By Michael Shepherd - April 19, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta. It is the penultimate day of the scheduled 2022 legislative session. Here's your soundtrack.

What we're watching today

Voters are frustrated with the COVID-19 response in Maine and nationally. Is wholesale change their preferred response? The Maine Republican Party on Monday trumpeted new polling from the COVID States Project, which has been a valuable source of state-by-state surveys on the pandemic. Gov. Janet Mills hit her lowest marks in the surveys to date over the past four months, with her pandemic response at 43 percent in March. President Joe Biden was at a dismal 32 percent here on that subject, below his national rating of 37 percent.

Context is king here, though. There has been a downward trend for virtually all governors since the pandemic began. Republicans have been driving this huge dip, with their approval of Democratic governors on the pandemic falling from 57 percent in April 2020 to just 19 percent this month, the polling project found. Those voters also have a much dimmer view of Republican governors, for which approval dropped from 77 percent at the outset to 44 percent now.

We do not have those partisan breakdowns in Maine and there are many reasons why voters might say they do not like the governor's response. A subset of conservatives are still upset with Mills' 2021 vaccine mandate for health care workers. A more liberal group could believe mask mandates were wound down too quickly. We are all tired of the pandemic in one way or another even. At the same time, most of us are living about as normally as ever.

While these surveys may not be strictly political, they come at a bad time for Democrats angling to stave off a Republican wave in 2022. Biden's national approval ratings have sat at an all-time nadir in the low 40s in recent days, with high costs and inflation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the pandemic among the big issues facing his presidency. We have seen legislative Republicans here focus campaign messages on Biden in a bet that he will drag Democrats down all the way to the local level.

Mills and her allies will note that other polls have consistently shown higher approval ratings for her overall performance. After becoming the first governor since 1966 to take office with a majority of votes, Mills has consistently registered higher marks than former Gov. Paul LePage had during his eight-year tenure. He will oppose Mills in November and faces the challenge of broadening his appeal in a Democratic-leaning state.

A Republican-leaning national environment should certainly help LePage. Pandemic differences will be a part of the campaign with Mills, but other issues seem likely to dominate it. The Republican is already pushing a voter identification law and the specter of abortion limits like those advancing in conservative states could lead Democrats to advance a nationalized campaign of their own. Lots of other issues could crowd out this pandemic anxiety.

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What we're reading

— Tribal rights and sports gaming are the subject of intense behind-the-scenes talks in the State House. Sen. Joe Baldacci, D-Bangor, is trying to amend a Mills compromise that would hand mobile sports betting to tribes to allow in-person betting at a Bangor casino. There are also signs that tribes are resigned to the failure of their sweeping sovereignty measure which is opposed by the governor. It was not on an allied group's list of priority bills on Monday.

— We have a guide to the $850 checks that make up the largest part of Mills' $1.2 billion budget deal with the Legislature.

— Workers from nearby states, led by Massachusetts, drove Maine's pandemic migration gains, according to new Census data. Maine only lost workers to six states from April 2020 through March 2021 during a period of historic migration here that offset stark natural population declines.

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Follow along today

10 a.m. The House and Senate are back for what should be a long day. We are expecting votes on the version of Mills' $1.2 billion spending bill advanced by the budget committee last week. It will start in the House, where we could see some floor amendment bids from Republicans.

Also in the House, tabled utility regulation bills and another measure to regulate the use of biometric identifiers such as face and fingerprint scans could come up for votes. Watch here.

The Senate needs to vote on Mills' sports betting compromise with tribes, but there will be a floor fight over aforementioned amendment proposals. The governor's utility accountability measure is tabled in the chamber. Watch here.

Keep an eye on the appropriations committee as well. It could meet as soon as today to choose the so-far-unfunded bills that will get a scant $12 million in funding under the budget deal. Leaders have not scheduled a meeting yet.

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📷 Lead photo: Gov. Janet Mills finishes tapping a maple tree with Scott Dunn, president of the Maple Maple Producers Association, at the Blaine House on March 11, 2022, in Augusta. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

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