The Nov. 4 election reaffirmed that Maine is a divided state. Gov. Paul LePage won re-election with strong support from the state’s most rural counties. Democrat Mike Michaud, by contrast, received the majority of the votes in Cumberland County and in two of Maine’s largest cities — Portland and Bangor.
Likewise, rural areas generally will send Republican lawmakers to the State House in January, while Democratic state lawmakers are clustered in the state’s few urban areas.
Overcoming different views of Maine may prove to be as difficult to overcome as differing political ideology. To help bridge the gaps, lawmakers must keep in mind the state’s need for unity and that policies that hurt Portland will hurt the entire state — and vice versa.
First, the politics. LePage cruised to re-election on the strength of his support in rural areas. His largest margins of victory came in the state’s most rural counties — Piscataquis, Washington, Franklin, Somerset and Oxford. He won Hancock County by two votes, according to unofficial results compiled by the Bangor Daily News. LePage also scored huge victories in Lewiston and Auburn.
Michaud tallied the most votes in only two counties, Knox and Cumberland. In Portland, Michaud received 71 percent of the vote.
The divide is similarly stark in the Legislature that will be sworn in in January. Democrats, and their leaders, are primarily from southern Maine, Bangor and coastal areas. Republicans will represent much larger geographic swaths of the state from York to Aroostook counties.
Now, the reality. LePage has been public about his displeasure with Portland and the Democratic lawmakers there, including Mayor Michael Brennan and outgoing Senate President Justin Alfond. The most recent, ongoing, conflict is over assistance to undocumented immigrants. LePage has threatened to withhold all state reimbursements for General Assistance to communities that give the financial aid to undocumented immigrants — a large portion of whom are awaiting asylum determinations. Portland and other cities have argued that, by law, they must give this assistance to all. Portland is now curtailing spending and has instituted a hiring freeze in case more than $3 million in GA reimbursements is not forthcoming from the state.
Punishing the state’s largest population center is counterproductive.
Greater Portland generates more than half the state’s economic output, one-third of its jobs and 44 percent of the state’s personal income in 2012. The Portland area is defined, by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, as Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties. Bath Iron Works is in Sagadahoc County.
“State policies have historically been anti-Bangor, anti-Portland, anti-Lewiston-Auburn,” Jim Damicis, senior vice president at Camoin Associates, a company that helps states and municipalities with economic development projects, said in 2012. “We need policies that support small- to medium-size metros.” He offered as examples of anti-urban policies the disapproval in the Legislature of local option sales taxes, the formula for state education funding and transportation maintenance arrangements.
Maine faces many economic hurdles — the largest being its aging and declining population, which State Economist Amanda Rector again last week said was a drag on the state’s business growth. To overcome these hurdles, lawmakers — no matter what part of the state they are from or what party they belong to — must work together to build on economic successes, both regional and statewide.
