Maine Squeeze - Granite Grok

Maine Squeeze

Maine by degrees of Republican-ness

Maine has something of a bi-polar disorder.  They have purple US Republican senators, democrat congressman (still) and just elected a tea party-ish backed governor while handing their entire state legislature over to Republican control for the first time in about 30 years.

Why do that?

For all the why’s and what-fors that can be imagined, at the end of the day it is hard to ignore the pressure from on high.  Two years of high-profile democrat campaigning to advance what turned out to be a very unpopular progressive-national agenda, was felt most strongly in the places where voters felt they have the most control–local state house and state senate races.  It’s been true all across the country.

Moderate to democrat Maine, it seems is no different.  In a state that has let the left dominate state government for decades, Republicans successfully sold the need to be more state-centric and that resonated locally, perhaps to fend off the nationalization of local government from massive federal overreach.


So can we say that Mainers don’t so much dislike democrats as they might want someone standing between them and the Obama administration?  A Republican state government will do that.  At the same time they kept to much of their more center-left tendencies in other races.

They elected plenty of democrats to non-legislative positions in state and county government, and both congressional seats stayed blue.  The GOP wins overall are slim wins, and perhaps more a product of turn out in rural areas (where the bitter clingers live) which if lost in upcoming years could put them back in the minority. 

So Maine is not going Republican so much as going less democrat, for now. 

But the GOP took over when it mattered.

In the next two years they have an opportunity to make a difference and impress upon the people the need to defend the sovereign interests of the state over an intrusive national agenda.  Whether they have the strength to do so–I have no idea just how Republican these Maine Republican’s are–we’ll have to wait and see.  For now, however,  State government is in the hands of the GOP with a Republican governor, and their agenda is smaller government and control of spending.  If they can do it, perhaps 2012 will bode equally well for them, but I’m not holding my breath. Not yet.

 

Note: Red counties in the map above went to the Republican candidate for governor, shading demotes depth of victory. Green went to the independent candidate.  The democrat governor won no counties but only lost the race for Governor by about 9000 votes or less than 2%.

Map courtesy of the NYT

 

 





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