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What to watch for in Maine’s statewide primary elections

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What to watch for in Maine’s statewide primary elections


As Maine voters go to the polls to vote in native primaries on Tuesday, Beacon will probably be watching how progressives fare of their bids for the Maine State Legislature and native college boards. We’ll even be keeping track of the Republican major for Maine’s Second Congressional District, the place former Rep. Bruce Poliquin and newcomer Liz Caruso are competing to courtroom voters loyal to former President Donald Trump.

Right here’s our rundown of major outcomes to look at.

The progressive street to Augusta

Patty Kidder speaks on the rally in assist of Medicare for All in 2021. | Photograph by Marie Follayttar

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On account of redistricting, the Maine State Legislature, at the moment managed by Democrats, may very well be among the many best battlegrounds within the U.S. this November, based on an evaluation by FiveThirtyEight.  

Hoping to push the Maine Democratic Get together to face this problem by backing insurance policies which can be aware of the wants of working Mainers, progressives are working campaigns centered on points like assured entry to well being care, tackling Maine’s reasonably priced housing disaster, robust funding for schooling and addressing local weather change. 

In Home District 141, newly redrawn to incorporate Shapleigh, Newfield and components of Springvale and Sanford, Patty Kidder is dealing with John McAdam within the Democratic major.

Kidder, who ran unsuccessfully for the Home in 2020, is a longtime activist with Maine Folks’s Alliance (of which Beacon is a challenge) who has accomplished volunteer work on points starting from supporting Medicare for All to pushing for a statewide consumer-owned utility to exchange Central Maine Energy and Versant. 

In a Democratic major in Penobscot-county based mostly Senate District 8, Mike Tipping is dealing with Orono Brewing Firm co-owner Abe Furth to fill the Senate seat vacated by Sen. Jim Dill, a conservative Democrat who’s termed out.

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Tipping, a senior strategist at MPA and the founding father of Beacon, and has labored on campaigns to lift Maine’s minimal wage and clear up mercury within the Penobscot River. 

Different progressives are working unopposed of their primaries. In Home District 95 in Lewiston, neighborhood organizer and Bates School intercultural schooling coordinator Mana Abdi is working as a Democrat to exchange Rep. Heidi Brooks, who’s term-limited. Abdi could be the primary Somali-American to serve within the legislature if finally elected. 

Inexpensive housing activist Cheryl Golek can also be working unopposed within the Democratic major for Harpswell-based Home District 99 after her solely opponent just lately dropped out. In Kennebunk, schooling advocate and Maine Democratic Get together platform committee member Dan Sayre is the only real member of his get together working for Home District 135. 

And in Waterville, searching for to work outdoors of the two-party system, Isreal Mosley is working as a progressive unbiased for Home District 65, a seat that may seemingly function a three-way race with a Democrat and a Republican in November. 

One other legislative race of be aware on Tuesday is Senate Democrats’ bid to carry onto a seat within the swing district of Hancock County in a particular election between Republican Brian Langley, who beforehand held the seat, and Democratic Rep. Nicole Grohoski, a legislative champion of a poll initiative to exchange Central Maine Energy and Versant with a consumer-owned utility.

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Maine media has described the particular election as a possible bellwether for a way Democrats will fare within the fall.

Who’s extra MAGA in CD2?

Within the Republican major for Maine’s Second Congressional District, the place former Congressman Bruce Poliquin is dealing with Liz Caruso of Caratunk, the candidates are each embracing Trump and his insurance policies.

The favored Poliquin, who’s backed by nationwide Republican teams, has refused to debate underdog Caruso. Caruso — a former government director of the native chamber of commerce, registered Maine whitewater information and homeschool mother — has tried to solid herself because the “real conservative outsider” within the race, in comparison with Poliquin, who she described as an institution Republican and “profession politician.” 

If elected, Caruso has mentioned she would align herself with Trump’s largest supporters in Congress, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, who’ve all pushed the “Cease the Steal” conspiracy concept that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent.

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Caruso has additionally stoked the conservative panic over public faculties. “We are able to’t entice our kids in school rooms and power radical ideology on them,” she mentioned on the Republican conference in Could.

Poliquin, who additionally urged Trump to not resign after the 2020 election outcomes had been introduced, has performed up his connection to the previous president within the major.

“President Trump selected me, with my 40 years of personal enterprise expertise, to Chair the [Securities Investor Protection Corporation] so I might assist shield seniors’ retirements,” Poliquin mentioned in a Fb publish. “From President Trump’s appointment to my work defending Life and our 2nd Modification, preventing for Maine jobs, and chopping waste as our State Treasurer, I’ve a confirmed conservative report which I’ll put to work once more in Congress.”

The winner of the race will try in November to unseat Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, one of many most susceptible incumbents within the nation.

In his two-terms in Congress, Golden has drawn the ire of many progressives as he has grow to be certainly one of Congress’ extra conservative Democrats. He has taken votes in opposition to President Joe Biden’s social spending bundle, Construct Again Higher, and his COVID reduction bundle, the American Rescue Plan Act. He voted for just one impeachment depend in opposition to Trump and just lately voted in opposition to a gun management invoice handed after the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.

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College boards will probably be battlegrounds of GOP tradition conflict

College board elections are additionally happening on Tuesday in opposition to the backdrop of a nationwide Republican Get together that’s making an attempt to animate its base with conspiracies about public faculties being facilities for idealogical and sexual “grooming.” Final month, the Maine GOP amended its platform to incorporate insurance policies focusing on LGBTQ individuals and scare-words like “vital race concept,” which isn’t really taught in Ok-12 schooling and as a substitute is a tutorial concept studied on the faculty degree that examines the intersection of race and U.S. legislation. 

In Maine’s largest metropolis, 12 candidates are vying for 3 seats on Portland Public College’s nine-person Board of Training.

In Portland, college board elections are normally scheduled for November, however with former members Anna Trevorrow and Roberto Rodriguez being elected to the Portland Metropolis Council and Jeff Irish resigning final October, new elections are set for Tuesday.

Progressive Portland, a company that advocates for insurance policies on the metropolis degree, carried out a survey and final week endorsed Sarah Brydon for District 2 and Sarah Lentz and Ben Grant for the 2 at-large seats.

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Petition to do away with CMP

Additionally on Tuesday, grassroots volunteers with Our Energy, the group that’s main the trouble to exchange CMP and Versant with a statewide consumer-owned utility, will probably be gathering signatures at a number of polling locations throughout the state. The volunteers try to get a consumer-owned utility on the poll in 2023.

Gov. Janet Mills, who isn’t dealing with a Democratic major challenger on Tuesday, final yr vetoed a invoice that may have allowed Maine voters to weigh in on a consumer-owned utility in November.

Prime picture by David Paul Morris, Getty.

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Maine

Maine’s marine resources chief has profane exchange with lobstermen

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Maine’s marine resources chief has profane exchange with lobstermen


Maine Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said “f— you” to a man during a Thursday meeting at which fishermen assailed him for a state plan to raise the size limit for lobster.

The heated exchange came on the same day that Keliher withdrew the proposal, which came in response to limits from regional regulators concerned with data showing a 35 percent decrease in lobster population in the state’s biggest fishing area.

It comes on the heels of fights between the storied fishery and the federal government over proposed restrictions on fishing gear that are intended to preserve the population of endangered whales off the East Coast. It was alleviated by a six-year pause on new whale rules negotiated in 2022 by Gov. Janet Mills and the state’s congressional delegation.

“I think this is the right thing to do because the future of the industry is at stake for a lot of different reasons,” Keliher told the fishermen of his now-withdrawn change at a meeting in Augusta on Thursday evening, according to a video posted on Facebook.

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After crosstalk from the crowd, Keliher implored them to listen to him. Then, a man yelled that they don’t have to listen to him because the commission “sold out” to federal regulators and Canada.

“F— you, I sold out,” Keliher yelled, prompting an angry response from the fishermen.

“That’s nice. Foul language in the meeting. Good for you. That’s our commissioner,” a man shouted back.

Keliher apologized to the crowd shortly after making the remark and will try to talk with the man he directed the profanity to, department spokesperson Jeff Nichols said. The commissioner issued a Friday statement saying the remarks came as a result of his passion for the industry and criticisms of his motives that he deemed unfair, he said.

“I remain dedicated to working in support of this industry and will continue to strengthen the relationships and build the trust necessary to address the difficult and complex tasks that lay ahead,” Keliher said.

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Spokespeople for Gov. Janet Mills did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether she has spoken to Keliher about his remarks.

Lobstermen pushed back in recent meetings against the state’s plan, challenging the underlying data. Now, fishermen can keep lobsters that measure 3.25 inches from eye socket to tail. The proposal would have raised that limit by 1/16 of an inch and would have been the first time the limit was raised in decades.

The department pulled the limit pending a new stock survey, a move that U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District, hailed in a news release that called the initial proposal “an unnecessary overreaction to questionable stock data.”

Keliher is Maine’s longest-serving commissioner. He has held his job since former Gov. Paul LePage hired him in 2012. Mills, a Democrat, reappointed the Gardiner native after she took office in 2019. Before that, he was a hunting guide, charter boat captain and ran the Coastal Conservation Association of Maine and the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission.



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Opinion: Voter ID referendum is unnecessary, expensive, and harmful to Maine voters

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Opinion: Voter ID referendum is unnecessary, expensive, and harmful to Maine voters


The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com

Anna Kellar is the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maine.

This past November, my 98-year-old grandmother was determined that she wasn’t going to miss out on voting for president. She was worried that her ballot wouldn’t arrive in the mail in time. Fortunately, her daughter — my aunt — was able to pick up a ballot for her, bring it to her to fill out, and then return it to the municipal office.

Thousands of Maine people, including elderly and disabled people like my grandmother, rely on third-party ballot delivery to be able to vote. What they don’t know is that a referendum heading to voters this year wants to take away that ability and install other barriers to our constitutional right to vote.

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The “Voter ID for Maine” citizen’s initiative campaign delivered their signatures to the Secretary of State this week, solidifying the prospect of a November referendum. The League of Women Voters of Maine (LWVME) opposes this ballot initiative. We know it is a form of voter suppression.

The voter ID requirement proposed by this campaign would be one of the most restrictive anywhere in the county. It would require photo ID to vote and to vote absentee, and it would exclude a number of currently accepted IDs.

But that’s not all. The legislation behind the referendum is also an attack on absentee voting. It will repeal ongoing absentee voting, where a voter can sign up to have an absentee ballot mailed to them automatically for each election cycle, and it limits the use and number of absentee ballot dropboxes to the point where some towns may find it impractical to offer them. It makes it impossible for voters to request an absentee ballot over the phone. It prevents an authorized third party from delivering an absentee ballot, a service that many elderly and disabled Mainers rely on.

Absentee voting is safe and secure and a popular way to vote for many Mainers. We should be looking for ways to make it more convenient for Maine voters to cast their ballots, not putting obstacles in their way.

Make no mistake: This campaign is a broad attack on voting rights that, if implemented, would disenfranchise many Maine people. It’s disappointing to see Mainers try to impose these barriers on their fellow Mainers’ right to vote when this state is justly proud of its high voter participation rates. These restrictions can and will harm every type of voter, with senior and rural voters experiencing the worst of the disenfranchisement. It will be costly, too. Taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for a new system that is unnecessary, expensive, and harmful to Maine voters.

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All of the evidence suggests that voter IDs don’t prevent voter fraud. Maine has safeguards in place to prevent fraud, cyber attacks, and other kinds of foul play that would attempt to subvert our elections. This proposal is being imported to Maine from an out-of-state playbook (see the latest Ohio voter suppression law) that just doesn’t fit Maine. The “Voter ID for Maine” campaign will likely mislead Mainers into thinking that requiring an ID isn’t a big deal, but it will have immediate impacts on eligible voters. Unfortunately, that may be the whole point, and that’s what the proponents of this measure will likely refuse to admit.

This is not a well-intentioned nonpartisan effort. And we should call this campaign what it is: a broad attack on voting rights in order to suppress voters.

Maine has strong voting rights. We are a leader in the nation. Our small, rural, working-class state has one of the highest voter turnout rates in the country. That’s something to be proud of. We rank this high because of our secure elections, same-day voter registration, no-excuse absentee ballots, and no photo ID laws required to vote. Let’s keep it this way and oppose this voter suppression initiative.



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Maine Democratic Party leader won’t seek reelection

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Maine Democratic Party leader won’t seek reelection


Maine Democratic Party leader won’t seek reelection

Bev Uhlenhake Maine Democratic Party

The chair of the Maine Democratic Party announced Thursday she won’t seek reelection when members select leaders later this month.

Bev Uhlenhake, a former city councilor and mayor in Brewer and former chair of the Penobscot County Democrats, has served as chair of the state party since January 2023. She is also a previous vice chair of the party.

In a written statement, Uhlenhake noted some of the recent successes and challenges facing Democrats, including the reelection of Democratic majorities in both the Maine House and Senate last November, though by narrower margins, and winning three of Maine’s four electoral votes for Vice President Kamala Harris.

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“While we have laid a solid foundation from which Maine Democrats can build toward even greater success in 2026 and beyond, I have decided to step away from Maine Democratic Party leadership for personal and professional reasons, and will not seek reelection,” Uhlenhake said.

Party Vice Chair Julian Rogers, who was also elected to his post in 2023, announced he also won’t seek reelection to leadership, but will resume a previous role he held as vice chair of the party’s committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging.

Democratic State Committee members will vote for the party’s next leaders in elections to be held on Sunday, Jan. 26.

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