Dean Scontras, who lost the CD1 Republican primary to Charlie Summers earlier this year, has a new project. He and some other Republicans from southern Maine have created a political organization called The Republican Project which they hope will help to create "a statewide, conservative grassroots movement that is at least as effective as the movement of those on the left".
The nascent group has a website and a blog where Scontras explains how they hope to compete with the Democrats in the use of "texting, twitter, Facebook and other expanding technologies."
Rather than focusing on the future, however, the group seems to be stuck in the past. The front page of the site features attacks on ACORN for their work during the last election (the group doesn't even exist in Maine) and an article they link to and call a "good analysis of what GOP members need to do in order to counter the efforts of the Democratic opposition" contains rants against the Clinton administration and accuses the CIA of committing "treason" against George W. Bush.
Dennis Bailey settles some scores on his blog today, criticizing the methods and results of the Critical Insights research firm, which worked with the pro-casino side on Question 2. He also faults the press for failing to question the firm's results.
Critical Insights fared poorly in my recent ranking of Maine pollsters, coming in last place of all the independent polls taken in Maine in the month before the election.
The domain was registered yesterday and the owners of the blog appear to be two conservative UMaine grads who ran unsuccessfully for local office and who now live in Maryland and North Carolina.
The only content so far seems to have been borrowed from PolitickerME.
The Lewiston Sun Journal has finally gotten to the bottom of the mysterious campaign signs that popped up in Lewiston over the past few weeks.
The signs, which were just rectangles of slightly differing tartan patterns with no identifying information, were apparently the work of Corey Troup, a Republican candidate who was proud of his Scottish ancestry. Troup lost to Margaret Craven by a 50-point margin.
Sun Journal editor Anthony Ronzio provided some analysis of the effort:
[...]campaign signs are to, you know, campaign. Or, at least, get your name out there. Troup's mysterious tartans - though maybe a clever inside joke - were a failure on both fronts.
Then again, so were most Republican strategies in this election. Scott Lansley, head of the Androscoggin County Republican Committee, described the results as "getting our asses kicked."
The whimsical stupidity of this effort aside, it presents an interesting case of the reach of Maine political advertising laws. Most campaign communications must carry a statement identifying the group or individual responsible for their creation and distribution. I guess Troup was able to get away with not identifying his handiwork because the mysterious signs did not "clearly identify" a candidate.
The AP reports that the recount in the District 15 state senate race has ended with Democrat Deborah Simpson up by 104 votes, two votes more than her margin on election day.
WAGM takes a look at the new legislator orientation process and interviews Tyler Clark, the newly-elected representative for District 6 in Aroostook county.
Clark, a recent UMPI graduate and Wal-Mart manager, served as Secretary of the Maine College Republicans. He won his race against Democrat Kyle Green (who replaced Echo Kaply-Smith, who withdrew after winning the primary) to capture the open seat previously held by Democrat Jacqueline Lundeen.
Equality Maine had been preparing for election day for months, and had hoped to sign-up 10,000 supporters for a legislative push for same-sex marriage rights in Maine. They greatly exceeded their goals, and gathered more than 33,000 signatures.
Now same-sex marriage advocates have created a coalition of local religious leaders who are speaking out on the issue.
All this points to this issue being advanced in Maine through legislation and public advocacy rather than through court rulings, which have been the catalysts for equal marriage rights in other states.
The Democratic Party sent an email release yesterday about party and campaign workers heading to Georgia to help with the run-off election and to Minnesota to assist the Al Franken campaign, which is locked in a tight recount with incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. These two contests, along with the recount in Alaska, will decide the final partisan make-up of the US Senate and could give Democrats a 59 or (less likely) 60-seat majority.
Knutson said there was further evidence this week of the caliber of staff that Chandler recruited. Approximately a 10 members of his staff, including field director Mark Henson, were tapped by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) to help with the Minnesota recount between Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) and Democratic challenger Al Franken. The crew left Wednesday on the 24-hour drive to Minneapolis-St. Paul.
In addition, the party's IT Director, Reid DeWolfe, joined two Tom Allen for Senate staffers in Georgia, where they will hold leadership positions in the Georgia Senatorial run-off election between Republican incumbent Saxby Chambliss and Democratic challenger Jim Martin. Georgia law calls for a run-off when no candidate earns a 50 percent majority.
"The fact these staffers were tapped to work on the run-off and recount campaigns that are so important to determining the leadership that President Obama will have in the Senate speaks volumes about the talent on Tom Allen's campaign and at the Maine Democratic Party," Knutson said.
In this week's Twin City Times, Auburn city manager Glenn Aho recommends, based on his interpretation of the city charter, that newly elected District 70 state representative Bruce Bickford resign from his position as an Auburn city councilor. The article did not state whether Bickford agreed with this interpretation.
I got an email from Bickford today in response to my question on the subject:
I am aware that the city charter as approved by the voters in 2005 and effective July 2006 states in section 2.9 "except where authorized by law. no Councilor shall hold any other elected public office during the term for which the Councilor was elected." I checked with the state and there is no law prohibiting this and there is also no law specifically stating that it is okay. I have asked for an interpretation for the city Manager and our legal advisors. The basic interpretation is that this was put in the charter for the specific purpose of keeping the Council focus on local issues. I will tender my resignation to the City council on Monday evening Nov. 17th to be effective on Dec. 3 at which time I will be sworn in as a State Representative for District 70 which includes a portion of Auburn and Lewiston. I intend to follow the Council's interpretation and recommendation on Monday evening.
Bickford was one of only two Republicans to win a seat where the Democrat was favored in the PolitickerME rankings. His resignation will lead to a special election in Ward 4.
The Attorney General selection process is getting a bit more attention than normal this year. Three strong candidates are running for the Democratic nomination, and the Maine League of Women Voters and the AARP recently held a debate between the contenders.
For more on the candidates' backgrounds and plans, check out these audio interviews:
The Portland Press Herald has been sold to Maine Media Investments, a company owned by U.S. Sen. Bill Cohen, Robert Baldacci and Michael Liberty, according to the Busby-Diamon tag team.
Update: A "purchase agreement" has been signed, but the deal is not yet final, according to today's PPH article.
Congratulations to Dan B. for doing the best job of predicting the statewide and congressional races, with JonB close behind. Anonymous wisely decided not to provide any identifying information to avoid the public ridicule of coming in last.
Lastly, we have the state house and senate races:
Several people came close on these predictions, and it was only the lack of a Green Independent victory in the house that kept KF from a perfect score. It's not the first time the Greens have messed things up.
The whole field predicted this one losing, though most by a smaller margin. The only thing left to do on this one is argue about whether it was passed due to a hatred of taxes or the millions of dollars spent by out-of-state corporate interests.
Question 2, the casino referendum, was supposed to be the closest race on the ballot, but the final result was much more decisive. The collective wisdom of the betting pool average called this race almost exactly.
The results of the Question 3 bond issue were a big surprise for me and for most of the rest of the field, who predicted it passing by a much wider margin. JonB and Dan B. did a great job of reading this one and made up a lot of ground on the rest of us.
Dean Scontras, who lost the CD1 Republican primary to Charlie Summers earlier this year, has a new project. He and some other Republicans from southern Maine have created a political organization called The Republican Project which they hope will help to create "a statewide, conservative grassroots movement that is at least as effective as the movement of those on the left".
