Rick Bennett was 11 years old when Lewiston insurance agency owner Jim Longley won the 1974 gubernatorial race to become the first independent governor in Maine and the country.
Twenty years later, Mainers elected a public television host named Angus King as the second non-party governor. In 2026, Bennett is seeking to become the third independent to reach the Blaine House, requiring the former Maine Republican Party chair and Maine Senate president to cut against deepening political polarization in both Augusta and Washington.
Bennett said he did not consider the current field of Republican and Democratic candidates seeking to succeed Gov. Janet Mills before announcing his independent bid in June. But the last two independent governors only gained traction after one or both major-party candidates faltered significantly. He may need the same thing to happen next year.
“I think we’re looking at something similar this time,” Ted O’Meara, who managed the 2010 campaign of Eliot Cutler, who narrowly lost that year to Republican Paul LePage, adding that Bennett is a serious candidate who could pick up voters “totally turned off” by President Donald Trump and his movement.
Bennett may also look to pick up Democratic voters turned off by their nominee, particularly if it is a progressive who may struggle in more conservative areas. The Democratic field is largely set, led by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree and ex-clean energy executive Angus King III.
The Republican field is less settled, with lawyer Bobby Charles, state Sen. Jim Libby, entrepreneur Owen McCarthy, real estate firm leader David Jones and lesser-known candidates in. Other figures such as Rep. Laurel Libby, former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason, entrepreneur Jonathan Bush and businessman Ben Midgley have not yet entered.
Longley made history as Maine’s first independent governor from 1975 to 1979, fulfilling a campaign promise to only seek one term. The insurance executive had been a Democrat with no political profile until then-Gov. Kenneth Curtis asked him to lead a commission tasked with making state government more efficient.
Longley ended up beating Democrat George Mitchell and Republican James Erwin by garnering 39 percent of the vote, with Mitchell, a future U.S. Senate majority leader, in second at 37 percent. In 1994, King beat Democrat Joe Brennan, Republican Susan Collins and Green candidate Jonathan Carter by earning about 35 percent of the vote and serving two terms. As a popular former governor, he returned to politics in 2012 by winning an open U.S. Senate seat.
Maine nearly elected a third independent governor in 2010. Cutler, a wealthy environmental lawyer, fell fewer than 10,000 votes short of beating former Gov. Paul LePage after surging late while Democrat Libby Mitchell faded in a five-person field. Cutler was later sentenced in 2023 to nine months in jail for possessing large amounts of child sexual abuse material.
Political scientist Chris Potholm, a Bowdoin College professor and author, similarly said the lessons from the Longley and King victories include weak or underfunded major party candidates and only “one credible independent” candidate who wins urban Franco-American Democrats and small-town Republicans.
While O’Meara of Cutler’s 2010 and 2014 campaigns is higher on Bennett’s chances next year, Potholm thinks both Democrats and Republicans “have strong, savvy candidates in the mix already.” Both national parties potentially like generously to the Maine race, which could serve to cement their electorates.
“[I] would not bet the farm on any independent this cycle in Maine,” Potholm said.
Republican lawmakers have differing opinions on Bennett leaving the party to run as an independent. Assistant House Minority Leader Katrina Smith, R-Palermo, criticized Bennett’s votes with Democratic lawmakers on bills tied to transgender athletes and immigration, arguing his bid is “focused on winning independents and Democrats” and not on her party’s base.
But Sen. Jeff Timberlake, R-Turner, said Bennett’s bid “fits his personality.” A Bangor Daily News analysis of the Oxford lawmaker’s first term back in the Senate found he voted against his party more than any other legislator in either chamber.
“It’s America, and he has a choice to do what he’s going to do,” Timberlake said.
Bennett, a businessman and Harvard University alumnus first elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 1990, is a product of Maine’s party system.
He ran for Congress in 1994 and 2012, then cast an Electoral College vote for Trump as the state Republican chair in 2016.
He pointed to Longley becoming governor in the 1970s after the Watergate scandal led to voters around the country to feel “disgusted” with the existing political system. He noted King won after Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign showed a desire for third-party options.
Bennett thinks “we’re certainly at the same point now” while reiterating he gave little thought to Maine’s current field and national politics before entering the gubernatorial field.
“My candidacy isn’t about fixing the party system or either of the two parties, because I think the party system is broken and corrupted,” Bennett said. “We need to show a different path entirely.”
