While most attention in this forum has been turned to tomorrow's run-off in Arkansas (please, please, PLEASE let Bill Halter win), there is also an important primary taking place here in the state that Southerners consider "too far north to be 'Yankeeland'", Maine. Incumbent governor John Baldacci is term-limited and the primaries in both parties are wide open.
There are four Democrats and seven Republicans vying for the November prize, and a poll showed last Tuesday that 47% of Republicans and 61.7% of Democrats are undecided.
On the Democratic side, Senate President Libby Mitchell held a mere 13.3% of the vote, with former Attorney General Steve Rowe at 11.7%, local businesswoman Rosa Scarcelli at 7%, and Maine Conservation Commissioner Pat McGowan at 6.3%.
Things are slightly more clear on the Republican side, with former American Skiing Company CEO and Boston Red Sox part owner Les Otten garnering 17% of the vote. Teabagger/Marden's CEO/Waterville mayor Paul LePage was second at 10.3%. State Senator Peter Mills held 8.4%, Steve Abbott was at 8.3%, and former Husson College president Bill Beardsley and businessmen Bruce Poliquin and Matt Jacobson are afterthoughts.
Libby Mitchell is a former teacher who has also been a member of the Maine legislature since 1974. She believes that strong education is the key to economic revival in this state. Our education has slipped over the past decade; in 2000, Maine 4th graders had the highest test scores in the country in math and science. Now, we are in the middle of the pack even though we spend a fortune on K-12 education. Mitchell is also a strong supporter of same-sex marriage and was a driving force behind the passage of a same-sex marriage law in 2009 (which was rejected by the voters in November). She has been endorsed by Bill Clinton.
Steve Rowe was Maine's Attorney General from 2001 to 2009. He is also a former Speaker of the House. He firmly believes that health care is a right and not a privilege and used his position as Attorney General to stand up to insurance companies who ask for double digit rate hikes as routinely as waking up in the morning. He also proclaimed his willingness to shout from the rooftops that he is a Democrat in his speech at the state Democratic Convention.
State Conservation Commissioner Pat McGowan is a dark horse in this race because of his appeal to rural and northern Maine voters who do not have easy Internet access. McGowan has been endorsed by some of the top newspapers in the state (including The Portland Press Herald, The Kennebec Journal, and The Morning Sentinel). McGowan wants to cut the size of the legislature by a third as a means of saving the taxpayers money. He also wants to create green jobs. While in the legislature, McGowan was instrumental behind the passage of the Lands for Maine's Future bill, which protected over 600,000 acres of Maine land. He also headed the New England Small Business Administration during the Clinton years.
Finally, there is Rosa Scarcelli. She is the outsider candidate in this race, having spent her entire career in the private sector. She is currently the CEO of Stanford Management, a company that provides low-cost housing, which is the largest female-owned business in the state. To provide capital to Maine's strugging small businesses, Rosa has proposed the creation of a state bank, similar to the one in North Dakota (a rural state with only 4.4% unemployment). She is a fiscal conservative, but a social liberal who stated on Ray & Ted (our local right wing radio show) a couple of weeks ago that she would absolutely sign a gay marriage bill into law if it were to pass again. To me, she represents a rare point of agreement between progressive politics and the fiscal reality of this state ($2 billion budget deficit and the 6th highest taxes in the nation).
The next governor, no matter who it is, must make keeping our kids in Maine a top priority. Over the past ten years, we have only created a net of 56 jobs in the private sector. Our economic outlook ranks 48th in the nation. The Republicans have, of course, seized on this narrative to eagerly tell voters that this is because our current system rewards those on welfare, but the reality is that our problems have much more to do with demographics. While our kids are leaving, the people who are still here are seemingly aging two or three years every day. In other words, everyone in this state is either leaving or dying.
With only 24 hours to go, I need to know: Who do you support and why?