By Michael Shepherd - Nov. 21, 2022
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📷 Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, talks to reporters after Senate Republicans met behind closed doors to hold their leadership elections, at the Capitol in Washington on Wednesday. (AP photo by J. Scott Applewhite)

Good morning from Augusta. There are 16 days until the new Legislature is sworn in.

What we're watching today

The 2022 election shows a Maine senator's unique place in state politics. She was not on the ballot, but Election Day was still a significant one for Sen. Susan Collins. After she stood to gain the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, she will instead settle for the No. 2 spot after Democrats held control of the upper chamber. Republicans also lost state elections, leaving Collins as the only one in the upper echelon of Maine politics.

In a Friday interview, Collins said former Gov. Paul LePage never asked her to campaign with him in his losing race to Gov. Janet Mills. Collins added her party should look at how to be "more inclusive" and examine ways to reach out to young voters and to independents. Collins also said a third straight run for former President Donald Trump was not good for her party or the country.

That underscores Collins' strange place in Republican politics. Instead of helping LePage, she spent the final Sunday of the campaign just outside of Philadelphia campaigning with Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who lost his race to Democrat John Fetterman. While she was in the Pennsylvania suburbs, LePage was about to be shellacked by Mills in the Portland suburbs where Collins did relatively well against Democrat Sara Gideon in 2020 despite a bruising campaign that helped send Collins' approval figures tumbling amid a heavy focus on her 2018 vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Before that campaign, LePage and Collins had a tense relationship. But they repaired relations and the former governor served as a low-key ambassador to conservatives who had been frustrated by the centrist senator at times. She had also helped him before, including by showing up to a Blaine House photo op just before Election Day 2014 during LePage's reelection bid.

With her committee spot riding on the Senate majority, Collins was focused on national elections. Her political committee spent $720,000 through mid-October, directing $245,000 of that alone to Republicans' frontline political groups. She gave maximum donations to a wide group of candidates from Oz to outgoing Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, a fierce Trump critic who lost her primary.

In Maine, she gave $15,000 to Republican legislative campaign arms, $5,000 to groups run by incoming House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faukingham of Winter Harbor and Rep. Laurel Libby of Auburn, plus contributions to LePage and a small group of legislative candidates. Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin notably got no donation nor an endorsement in a loss to Rep. Jared Golden.

Taken together, all of these donations show Collins' wide group of alliances from the most conservative areas of her party to the never-Trump wing. They have all helped her at different stages of her career and aided Republicans at the state level. On one hand, she is one of a waning group of centrists who has not dealt with a primary threat. On the other, she had to call upon conservatives like LePage and the evangelical Christian Civic League of Maine to help her in the 2020 campaign fight against Democrats who wanted to drum her out.

Some of those social conservatives are upset with Collins now. She helped lead a measure advanced by the Senate last week that would shield federal protections for same-sex marriage. It got 12 Republican votes to break the 60-vote filibuster. Last week, the Maine civic league shared a post from an allied national group condemning those senators as "weak-kneed." The measure is poised to pass in the lame-duck session of Congress.

Collins has a point that her party needs to win over swing voters. Polarization has affected both her role in the Senate and her coalition of support among Mainers. But she has retained her ability to win elections. While Republicans may have lessons to learn from her, the state party also has followed LePage's lead over hers in the past decade. That does not seem likely to change now.

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News and notes

📷 Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, speaks at a rally outside the State House in Augusta on June 30, 2021. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

💡 Two prominent western Maine Republicans fight on Facebook.

◉ Catching my eye last week was a feisty exchange between Sen. Rick Bennett of Oxford and Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque over rate increases approved for major utilities including Central Maine Power Co. last week.

◉ Levesque tagged Bennett, who was a leading opponent of the CMP corridor and is championing a consumer-owned utility, to sarcastically thank him for the rate increases. Bennett shot back by telling the mayor to get off his "simplistic, self-righteous soapbox and call me, rather than demagogue."

◉ The cities of Lewiston and Auburn were some of the biggest allies of the corridor, in large part to due to large property tax gains from new infrastructure there. It is worth noting that the rate increases approved by regulators last week were largely due to soaring for natural gas in the region.

📮 Recounts in legislative races begin today. Expect no big changes.

◉ Three races are going to recounts that will be conducted by Secretary of State Shenna Bellows' office at a north Augusta state office building between Monday and Wednesday.

◉ The first is today in a race in which former state Sen. Eric Brakey, R-Auburn, bested former state Rep. Bettyann Sheats, D-Auburn, by 164 votes and a margin of just under 1 percentage point, according to initial tallies provided by Bellows' office.

◉ The other two recounts, coming Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, are in House races between Republican Barbara Bagshaw and Democrat Dana Reed of Windham and Democrat Kathleen Shaw and Republican James Sorcek of Auburn. Bagshaw won by 24 votes and Shaw won by 63 votes.

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What we're reading

📱 None of the Republicans at the top of Maine's 2022 ballot called their opponents to concede.

🔆 Maine's solar power boom leads some to worry about forestland loss.

📆 Bangor is expected to welcome up to 50 refugees by the end of 2023.

🏡 This little-known mortgage could make Maine homes more affordable.

🚜 Jobs in Maine reached an all-time high last month.

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