AUGUSTA, Maine — Widening political fractures within the Maine Democratic Party have created a three-way leadership race despite some positive results in last week’s elections.
Democrats retained their slim majority in the Maine House, gained two seats in the Senate and kept Maine in the blue column in the presidential race — even though Republican Donald Trump won handily in the more rural and conservative 2nd Congressional District. Some of the Democrats’ long-held priorities — such as raising the minimum wage and increasing funding for public schools — passed as referendums.
Overshadowing those gains, though, was Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat and the fact that for the first time since 1988, a Republican presidential candidate won an Electoral College vote from Maine.
Maine Democrats also took it on the chin when voters sent Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin back to Washington, ousted two veteran incumbents from the Maine Senate and defeated an attempt to implement background checks for private gun sales despite polling that insisted passing Question 3 should have been a slam dunk.
Presidential elections drive turnout. That has historically aided down-ticket Democrats in Maine, but this year, that did not happen. There was no repeat of the Democratic waves in 2008 and 2012 that secured solid legislative majorities and easily re-elected Democrats to both Maine U.S. House seats.
In the aftermath of Clinton’s defeat, angst within the party about her nomination over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who easily won Maine’s caucuses, simmers. The fact that voters stood in line for hours to support Sanders in the March caucuses seems more an indication of loyalty to his populist message than fealty to the party. It likely signals major problems for establishment Democrats.
Meanwhile, Democratic insiders parse what dwindling support from traditionally stalwart constituencies — Franco-Americans, union members, blue-collar workers and anti-authoritarian back-to-the-land types — signals about the party’s identity and future.
No Maine Democrat has won a statewide election since Gov. John Baldacci’s re-election in 2006. That came with only 38 percent of the vote. Since then, Democrats have placed third, behind non-party candidates, in the 2010 governor’s race and the 2012 U.S. Senate election, while losing the 2nd District seat they held for 20 years.
It’s not outlandish to suggest that the two “Democrats” with the most statewide appeal and influence are Maine Sen. Angus King and Sanders, both of whom won their seats as independents but caucus with Senate Democrats.
The Democratic State Committee convenes on Sunday afternoon in Augusta to elect subcommittee members and officers, but all eyes are on the top of the ticket: party chairman. The contenders are incumbent Phil Bartlett and two legislative candidates who lost their elections this year.
Common among the candidates is an agreement that Democrats have work to do during the electoral off-season if they are to claw their way back into favor among more Mainers, especially rural ones.
The candidates
Phil Bartlett is a former state senator who has been party chairman for the past two years.
Diane Russell is a former four-term House member from Portland who lost a three-way primary for the Maine Senate earlier this year.
Jonathan Fulford is a building contractor who has lost two close elections to Republican Senate President Mike Thibodeau.
Two other individuals announced candidacies but then withdrew.
Jeff McCabe is a former four-term House member who ran for Senate in Somerset County this year and lost to incumbent Republican Sen. Rodney Whittemore. During the 127th Legislature, McCabe was the House majority leader. He announced late Wednesday night that he has withdrawn and endorsed Bartlett.
Channa Schroff, a Democratic State Committee member from Franklin County was identified as a candidate but told the Bangor Daily News on Wednesday that she is withdrawing from the race.
“When I threw my hat in the ring for chair of the Maine Democratic Party, no other candidates had stepped forward to challenge current democratic leadership,” Schroff said. “Since that time, other candidates who I feel are excellent progressive challengers have stepped forward.”
Geographical matters
The notion of “two Maines” has long tinged political strategy. Southern and coastal Maine embraces a more progressive, socially liberated culture than the sparsely populated, more conservative western, central and northern regions. Those divides intensified last week when Maine’s 1st District and 2nd District, for the first time, produced opposite results in the presidential election, fueling criticisms from Republicans that southern Maine liberals are out of touch with residents elsewhere in the state.
The Portland area and south coastal Maine drive much of the state’s economy, leading voters and politicians from those areas to claim decision-making rights based on the areas’ value to the state’s financial health. But those population centers aren’t home to enough voters to control the Legislature or win statewide office, even though they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.
While Russell and Bartlett are from the Portland area, Fulford hails from Monroe, which is in the 2nd District. He and McCabe, while still in the running to chair the party, said the priorities of their Democratic and independent neighbors have been neglected by the party.
“Democrats can talk about climate change all they want, but when you’re talking to folks who are living paycheck to paycheck, that’s not their priority,” McCabe said. “We need to be talking about keeping jobs here. That resonates, and that’s vitally important.”
Fulford agreed that Democrats need to zero in on issues that matter to rural Mainers.
“Are people’s concerns and needs being addressed and spoken to, or not?” he said. “Whoever can actually walk the walk if they’re talking the talk, that’s what we need to see. … I have different experiences, and being from the 2nd Congressional District brings a different perspective than someone who has been seeing life from southern Maine.”
Russell said she wants to move Democratic Party headquarters out of Portland. The party’s permanent headquarters are in Augusta, though a campaign office is usually opened in Portland in election years.
“I want to change the power structure and put it back in the hands of the people,” she said.
The Bernie factor
Russell and Fulford were Sanders supporters, as was McCabe. Bartlett kept mum about who he would support in the Democratic nomination process until it was clear that Clinton would win. As one of Maine’s superdelegates, he voted for her at the Democratic National Convention.
Sanders supporters have spent a lot of time speculating that he could have defeated Trump in the general election. That’s irrelevant now, but it’s undeniable that his candidacy energized thousands of voters in Maine and highlighted issues, such as income inequality and the crippling cost of a college education, that resonate with Democrats and formerly Democrat-leaning independents throughout the state.
“It’s pretty clear that Democrats haven’t been listening to the working class in the rural parts of the state,” Russell said. “People want jobs, and they don’t care how they’re created. They just want someone to fix the damn system.”
Fulford said Democrats should follow Sanders’ lead.
“He got great national traction and statewide traction,” Fulford said. “It’s time for the party to recognize that that message and action is a really strong path forward.”
McCabe suggested Sanders and Clinton supporters have overlapping ideological ground and could combine forces.
“This isn’t about a takeover of the Democratic Party by Bernie supporters or Hillary supporters,” he said. “It’s really about who’s going to unify the party and attract disenfranchised folks who understand our party’s core issues.”
Continuity or change?
Bartlett said under his leadership, the party has been focused on the long term and that Clinton’s Maine win, along with Democratic gains in the Senate, including two wins in conservative Aroostook County, indicate progress. He said the key to long-term success is recruiting and electing Democrats to local boards and committees.
“There’s something really positive here to build on,” he said. “When I took over as chairman two years ago, I tried to change the dynamic from a party that is focused on elections every two years to a party that has a long view. … While we always wish the results had been better, I feel good about the work that we did.”
Bartlett and others acknowledged that party officials need to increase their efforts to engage with Mainers year-round, not just at election time.
McCabe said Democrats can learn something from Trump, particularly when it comes to his anti-establishment and free-trade stances, and particularly in areas of Maine that have a history of manufacturing.
“Democrats have struggled to have a message that resonated with voters,” he said. “There was a sort of anti-establishment candidate feeling and sensation out there. People are less worried about wonky policy issues and more interested in what’s authentic.”
Fulford said of all the candidates, he is the one from outside the establishment. He has never held elected office.
“That’s a strength and it is a weakness,” he said. “I can’t claim to know everything. At the same time I’m also not restricted by preconceived assumptions about what’s possible and what we can do.”
Why?
To most Mainers, who leads the political parties matters little. Other than being the public face of the party for the media, leaders work mostly behind the scenes on fundraising, recruitment and campaign strategy.
Democrats have consistently poured more money and resources into elections in Maine and the returns on those investments during the past decade have been disappointing in years when Barack Obama did not top the ballot. The party that could reliably count on legislative majorities from the 1980s through the 2000s now finds itself struggling to win the grass-roots battles it took for granted.
That means that whoever chairs the party for the next two years will have to craft a strong message that bridges the “two Maines” and finds ways to connect with voters in both Portland and New Portland.
