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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.