By Michael Shepherd - May 24, 2022 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up.
Good morning from Augusta. There are three weeks until Maine's June primaries.
What we're watching today
A former congressman has to close a gap with the other top Republican on the ticket if he wants to recapture his old seat. Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin enters his rematch with Rep. Jared Golden of Maine's 2nd District in a strange place. With a good national environment for Republicans behind him, he lagged the Democratic incumbent by nearly 9 percentage points in their first head-to-head public poll released by Pan Atlantic Research this month. Another 18 percent of voters were undecided or said they would back a third candidate, showing things are still deeply unsettled.
But that is in a conservative district where former Gov. Paul LePage was beating Gov. Janet Mills by 9 points in their high-profile race, equaling an 12-point gap between LePage and Poliquin's support in the 2nd District as the latter enters the race with Golden, assuming the former congressman can get past a longshot primary challenge from Caratunk Selectman Liz Caruso on June 14. The race is poised to again be one of the most targeted by the parties nationally.
Golden is looking like a hard out in November, boasting a broad coalition in a different poll released this month, with one-third of Republicans in his district supporting him along with half of Democrats after some high-profile votes against party leaders. Mills and LePage supporters are about as polarized as you would expect at the top of the ticket. If Poliquin is down in the 2nd District, he has problems on the Republican side.Â
We have seen this for Poliquin before. He has been working to rally the base in 2022 after a Maine Republican Party autopsy of his 2018 campaign singled him out for not energizing the grassroots. After never saying publicly whether he supported former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2016 election, he is tying himself to both Trump and LePage in early ads.
In a recent radio ad, Poliquin's campaign mentions associations with those two Republicans while saying he will stop Democrats' agenda nationally, according to a summary submitted to federal regulators. The ad's summary mentions the names of President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, without mentioning Golden.
Poliquin has one advantage over LePage in the race to oust one Democratic incumbent or the other. He simply needs Republicans to come home, while LePage needs to win by more in the 2nd District than Mills wins in the liberal 1st District. That is the good news for Poliquin, explaining his base-rallying strategy. The bad news is that it looks like a struggle for now against a tough incumbent. If it fails, there may not be many votes left to capture.
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— We're getting into crunch time in the special election for a Maine Senate seat in Hancock County between former Sen. Brian Langley, R-Ellsworth, and Rep. Nicole Grohoski, D-Ellsworth. Senate Republicans' campaign arm exhorted volunteers to close an absentee ballot request gap with Democrats in a Tuesday email to supporters. Grohoski has been touring the Deer Isle area with outgoing Rep. Genevieve McDonald, D-Stonington, this week.
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— Two advocacy groups say Gov. Janet Mills' administration needs to develop and stand by an LGBTQ-rights curriculum after removing a video explaining transgender identities to young children that became the subject of a Republican attack ad on the governor.
University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel Malloy (center left) looks at the screen of an iPad just before a system board of trustees meeting is called to order May 23, 2022. (BDN photo by Sawyer Loftus)
đź“·Â Â Lead photo:Â Former Rep. Bruce Poliquin of Maine's 2nd District waves to a supporter at Dysart's on Broadway in Bangor during a Thursday campaign stop. (BDN photo by Linda Coan O'Kresik)
❌ Corrections: Tuesday's newsletter had two errors. Three faculty senates have taken no-confidence votes on University of Maine System Chancellor Dannel Malloy. A fourth has only supported those three in a letter. Former trustee Samuel Collins was the chair of the chancellor search committee at the time of Malloy's hiring, not the chair of the board of trustees.
