Over the course of her husband’s two terms in office, First Lady Michelle Obama has invited 161 people to serve as her honored guests at the president’s annual State of the Union speeches.
Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver his final State of the Union speech tonight, and Michelle has offered invites to nearly two dozen people to join her in the First Lady’s prestigious balcony for the event.
But never in Obama’s going-on eight years in office has the First Lady invited someone from Maine to accompany her in the guest box. It’s one of 12 states that have been left out, according to Smart Politics, a nonpartisan political research site headed by the University of Minnesota’s Eric J. Ostermeier.
To be clear, Michelle Obama has not over her career seemed to have bore any ill will toward Maine. She has visited the state to campaign for fellow Democrats and has invited Mainers who have embraced her “healthy living” cause to Washington for special events. So it’s not as though the First Lady has historically given the Pine Tree State a cold shoulder.
So why hasn’t she reached out to any Mainers to join her for the State of the Union addresses, especially considering how many people she has invited.
“It is no secret that guests of the First Lady serve political purposes — with several specifically referenced each year as episodic examples that illustrate a particular policy position of the president during his address,” Ostermeier wrote. “No doubt each of the 12 forgotten states could make an argument that they, too, have residents symbolizing important national stories.”
The difference between inviting a Mainer who is illustrative of a presidential priority and bringing, say, a Californian, is that the Californian’s story is relatable in a state with 55 electoral college votes, the political researcher wrote.
Michelle Obama has invited more people to the State of the Union speeches from California — 18 — than from any other state, according to the Smart Politics report.
“[T]hese aforementioned 12 states not to appear with the First Lady are among the lowest in population and collectively account for just 57 electoral college votes,” Ostermeier wrote.
Maine is worth four electoral college votes in the presidential election.
In addition to Maine, the First Lady has left New Hampshire, Vermont, Hawaii, Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming off her guests lists, Smart Politics reported.
Eighty-three of Michelle Obama’s guests have been men and 78 have been women, according to the political research site, if you’re curious.
“Overall, the First Lady has invited 108 guests in states won by President Obama during the previous election cycle (69 percent) and just 49 guests from those states carried by his opponents,” Ostermeier wrote, noting that four other guests were government officials or representatives of U.S. territories.
The decisions for whom to bring to the guest box, then, seem to be based on political calculus that considers which guests can represent talking points in the president’s speeches, can represent great numbers of voters back home and — in some cases — have ties to states the administration considers vulnerable in the next election, the political researcher suggested.
Although Obama can’t run for re-election, he can begin to lay the groundwork for whichever Democrat earns the party nomination in 2016.
(New York has a lot of electoral college votes, for instance, but has only been represented on the First Lady’s State of the Union guest list four times, a sign the traditionally blue state isn’t a concern for the Democratic president.)
Maine has never been represented in Michelle Obama’s balcony during her husband’s terms in office, but that hasn’t meant the state has been totally closed out from attending State of the Union addresses. Members of Maine’s congressional delegation have invited representatives of their home state to the event.
This year, for instance, U.S. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, announced that retired Maj. Gen. Earl Adams, the adjutant general of the Maine National Guard during King’s tenure as governor from 1995-2001, would be joining him for the speech.
