LEWISTON, Maine — When Tuesday’s runoff election results come in, Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald said he’ll be at home. His challenger, Ben Chin, has planned a party at a downtown restaurant.
Those post-election plans highlight the stylistic and political divide between polar-opposite candidates competing in the high-profile race whipping high turnout in Maine’s second largest city.
Chin, a 30-year-old progressive activist with the Maine People’s Alliance, ran an aggressive campaign that raised 15 times more than Macdonald, 68, a conservative Vietnam War veteran, retired police detective and two-term mayor who barely campaigned.
Polls closed at 8 p.m. Tuesday with 9,000 voters expected. Results were expected to be made available by 11 p.m.
That would be more voters than the November election, when Chin outpolled Macdonald but not by enough to avoid the runoff. Both liked their chances as they greeted voters at Longley Elementary School.
“The turnout, I think, speaks to the level of importance and the quality of the conversations we’re having, and that’s all you can really ask for,” Chin said.
At the same time, Macdonald stood inside the polling place, saying he saw a lot of older voters who will likely support him.
“I don’t want to be presumptive, but it sounds like I have a real good chance here,” he said.
The runoff adds suspense to the most politically charged mayoral race in Maine’s recent history — for a part-time office that pays $4,500 per year.
It’s no surprise that such a race arose in Lewiston.
It became a Franco-American city after Canadians began moving here in the 1860s for jobs in shoe and fabric mills on the Androscoggin River. Their descendants made Lewiston a Democratic stronghold where John F. Kennedy made the final stop of his 1960 presidential campaign.
But the mills closed, and since 2000, immigration has changed Lewiston like no other place in Maine, with 7,000 Somalis living in the region.
At the same time, however, the city has become more conservative, backing Republican Gov. Paul LePage in 2010 and 2014, and twice electing Macdonald, who made headlines for saying in 2012 that Somali immigrants should “leave your culture at the door” and this year for calling for an online registry of welfare recipients.
Somali immigrant Jama Mohamed arrived in Lewiston seven years ago and serves on the school board. He voted for Chin, saying immigrants are “in our home” now and that the city needs a leader who can “represent us, all of us.”
“We are one community and we want to come together,” Mohamed said.
But Macdonald’s arguments find an audience with people including Don Hebert, a lifelong Lewiston resident whose grandparents came to the city from Canada.
He said that he finds it “an insult” that recent immigrants have been compared to his Franco-American ancestors because “there was no welfare” then.
“The people that work, you know, we work hard, we pay taxes,” Hebert said. “We’re tired of the freeloaders.”
Race loomed over this campaign. Local landlord Joe Dunne hung signs in the city saying “Don’t vote for Ho Chi Chin” in October after the Chinese-American candidate dubbed him a “slumlord.” Dunne said the signs simply referenced Chin’s ideas, but many condemned them as racist.
Many thought it’d be difficult for Chin to unseat Macdonald when he announced his run in February, but his campaign had the trappings of a state or federal race, and he ran on a progressive plan for the city that includes building 100 units of resident-owned housing.
He also got lots of help from outside the city: At a Maine Democratic Party event on Friday, former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell made a fundraising pitch for Chin, who put Maine People’s Alliance activists to work knocking on doors and making phone calls.
Macdonald bought radio and newspaper ads, but he didn’t run a visible campaign. Some prominent Republicans — including U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin of the 2nd District — donated to him in November, but he later told the Sun Journal that he wasn’t taking more money.
In November, Chin drew his support from the city’s downtown and the area around Bates College, while Macdonald won in more suburban areas with older voters. The divide between those voters was stark at the polls on Tuesday.
Campbell Hart, a Bates senior from Massachusetts, voted for Chin, saying his progressive policies on housing and immigration are “drastically different” than Macdonald’s ideas.
“He’s also just a very personable, passionate person who just has the outlook that we want to see in Lewiston,” she said of Chin.
But Glorianne Travaglini, a widow and Lewiston native, signed a petition that would move city elections to June, a change aimed at making it harder for Bates students to vote. She said they “know nothing about Lewiston, and they’re taking over.”
She also voted for Macdonald, who was a friend of her husband, saying increases in property taxes could harm seniors who live alone, and if Chin is elected, they “will go up.”
“I don’t want to be forced out of my house,” Travaglini said.
Watch bangordailynews.com for updates.