Just a few final remarks about the 2010 election which we can now, thankfully, put behind us.
Voter turnout was huge. The voting percentage in Kennebunkport was 77%.
Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree, both re-elected to Congress, will serve in political “purgatory” as they are now junior members of the minority party. The good news is that they will have lots of time to help individual constituents.
As Eliot Cutler humbly pointed out on election night, before he knew the results of the Governor’s race, whoever was about to be elected was not the first choice of nearly two thirds of Maine voters.
When she knew she’d lost but didn’t know whether Cutler or LePage won, Libby Mitchell showed class in her concession remarks by pledging that Democrats would work with whoever was elected Governor.
Shawn Moody is a natural leader with great political instincts who conducted his campaign with dignity. It was refreshing to watch and listen to him during the debates. He should run for office again.
Maine lost the opportunity to be led by a fine man, Eliot Cutler. We needed the insight, experience and intelligence he would have brought to Augusta. We also lost the people he might’ve attracted to serve in his administration.
Had Angus King endorsed Cutler a week sooner, had the “fortune cookie” flyers come out a week sooner, had the polling results been available earlier which showed that Mitchell was fading and Cutler surging, had any of us who supported Cutler persuaded others to vote for him, the outcome might be different.
The vote confirms that there are indeed “Two Maines”. Cutler took the more affluent (some would say cosmopolitan) coastal towns and large cities, as well as every community on Mount Desert Island. LePage’s strength runs up the west side of the Maine Turnpike and Interstate 95 over to the New Hampshire and up to the Canadian border, the rural Maine.
Not only are there two Maines, there are two York Counties. Cutler carried the large service-center communities of Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Old Orchard Beach, Saco, Sanford and incredibly, Biddeford. In many of those communities, however, the votes for LePage and Cutler were very close. LePage carried every rural town in York County and in the end garnered more total votes County-wide.
The results confirm that Maine voters are discriminating because we elected a Republican Governor and two Democratic U.S. Representatives who join two Republican Senators in Washington.
Amazingly, it was only in 1972 that Maine eliminated straight-ticket voting.
An interesting phenomenon was voters in the former manufacturing centers of Biddeford, Sanford, Lewiston and Waterville who historically voted Democratic voted Republican because of their attraction to Paul LePage, a French-Canadian who speaks French. In any other election, Democrats could bank on carrying these towns.
LePage’s Franco-American ancestry no doubt has and will continue to arouse pride in Maine’s dwindling Franco-American population. He made French language robo-calls in strategic locations prior to the June primary and recorded radio ads in French for use during the fall campaign.
About Franco-American pride, some explanation may be needed. People who have moved to Maine in the last 25 years may not realize the extent to which Maine has been populated by Francos. French-Canadians swarmed into the milltowns of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts during the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century. Those mill buildings which are being converted to condominiums housed the textile looms which were operated by the first and second generation immigrants from Canada. When I was growing up in Kennebunkport in the 1950's, downtown Biddeford served as our shopping center and it contained many speciality stores. It was common to be in a store in downtown Biddeford and hear French spoken. The other side of the presence of French Canadians was the discrimination they faced. My mother, who graduated from teacher's college (Farmington Normal School) in 1933, was not hired for a job in her hometown of Yarmouth because she was a Catholic Franco-American. She moved to New York to take a teaching position. She also remembered as a child, being in church with her mother and hearing the priest warn that the Klu Klux Klan was active in Maine and that Catholics were a target for this group. There are many reasons to celebrate the victory of a politician raised in a Franco-American household. For my grandparents, my mother and aunts and uncles, for all the French-Candadian immigrants who were discriminated against or suffered second-class status, I tip my hat to Paul LePage.
Is LePage the Sarah Palin of Maine? Both were elected Governor with limited political experience after being elected mayor. Let’s hope the resemblance ends there. Waterville has a population of about 16,000, compared with Wasilla, Alaska’s 8,500 residents.
LePage was not my first choice for Governor. But you have to admire his perseverance despite the adverse conditions of his youth. Setting his politics aside, his personal story is transformational and inspirational. His political message resonated with people who are drawn to the so-called Tea Party Movement. If he surrounds himself with good people, he may surprise all of us. I wish him well.
If anyone was driven away from the television by repetitive and scornful political ads, it is now safe to watch your favorite programs. After what we’ve seen the last 2 months, non-political advertising seems delightfully benign, optimistic and naïve.
