By Michael Shepherd - July 22, 2022 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up.
📷  Hamza Mohsin, foreground, uses his hands to paint a flag of one of many nations on July 13, 2022, at the corner of Bartlett and Birch streets in Lewiston. The mural is part of a public art project spearheaded by a teacher under a city grant. (Sun Journal photo by Russ Dillingham via AP)
Good morning from Augusta. There are 109Â days until Maine's November elections.
What we're watching today
Androscoggin County is at the center of another Maine election. Lewiston and Auburn seem to always find a way to the center of Maine politics. The Franco-American center has been pivotal in elections dating back to the 1970s, swinging between Democratic and Republican victors in key elections. A wave of African immigration to the two cities since 2000 now makes Androscoggin County the youngest and most diverse one in Maine. Because of that, it is the Maine county most closely resembling the U.S. as a whole.
Over the years, there have been few elections with a more direct line through Lewiston than the one this November. Gov. Janet Mills is from Farmington, but the Democrat cut her teeth in politics as the first woman to serve as a Maine district attorney based mostly in Lewiston. Former Gov. Paul LePage was born there. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine's 2nd District lives there now and is from nearby Leeds. His opponent in a nationally targeted race, former Rep. Bruce Poliquin has Franco heritage and family ties there.
In 2020, the county was won by former President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and Golden. Trump lost Lewiston and Auburn. Mills lost the county in 2018, but she won Lewiston and Auburn. LePage, a Republican, won the county and the two key cities in his 2010 and 2014 elections.
In the last few years, a north-south trend of political polarization has escalated in Maine. The Portland suburbs have grown more Democratic by party registration, while inland areas are generally more red. The Lewiston area was polarized already and it has not grown much more. The cities are slightly more Democratic than they were in 2018, while the rural and conservative areas in the north and west are only a pale shade redder.
Early polling in the Mills-LePage race shows a close statewide race composed of bloody electoral matchups for both candidates in each congressional district. One spring survey showed Mills leading in the liberal 1st District by about 14 percentage points, with LePage up by nearly that much in the 2nd District. She has had only narrow leads so far in public polls that are largely backed up by internal polling that I have heard about from sources in both parties.
Winning Lewiston may be slightly harder for the LePage this time, with only the little-known independent Sam Hunkler on the ballot alongside he and Mills in 2022. The winning statewide map for the Republican probably includes a close margin around Lewiston, not getting crushed in the Portland suburbs and running up a big margin in the 2nd District overall. The 1st District should go for Mills handily. If she runs up huge margins there, she can hold on.
The candidates' personal histories, Maine's political geography and the Lewiston area's obstinate group of swing voters make the area the fulcrum of the biggest races this year. Reporters will be spending a lot of time at Simones' Hot Dog Stand. That's always a lunch deal that is OK with me.
🗞 The Daily Brief is made possible by Bangor Daily News subscribers. Support the work of our politics team and enjoy unlimited access to everything the BDN has to offer by subscribing here.
What we're reading
— Central Maine Power Co. and its allies will keep access to its $1 billion corridor route if they can prevail in two upcoming court challenges.
— Business leaders are calling on the next governor and Legislature to prioritize strategies to help them find entry-level workers in a pandemic-tinged break from their typical concerns about Maine's workforce.
— In news that could help determine control of Augusta, No. 2 oil prices here nearly doubled between June 2021 and June 2022, Maine Public reported.
— A video showed that a Newport campground worker who was shot and killed by a sheriff's deputy on Friday pointed a gun at the deputy just beforehand.
— Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine's 1st District, urged a federal investigation into Chipotle after it closed an Augusta store where employees were holding the chain's first-ever U.S. union drive.
📱Want daily texts from me tipping you to political stories before they break? Get Pocket Politics. It is free for 14 days and $3.99 per month if you like it.
News and notes
Collins is one of the Republicans backing a bill to shield the right to contraceptives.
— A Democratic bill passed largely across party lines in the House on Thursday that would enshrine the right in federal law after a concurring opinion from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a landmark abortion-rights case called into question an earlier decision on contraceptives.
— Collins told the Associated Press she was "most likely" to support the measure in the Senate, where 10 Republicans would be needed for it to pass.
— Democrats and the Maine senator are also trying to codify same-sex marriage in federal law in response to the same Thomas concurrence.
One of Maine's historic public buildings is on the market.
— That is the Old Post Office and Court House, the former federal building in downtown Augusta being listed at $2.65 million, MaineBiz reported.
— Finished in 1890, the 41,000-square-foot granite-faced building is one of the state's best examples of Romanesque Revival architecture. The federal government built such a grand outpost here due to Augusta's status as a publishing center at the time.
— While a small, satellite post office remains in the building now owned by private developers, Augusta's main post office moved to the seven-story Edmund S. Muskie Federal Building near the State House in 1966.
