Maine news, sports, weather | Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine

GOVERNOR'S RACE

Fall election may be an 'aggressive' three-way race

BY MATT WICKENHEISER

BY MATT WICKENHEISER

Portland Press Herald

Eliot Cutler, Paul LePage, Libby Mitchell, Shawn Moody and Kevin Scott -- if those names aren't familiar yet, they will be by November.

Those five are the gubernatorial candidates who will be on the Nov. 2 ballot. After more than a year of campaigning, the field of 11 party candidates was narrowed Tuesday to two: Republican LePage and Democrat Mitchell.

Cutler, Moody and Scott are independent candidates who have qualified for the ballot by collecting at least 4,000 voters' signatures.

Exactly how the next five months will play out was a matter of speculation on Wednesday, the day after primaries that surprised many.

Despite pre-election analyses showing no clear front-runner in either primary, LePage got 38 percent of the Republican vote in a seven-way race. His closest contender, Les Otten, got just 17 percent.

LePage handily won every county except Oxford and Hancock.

In the Democratic race, Mitchell got 35 percent of the vote, with Steve Rowe next at 23 percent. She won every county but Somerset.

Observers said Wednesday that the primary results may create an interesting three-way race involving Cutler, Mitchell and LePage.

"The two parties have nominated the most liberal Democrat and the most conservative Republican," said Sandy Maisel, a political scientist at Colby College. "To me, that leaves a great gap in the center."

Michael Franz, a professor of government at Bowdoin College, said he foresees a "pretty aggressive" three-way race.

"With Libby on the left, LePage on the right, Cutler has a chance to capture the center," he said.

Cutler, who was an aide to Sen. Edmund Muskie and a Carter administration official, has worked on presidential campaigns and worked as an environmental and land use attorney for 30 years. He has aired TV ads as part of an active campaign, and is widely seen as a strong contender.

Moody and Scott are less known.

Moody owns Moody's Collision Services in southern Maine, and ran a stealth campaign until Wednesday, when he held a press conference announcing his candidacy -- his first foray into politics. He also launched TV ads Wednesday, spending some of the $500,000 he has loaned to his campaign.

Scott is running as a "citizen governor." He has driven around the state campaigning. He runs a business that fills professional staffing needs for high-tech firms. He has been an elected member of his town's water district and was appointed to a three-year term on its planning board. He has also been elected moderator for two town meetings.

Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine, said LePage and Mitchell will be looking at adjustments -- if any -- they must make to their campaigns as they move from primaries to the general election.

Over the next few weeks, they will likely work to draw in supporters from their primary opponents, he said.

Maisel said that might be easier for Mitchell than for LePage. In the Democratic primary, the four contenders were more ideologically similar than the seven Republicans.

Maisel said he thinks Mitchell could move a bit to the center, to appeal to the broader voter base. He said he isn't sure that LePage will shift from the right.

Jesse Connolly, former chief of staff for Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree and Gov. John Baldacci's 2006 campaign manager, said Mitchell has an advantage as potentially the first female governor of Maine.

"You're going to have a lot of women across the state of different party ideologies that really want to see this glass ceiling break," said Connolly. "Libby's going to have a strong women's presence throughout the state."

Chris Jackson, a lobbyist for the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, ran Republican Chandler Woodcock's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. He said he will watch to see how the candidates break out of the gate in the next month.

The party candidates, in particular, can leverage their victories and name recognition to get free media -- stories about them on TV and radio and in newspapers, Jackson said.

Successful candidates will be those who strongly define themselves - before an opponent defines them, he said. And candidates will have to maintain support from their base while trying to appeal more to moderates and independents.

If the race is particularly competitive, he said, he won't be surprised to see third parties make campaign expenditures.

There's plenty of time before the Nov. 2 election, said Jackson, and anything can happen.

"Five months is such a long time -- in politics it's an eternity," he said.