By Michael Shepherd - May 15, 2023
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📷 Gov. Janet Mills carries a Maine-made Dove Tail baseball bat past a new machine that can precisely scan them at Hadlock Field in Portland on Wednesday. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

Good morning from Augusta. Legislative committees are in today. Here's the agenda, including testimony from Budget Commissioner Kirsten Figueroa on the new spending proposal and Republican bills on transgender students. The Daily Brief will be off Tuesday and return Wednesday, May 17.

What we're watching today

Other Democrats begin to challenge the governor's role in the state power structure. Gov. Janet Mills has mostly had her way in the State House since she and fellow Democrats took it over in the 2018 election. She set early edges against progressive desires for tax hikes and gun control and has never had a veto overridden after lawmakers went further than she wanted.

Mills' ability to either set the agenda or control it by the end of a legislative session has not been effectively challenged to date, leading to some pent-up frustrations on that side on causes from tribal sovereignty to labor. Those issues, respectively, are the top issues for House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross, D-Portland, and Senate President Troy Jackson, D-Allagash.

Talbot Ross is now going into the breach. Her chief of staff told his counterpart in the governor's office last week that the speaker would not support Mills' new $900 million spending package unless the governor gets behind three tribal bills that Mills has resisted so far, according to a statement from the governor's office that rebuked Talbot Ross. Her office did not comment last week.

This has been perhaps the biggest outward dispute so far between two top Democrats in Augusta, but many lower-key divisions have emerged in the last two weeks between the governor's spending goals and other negotiations afoot in the Legislature.

For example, her proposed expansion and overhaul of business tax credits is backed by Jackson but has some progressive critics. Her budget plan did not include money for a child tax credit expansion proposed by leading Democrats.

She also seems to be trying to rein in a paid leave effort that has a referendum threat from progressives hanging over fraught talks in the State House. Her administration is negotiating with the gun-rights Sportsman's Alliance of Maine on a consensus package that may address so-called straw purchases of firearms after the high-profile shootings in Bowdoin and Yarmouth last month. Such a result may frustrate progressives who want more.

There is a month left to go in the 2023 legislative session. It remains to be seen whether Talbot Ross will truly take her spending dispute with the governor to the mat and tank a budget proposal with many things in it that are important to her members. But her actions and the potential paid leave referendum are ways that progressives are pushing the governor seriously for the first time.

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News and notes

📷 Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, pauses Wednesday during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington to examine the president's budget request for the National Park Service. (AP photo by Carolyn Kaster)

❓ A Maine senator is among the undecided on the labor secretary nominee.

◉ Politico had intel over the weekend on President Joe Biden's battle to confirm Julie Su as labor secretary. Her nomination is in some danger as five more centrist members of the Senate Democratic caucus hold out, including independent Angus King of Maine.

◉ Su, a deputy U.S. labor secretary who once held the top labor position in California, has faced criticism from Republicans who perceive her as too close to unions. None of the Democratic caucus members have said they will not vote for her. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, is the most in question since he has grown more critical of the Biden administration in recent weeks.

◉ White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients as well as Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm have been leaning on the holdouts in recent weeks, Politico reported. King generally supports Biden and his policies but once blocked a nominee for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who was opposed by gun-rights groups.

1️⃣ There is less than a month before an interesting Maine election.

◉ A fascinating June 13 election for a vacant House seat on the Midcoast between former Reps. Abden Simmons, R-Waldoboro, and Wendy Pieh, D-Bremen, is heading into crunch time. The seat was vacated by former Rep. Clinton Collamore, D-Waldoboro, earlier this year after he pleaded not guilty to signature fraud charges related to the Clean Election program.

◉ It is a good opportunity for Republicans, who hold a healthy advantage in the district by party registration despite Collamore's win there in November. However, the minority party in Augusta is on a long losing streak in these kinds of competitive legislative special elections, not winning in any closely divided district since 2015.

◉ Early indicators are good for Republicans. Simmons raised nearly $16,000 through April 25, much of it from party lawmakers, according to state filings. Pieh only had $1,000 in seed money under the Clean Election program around that time. Outside spending has only come so far from the Maine Republican Party, which has tossed in $5,000 for ads and materials helping Simmons.

◉ But Democrats have the financial advantage in state politics, spending nearly three times more in outside money than Republicans in 2022 legislative races. We should see more spending by the time this is over.

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What we're reading

🤷 Sanford's influx of asylum seekers highlights the lack of a statewide plan.

🎥 Few films set in Maine are actually shot here. They want to fix it.

🌞 Rising solar subsidy costs prompt a heated debate, Maine Public reports.

🔋 A drill battery failure caused the truck explosion near the Blaine House.

🌲 This Maine woman hikes naked. Here's your soundtrack.

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