AUGUSTA, Maine — Last November, when Gov. Paul LePage was re-elected by 5 percentage points in a three-way race, most political observers believed he had earned political capital he could use in the new Legislature to accomplish some of his goals.
Some feel LePage has squandered that capital and is going outside the Legislature in pursuit of his policy agenda.
Whatever capital LePage may have collected, University of Maine political science professor Mark Brewer said, began to diminish as what already had been a poor relationship between LePage and the Legislature got worse.
“The level to which the animosity has risen between Gov. LePage and this Legislature, not only Democrats but Republicans in the Senate as well, I haven’t seen anything like it in — I mean I have been here 10-plus years,” Brewer said. “I’ve never seen anything like it in Maine politics, and it shows no signs of abating.”
LePage is preparing a citizen initiative, with the support of the Maine Republican Party, to force a vote on eliminating the income tax.
“It’s better than having what the Democrats are doing, cutting out the people’s say,” LePage said.
He hopes the ballot question will bring out voters who also will help to elect legislative candidates in 2016 who support his agenda. LePage also is threatening to oppose the candidates in his own party in primary elections next year if they fail to support his proposals.
“Just because you call yourself a Republican or a Democrat doesn’t mean you are,” he said. “Your actions have to speak.”
That strategy of trying to bring your party into line using the primary process is nothing new. University of Maine at Farmington professor Jim Melcher said it usually does not work, even for immensely popular leaders such as Franklin Roosevelt.
“It blew up on him. Almost none of those primaries that President Roosevelt got involved in were ones that he won, and they wound up having an even more obstinate group of people to deal with,” he said. “I think there is a real risk the governor is facing the same sort of thing.”
Colby College government professor Tony Corrado said LePage should remember the political wisdom of former U.S. House Speaker Tip O’Neill — that all politics is local — and that the governor’s support of challengers to incumbent Republican lawmakers may have limited success.
“In some specific races, this may have some effect, but generally it’s the case that Maine voters know their representatives fairly well and that endorsement one way or other by the governor may not necessarily have the impact that one might suspect,” he said.
And Bowdoin College government professor Mike Franz said LePage could hurt his long-range goal of eliminating the income tax at the ballot box if he alienates voters in his efforts to elect more conservative Republicans.
“It comes with some risk of showing the party to be more split than the other side perhaps, and that creates problems down the road,” he said. “And you have seen that nationally, with Donald Trump surging in the polls. That baffles independents and Democrats, but many Republicans think he is right on point.”
All interviewed for this story say LePage will need a broad-based coalition to gather the more than 61,000 signatures needed to put the income tax question on the November 2016 ballot and to reach the large group of voters who turn out in a presidential election year.
They point out the ballot question likely will be actively opposed by supporters of the income tax, and LePage will have to sell his proposal to a far broader constituency than just Republicans.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public Broadcasting Network.