“Eat it, Hogg.”
These three words have been the flashpoint of one of the most dramatic political episodes in Maine in the past few weeks. When they issued from the Twitter account of Waterville Mayor Nick Isgro in early April, they quickly prompted a successful petition that will make whether to recall the 36-year-old Republican from office one of the hottest issues on the ballot in the June 12 election. It’s also one that is having significant statewide overtones.
Though voter attention will be focused on the race to choose party nominees in the contest to succeed Gov. Paul LePage, there is also fervent interest in the unusual election in the city where LePage served as mayor on the same day as the statewide primary.
Isgro’s “Eat it, Hogg” tweet was in reference to Parkland, Florida, school shooting survivor David Hogg. Isgro, who himself seriously considered his own gubernatorial bid just a few months ago, made the comment in response to a story that Fox News would stand behind Laura Ingraham after Ingraham also made comments ridiculing Hogg, who later called for a boycott of Fox advertisers.
Driven not only by Twitter etiquette but also by ideology, liberals and conservatives throughout the state are lining up on opposite sides of the question.
Soon after disclosure of the tweet, the spotlight was also directed to such earlier Isgro tweets that included a defense of Roy Moore, who was accused of sexual misconduct with teen girls, in last year’s Alabama Senate special election and a vulgar reference to anti-sexual harassment proposals.
Within a week of the anti-Hogg tweet, Isgro and his longtime employer, Skowhegan Savings Bank, where the mayor was its controller and assistant vice president, parted company. This came after the bank’s CEO said in a statement the bank was “disappointed and dismayed” by the tweet. This drew the ire of LePage who then wrote to the bank’s president, John Witherspoon, saying, “You have fallen prey to the leftist hate ideology that refuses to recognize free speech,” and calling the bank’s decision one that it “will likely come to regret.” (It’s still unclear whether Isgro voluntarily resigned or was forced out.)
At the same time, former Mayor Karen Heck — Isgro’s immediate predecessor, who had supported him when he first won election in 2014 — initiated a petition to put the issue of Isgro’s tenure before the voters. By the first week of May, Heck and her allies had summoned the 857 signatures required to trigger the election, one that will be held the same day as the statewide primary.
Also simultaneously confronting a recall election will be a recently appointed member of the City Council, John O’Donnell. Those seeking to give O’Donnell the boot complained that other councilors in appointing him to fill a vacant slot in its membership did not pay enough heed to backers of a losing candidate for the job, Julian Payne.
The Waterville recall elections are coming after a recent recall in Scarborough. They are part of a recent upsurge in voter utilization of the procedure.
There, in Maine’s 10th-most-populous municipality, two-thirds of voters outsted three school board members in the town’s first-ever recall election. Donna Beeley, Cari Lyford and Jodi Shea were targeted because they had been accused of standing in the way of high school Principal David Creech’s efforts to rescind his resignation.
It’s unclear whether this paves the way for Creech’s return, since the authority to restore Creech lies with Scarborough school Superintendent Julie Kukenberger, who has so far indicated no interest in reinstating him. That’s due in part to Creech’s perceived objections to the mechanics of Kukenberger’s proposal to institute a later start time for high school students — accompanied by an earlier time for lower grades — and their apparently conflicting positions on how to roll out a proficiency learning program. (Both Kukenberger and Creech have been reticent about the actual basis for and extent of their policy differences, something that has not by any means prevented activists on both sides from attributing positions to each of them.)
To put Creech back on the job, the remaining four board members and eventually the three as-yet-unnamed replacements for the removed members would likely have to buy out Kukenberger’s contract and find a replacement willing to reinstate Creech in order to accomplish the recall’s objective. (Running out the clock until Kukenberger’s contract expires a year from now is another alternative, though there would, of course, be no guarantee that Creech would still be standing in the wings.)
Further thickening the plot is the fact that all four remaining school board members must now — under the town’s charter — unanimously agree on all their decisions until the three new members are elected, a process that could take several months.
The Scarborough experience is a reminder that few spoons stir the political pot as tempestuously as who gets the thankless job of being a high school principal. Such was also the case in Portland in 1967, when five school board members were forced into a recall election stemming from their action in filling the top job at Deering High with Massachusetts school administrator Donald Hale despite a groundswell of public support for promoting popular subprincipal John Ham. The outcome there, however, failed to unseat the board members, whose fates were put in play. In a 2-1 outcome, voters sided with keeping the board.
Other Maine communities in recent years also have been venues for recalls. Among them:
— Peru, where residents in 2016 voted to retain two of its board members after a petition put their positions in play for a recall election.
— Old Orchard Beach, in 2013, where six of the seven town councilors were successfully recalled over a vote to fire the manager.
— Poland, in the same year, where three of its five board members also were recalled over a vote to fire a town manager.
— Limestone, also in 2013, where an effort to recall three of its selectmen failed in the aftermath of a decision to dismiss the fire chief and refusal to reappoint its fire chief.
Though it is too early to tell whether this year’s Waterville and Scarborough recalls will be a bellwether for similar movements elsewhere, they are well worth monitoring. They are a sign of how, in an era of national political volatility, tremors at the local level are also jarring the civic landscape.
Recall at the state level would require a constitutional amendment, something that neither Maine nor some 18 other states have chosen to enact.
It is a spirited phenomenon that the state has nevertheless been witnessing in two of its largest communities, which, particularly in the case of the upcoming Waterville plebiscite, may have statewide implications.
Paul H. Mills is a Farmington attorney well known for his analyses and historical understanding of public affairs in Maine. He can be reached by email: pmills@myfairpoint.net.
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