Rooks: Mills and LePage off to the races for Maine governor. Who has the edge in 2022?

It’s Labor Day weekend, the traditional start to the fall campaigns, and New Hampshire Republicans don’t even know who their candidate will be to take on incumbent Senate Democrat Maggie Hassan, running her first re-election campaign.

That’s because New Hampshire votes on the last primary date, disadvantaging those not already in office. It does appear Don Bolduc, retired Army general, leads Chuck Morse, state Senate president, which could be problematic.

Morse is relatively moderate, while Bolduc is all-in for Donald Trump, still claiming he won the 2020 election that, by now, everyone should know he lost. Another “vulnerable” Senate incumbent may eke out a win, after all.

Maine Republicans have no such doubts. They’ve known Paul LePage would be their candidate for governor ever since he returned from an 18-month residency in Florida in July 2020.

Incumbent Democrat Janet Mills formally announced her re-election bid in March, though it was a certainty long before that.

So we have the first matchup of a former and an incumbent governor since Joe Brennan and John McKernan faced off in 1990, with McKernan the winner; independent Sam Hunkler is also in the race. The last time an incumbent governor lost a re-election bid was when Ken Curtis defeated John Reed in 1966.

One notable difference between 1966 and 2022 was that then, the average age of the candidates was 40. This time, both Mills and LePage will be 74 on Election Day.

One presumes this is the last time baby boomers will dominate the ticket; millennials, already the ages of Curtis and Reed, have been waiting a long time for a chance.

Other aspects of the campaign seem familiar, if not necessarily reassuring.

LePage, in his two terms, was known for attempting to slash government spending at every turn, and cutting income taxes by any means possible.

After vetoing expanded Medicaid seven times, though, LePage now accepts it; it was swiftly installed by Mills and a Democratic Legislature in 2019. As for his signature tax issue, it’s showing signs of age.

Ever since Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback actually went ahead with a 25% state income tax cut in 2012-13, and revenues plunged, it’s been problematic. A Republican Legislature restored the cuts over Brownback’s vetoes in 2017, and Kansas voters elected a Democratic governor the following year.

It appears huge tax cuts are still possible at the federal level — the 2017 Trump cuts are now estimated to be producing $2 trillion in deficits annually — but states, unlike the federal government, cannot print money and have to balance their budgets every year.

Mills has her own liabilities, but no albatrosses when it comes to policy. Her campaign, now in high gear, features daily visits to far-flung parts of Maine, and often she’s able to announce major new grants — thanks to American Rescue Plan funding that’s President Joe Biden’s gift to incumbent governors.

Where LePage may have an edge is his legendary ability to engage voters, despite his aggressive, even bullying ways. After pronouncing mostly on talk radio for months, he’s out on the trail in relatively spontaneous, though carefully screened, gatherings.

No one would ever accuse Mills of excessive spontaneity. She gives few interviews, no press conferences, and has rarely appeared comfortable speaking in settings she doesn’t control.

Still, that’s not enough reason to throw out a sitting governor and bring back the previous one. Brennan arguably had a better grasp on the state budget, and his own party, than McKernan, who had a horrendous second term after Maine’s economy plunged into a major recession.

It’s hard to argue that LePage, who decimated public health funding for years before the coronavirus pandemic — and is notably unspecific about new areas to cut — has such qualifications.

Brennan led the polls up to Election Day and McKernan reportedly went to bed on election night thinking he’d lost, but in the morning found he was still governor.

True, the polls have been inaccurate before; LePage has always cast himself as an underdog, and may have been one in his 2014 re-election campaign against Congressman Mike Michaud.

This one has a different feel, though. Whatever discontent exists among young Democrats and independents about Mills’s unbending positions on issues like criminal justice reform and tribal rights, they’re unlikely to desert her, knowing what it was like through eight years of LePage.

What debates there will be — few, certainly — may move a few votes one way or the other, but are unlikely to change the outcome.

Yet time hastens on. Almost the moment the current campaign is over, candidates will be presenting their bonafides for the 2026 race — and, for once, they may have good reason.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books, and is now researching the life and career of a U.S. Chief Justice. He welcomes comment at [email protected]

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Rooks: Mills and LePage face off in Maine 2022 governor election