AUGUSTA, Maine — Republican voters in Maine’s 1st Congressional District will decide Tuesday between Mark Holbrook and Ande Smith, who are vying to challenge Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree in the fall.
Smith of North Yarmouth serves on the Maine Board of Education and is a patent attorney who spent nearly 30 years the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserve. He owns a cybersecurity consulting firm and is married with five children.
Smith said he is running because he believes Pingree is out of touch with the district. At his speech to the Republican state convention, he never mentioned Holbrook, instead focusing on what he calls Pingree’s out-of-touch liberal views.
“Unlike Chellie Pingree I will not boycott a speech by America’s one enduring ally in the Middle East, Israel, while at the same time channel billions in funding to Iran so they can continue to destabilize the world, nor will I choose the path of Chellie Pingree and spend my time fretting about butterfly habitat,” he said.
Smith has spent several thousand dollars on TV ads that attack Pingree, portraying her as being more concerned about junkets to Cuba than about being present for important votes in the House.
He said Pingree has little to say about one issue that’s on most people’s minds.
“We should have an economy that’s on fire, growing jobs and pushing people forward. And as it is we limp along at near recessionary growth rates. I think jobs are things Maine cares the most about. Maybe Portland is doing pretty well, but not as you move out from the coast. Those people want help, too, and they need change to get it,” he said.
Smith said his campaign is focused on the fall because he expects to be the Republican nominee. He said he is a conservative, but also believes that as a member of Congress he would have to work with all other lawmakers to get things done. And he said the voters he has spoken with agree.
“They are tired of the hyperpartisanism that has characterized the dealings there for the last six or eight years. Chellie Pingree has been part of that. I believe that I can offer in this time a competing message of strong leadership, pragmatism and somebody who wants to get things done to make things better here in Maine,” he said.
Smith insists he’s not taking the primary for granted, but even if he is successful in beating Holbrook, most political observers give him long odds in the fall.
“The history of the district and her [Pingree’s] support in previous elections and just sort of the basic advantage that always goes with incumbency in Maine congressional elections, I doubt that there is much of a chance,” Ron Schmidt, a political science professor at the University of Southern Maine, said.
University of Maine at Farmington political science professor Jim Melcher agreed. But he said Republicans could be banking on this being another Republican year like 2010, when Paul LePage was elected governor and Republicans won legislative majorities for the first time in decades.
“They are very motivated,” he said. “Look at the crowds that Donald Trump is drawing and that this would be like that. It would take that kind of election to make Pingree’s seat look vulnerable.”
Both point to the fact that there are few other Republican contests to generate interest in this primary election. Four years ago, only about 29,000 Republicans voted in the 1st District primary, another two-way contest. Turnout could be even less this year.
This article appears through a media partnership with Maine Public Broadcasting Network.