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The Maine race for governor will be a three-way contest come November after one independent candidate qualified for the ballot.
State Sen. Rick Bennett, the former chair of the Maine Republican Party, is the only independent who submitted enough signatures this week to make the November ballot.
He’ll take on the Republican and Democratic winners of next Tuesday’s primary election, setting up a three-way race that will not be decided by ranked-choice voting. The voting system is used in primary elections and general election contests for congressional races, but two opinions by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court have prevented its use in gubernatorial and legislative general election races because doing so conflicts with the Maine Constitution.
There are also 28 independent candidates running for the Legislature, seven in the Senate and 21 in the House.
Three of the independents running for the Senate switched their party affiliation from Republican to independent before gathering ballot qualifying signatures earlier this year. All three — Eryn Soule, Nicole Kalloch and Edwin Mitchell — are running in left-leaning districts in Lewiston, Rockland and Boothbay, respectively.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.