserve to be in power. Too bad more Independents, Greens, Libertarians, Tea Party and folks from the Indian Tribes don’t run because all of these folks would do a better job than Democrats and the RINO’S.
That’s why Maine’s delegates should have went to Ron Paul, but dirty RINO/Neo-Con “Republicans” stole that one by throwing out the votes of the districts Paul won. Curiously they were 15% of the votes that coincidently were going to give Paul the win.
Hello new boss, same as the old boss. Romney is Obama, dirty people willing to win at any cost. This essentially shuts out Paul, since the same people buying up news corporations are the same people buying up politicians.
When will we learn? There is no “Right vs Left”! It’s a scam to keep you occupied until they’re finished tearing down the old system and replacing it with a new one. What do you think will happen, then? It’s going to be chaos, and blindly we’ll march to our deaths, chasing after lies.
Why do you think the United Nations has a “world-population reduction” plan? A plan for “sustainability”? A plan for a brave new world? After it’s all over, we’ll be in a one-world government, because we didn’t listen to the sage advice of times past.
People… We have not changed in over 8,000+ years of human history. We still argue, and bicker, and fight, and kill each other over the stupidest of things! Nothing is going to save us from ourselves, we’re doomed to fail in a fallen world.
Ben Grant said, “Democrats should benefit from this being a presidential election year.” That’s putting it mildly. Democrats should benefit greatly here in Maine because Paul LePage has just spent a year and a half making most folks wish he didn’t exist. He’s done nothing but embarrass us, insult us and our state all while pretending to balance a budget by attacking the weakest among us and giving tax breaks for those who need them the least. We wish that more conservatives currently in our state government had the guts to put him in his place, but since they haven’t, it’s time for all of them to go.
I couldn’t agree more!
Two days after Republicans passed by a party-line vote a budget they say fixed state funding, Moody’s downgraded our credit outlook from stable to negative.
Brilliant.
So, Moody’s is punishing the State of Maine for going against the status-quo?
That’s how I see it.
Moody’s is telling investors that the chances that Maine will pay it’s debts is lower than it used to be.
Conservatives like to say, “let the market decide”. The market has spoken. Maine is going in the wrong fiscal direction under the Republicans.
You mean there is a difference ?????
In a way the adjournment of The Maine Legislature is kind of like the end of the school year for a ”student”. All year long the republicans have done pretty much what they wanted to do in Augusta. They were in control and control they did. They have made agreements and then turned right around and broken them as was the case with the budget. They bowed to the wishes of Maine’s unpopular Governor. They crammed through legislation which benefited special interest and called it “reform”. Now like the high school “student” who has been spending the school year doing what he wanted to do rather then what he was supposed to do the time of reckoning has come. It is report card time for both the ”student” and The Maine Legislature. The “student” gets to bring his report card home to loving parents. In the case of the Maine Legislature they get to bring home their report card to the voters of Maine. Something tells me that the voters will not be as loving to the Legislators as the parents will be to the “student”. Time will tell. November will be here before we know it. Will the people of Maine send tea party republicans back to Augusta? Or will we see a political bloodbath the likes of which have never been seen before in our State?
It is time for the voters of maine to show the lawmakers who rules the roost.They rushed thru the business of the state by rubber stamping so they could adjorn early.It seems a lot of them arent running again because of term limits or maybe the writing is on the wall.The people of the state has had enough empty promises and watching them cut everything but them selves and pile more tax cuts on the ones that dont need it and the middle and lower class get stuck paying more.It is time to exercise our right to vote every one needs to vote this year.
It is time to stop our griping, enjoy our beautiful Maine weather and get ready to vote. Carpe diem. :)
Hold onto your socks and knickers now, you might just want to check out the, Lisbon Reporter come Monday morning for some REAL factual information.
HECK, check it out now, this is OUR source of local and worldly information and these people do have a CLUE as to what is really going on in the world.
ONLY wish they were able to get it out in print form but do realize the expense and implications in our Ligative society of today.
http://www.lisbonreporter.com
11 / 6 / 2012 … Bye Bye R’s
If we let Charlie Webster’s crew win this one, we deserve lying, cheating legislators.
The only way the Republicans will do well at the polls would be if they use a mind warping machine that would erase the last 500 days from the voter’s minds.
Can’t wait for the Republicans to get more seats, only a few more months!!!
Yes, I want the Republicans to get more seats too! More seats, at the unemployment office.
Given LePage’s, not to mention the GOP and Tea Party’s, record as it goes, I for one, would not be all that anxious to go out and try to start running with Paulie and Company’s record of ‘achievement’ attached to me. Given the fact that Paulie waited until both House’s recessed, and then line item veto’ed almost everything he didn’t like, and then hid behind Nutty’s supposedly ‘secret poll of GOP members’s’, tells me that the GOP is in no real big hurry to go out and and be seen in public wiith this type of crap exposed for all to see, especially with the still tender issue of the GOP Caucus still out there for all to see (and laugh at if the various media’s are heard from, even FOX !). No matter how much colonge or Chanel you put on ‘it’, ‘it’s’ still gonna smell for what it is. Add to this the still much looked for DHHS computer system ‘fix’, that the Fed’s have made very clear they are still more than willing (and God only knows how long that source of patience is gonna last !) to help Maine’s DHHS with in fixing and get running, and one has to ask, and I’m doing it here publicly, just where is the fix that’s been promised? To date no one, up to and including the DHHS Commissioner, has come out and said simply ‘We got it fixed’. That alone, which got all of the current Legislative sessions ‘juice’s’ going, was at the heart of a lot of Maine’s problem’s. That’s what we elect Legislator’s to do, govern, run and fix the problem’s that come up here in Maine. So far, aside from the almost shocking decision of BOTH Party’s to come together and tell Paulie ‘No more’ as far as his finagling the General Operating Budget goes, this Legislative session has been one big pile of moosepoop since most of the time they are both doing nothing more than making press statements and TV camera ‘spot’s’ for themselves. If they want to run on a record, fine. But they had better be dammed sure that it’s a record that they can support and be ready to take the inevitable ‘hit’ on when they find someone with a differing opinion. Given the current mood of the Right-wing voter’s, aka Tea Party, MHPC, ALEC, American’s for Prosperity and Rove’s folk’s at Crossroad’s, and the FOX media to boot, to demonize, to the point of declaring someone a Socialist or Communist (and there have been more than a few here on BDN) anyone that’s not in lock-step with the GOP’s version of ‘True American’, the Maine Republican’s might not find as receptive a crowd as they think.