The job of a voter is to vote for the best candidate in a given race. To do otherwise is to distort the whole electoral process.
In all the strategizing that I’ve been hearing and reading around the state, I have not heard a credible argument why independent Angus King is a better candidate and would make a better U.S. senator than the Democratic nominee, Cynthia Dill. In fact, I’ve heard several arguments to the contrary, most frustratingly from those who proclaim that they will nevertheless vote for King.
If you think King is really the best candidate in this U.S. Senate race, by all means vote for him. But if you vote for him not because he’s your favorite candidate but because you are afraid of how other people will vote, you are in fact voting against your, and our country’s, best interest. I refuse to cast my vote for a lesser candidate based on that contorted thinking.
You would think “strategic” voters in Maine would have learned their lesson with the last gubernatorial race. Casting a vote based on polls and strategy instead of the competency of the individual candidate is exactly what got Paul LePage elected governor. Yet here they are again, spouting the same failed technique. It’s as if they are saying that King and Dill are interchangeable, so let’s all get behind one or the other — some even calling for Dill to bow out before election day if the “polls” show her behind.
But the two non-Republicans in this race are very different from each other and from the Republican, Charlie Summers.
Summers is a political clone of Sen. Olympia Snowe. If he is elected, we will have swapped a female Republican lapdog for a male Republican lapdog. The party headcount in Washington will not change. In fact, nothing will change as far as the Maine delegation is concerned — two Republican senators, and (probably) two Democratic members of Congress. Ho-hum.
If Dill is elected, the numbers in Washington do change and, in my estimation, for the better. The Democrats would gain a seat that has been in Republican hands for far too long. Dill would help her Democratic peers hold off the onslaught against Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, fend off more tax cuts for the rich, stop the onslaught against women’s rights, the environment, the saber-rattling over Iran and more. Dill would help bring back sanity and stability to Washington.
However, if King is elected, lots of things will change, but I can’t see that they will change in a good way. He will go to Washington as a man without a party, without a platform, without a structure that he can use to our state’s and our country’s advantage. He will flounder there.
King has refused to say which party he will caucus with because he is counting on the U.S. Senate being split 49-49, with him and Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders standing in the center aisle. Sanders, a left-leaning Independent-Socialist, caucuses with the Democrats, which leaves self-proclaimed “moderate” King, in that scenario, as the deciding vote.
King wants to have veto power, just like he did when he was Maine’s governor. King is running to be governor of the U.S. Senate.
But what happens if the U.S. Senate is not split down the middle? If one party holds a comfortable majority, King is left out in the cold. He will be a one-percenter in that 100-member body. His one vote, his permission, his voice, becomes irrelevant. Neither party would need him. For anything. And Maine loses.
So, I urge all you strategic voters to step back, look at the bigger picture and learn the lessons of history. Do the right thing for the right reason. Do your job as a U.S. citizen and a voter in the state of Maine. In this race and every race, vote for the candidate you really think would do the best job. And leave the voting booth feeling good about your choice.
It’s the only way we have of actually getting the government we want, and not the one we have to settle for.
Jean Hay Bright of Dixmont, now a semiretired organic farmer, ran against Sen. Olympia Snowe as the Democratic nominee in 2006.
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Excellent article that describes my feelings in their entirety – I also will not vote a 68 year old man who doesn’t even know (or has not yet been informed) as to which Party he will caucus with. The Senate Majority is at risk, and Dems. have ignored their true party’s Candidate, Cynthia Dill.
Dill meets every requisite of the DNC Platform, yet the DNC and DFA refuses to spend a dime on her. Shame on them for assuming Angus King will win and caucus with the Dems – a great example of idiocy in my opinion.
I will support Dill at the polls, and hope that fellow Dems. will stay true to their Party and do the same.
And the Republicans will thank you very much for letting their candidate slide into office. Avote for Dill, given her poor numbers, might just as well be a vote for Summers. If you want your vote to have some meaning, other than to yourself, you need to look at the bigger picture and the reality of the possible outcome. Dill is so far behind and has so little support from her own party that a vote for her is a throw-away vote.Why do you think Republican money is being spent in her support? They are trying to take voters away from King and load them onto Dill so that their candidate can slip in like LePage did two years ago. Smarten up, already!!
A vote for Dill is a vote for Dill. If King needs my vote to win he doesn’t stand the best chance to win.
Dobbs: Look Yossarian, suppose, I mean just suppose everyone thought the same way you do.
Yossarian: Then I’d be a damn fool to think any different.
There is no “big picture” … please stop being so clever with everyone.
Vote for whom you support.
Jean Hay Bright, who I like and respect, is right in one sense — Dill, whose TV ads are being paid for by the Republicans, is not the same as King, the man who is being smeared by those same Republicans.
I will not consider voting for Dill until she spends more campaign money that she has raised herself , than the Republicans have spent on her behalf. As long as the Republicans are funding Dill’s campaign, we know who she is really helping, even if that is not her intention.
We know who the Republicans are endorsing by the money they are spending to support Dill and Summers. We know there is only one chance of stopping them, and that is by voting for King.
No, they aren’t interchangeable. Cynthia Dill cannot win this time around and, even if she could, she would end up just another partisan warrior in the interminable two-party stand-off. King, on the other hand, certainly can win and even if he would caucus with the Democrats (why would he do otherwise after the GOP’s attack ad shenanigans?), he would be a much needed voice of reason, unfettered by partisan ties. He fits well in the Maine tradition of sending articulate, thoughtful and deliberate political delegates to Washington and the state would no doubt benefit from the attention he would generate.
King would be as ineffective as the other Independent in the Senate (socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont). Independent Sanders has done squat. To actually get things done, better to put a D or an R in the Senate than an ineffective I.
Sanders caucuses with the Democrats as does Lieberman, so the (I) is really irrelevant except as a political statement. If King wins, he will caucus with the Democrats or he will not be selected to sit on any committees. That would truly be ineffective.
If they were interchangeable, King wouldn’t be getting my vote.
It appears Jean Hay Bright still has some sour grapes from losing to Olympia in ’06. This line: “Summers is a political clone of Sen. Olympia Snowe” is utterly ridiculous. If that were true, wouldn’t Olympia be helping Charlie? She is not. Charlie is a sell out to the Far right of the republican party. Snowe is a highly respected centrist. King is pulling moderate Republicans, Independent AND moderate Democrats of his own accord and on his own merits, as he too is a centrist. Dill is too far left & too inexperienced (less than 2 years as a State Senator). She would not even BE her party’s nominee, except that the “A Team” Dems got scared off by King. Dill is done. Centrist Snowe will be replaced with centrist King. Good.
You hit the nail on the head. Olympia isn’t helping Charlie because she knows he will be part of the problem, not the solution.
Anyone but Summers.
Anyone but King.
They’re both big spending liberals! We don’t need any more of them!
King and Dill are both hard core liberals. The difference is that Dill is more honest and has some integrity. She stands up for what she believes. What does King stand for, anyway? Not much, but we know he stands for Angus and anything that will help him increase his one percenter income. When he was governor, he checked the wind direction more often than Lou MacNally. I fail to see the attraction of this sleazy mafia boss.