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

Tea Party activists install new platform

By Ethan Wilensky-Lanford ewlanford@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

PORTLAND — In a move that seemed to surprise many established members of Maine's Republican party, a group of Tea Party-style activists redefined the party platform at the convention Saturday.

After the vote, in which a vocal majority supported a wholesale replacement of language worked on by the party establishment since at least January, a string of delegates congratulated Horatio "Ted" Cowan III, a retired marine electrician from Rockland who wrote the adopted amendment.

"This is the first Republican organization to get realigned back to constitutional conservative values," said Blaine Richardson, who said he could trace his roots in Maine back to 1634. "To me, as Maine goes, so goes the rest of the nation. With the national Tea Party movement, more states will follow Maine's lead."

Rep. Stacey Fitts, an incumbent Republican from Pittsfield, made a failed motion to stop the reading of the amendment because, he said, a debate on the platform would take time away from the gubernatorial candidates.

The crowd booed his motion.

He said in an interview he liked the idea of people becoming more engaged, but was frustrated by some basic misunderstandings that people about how government works.

"I guess I'm part of the establishment that they hate," he said, adding that as a member of the most recent Legislature anti-government attitudes have rubbed off on him. "To attack the Republican establishment as if we were somehow complicit with what has happened in Washington is, I think, misdirected.

"It would be really good if people had a better understanding of history, and the foundation that makes both U.S. and state government what it is. There's a certain beauty to our system, but it is inefficient."

One delegate from Portland, Bob Hains, uttered the words "political suicide" while the amendment was being voted on.

"I believe that there are provisions in there that will scare off many independents who you need to win elections," he said after the vote. "It will make it very difficult for the majority of Republicans to win."

The movement to introduce the fundamentalist platform, which now officially states the party's priority as pledging allegiance "not to a political party, but to the Constitution of the State of Maine and the Constitution of the United States of America," began about 18 months ago when Cowan and other members of the Knox County Republican Committee began drafting a version of the platform.

"I've been a lifelong Republican," Cowan said. "And I've been very unhappy with the progressive elements within the Republican Party. I agree with the Tea Party sentiment of returning to constitutional government."

He said that Steven Dyer, vice chairman of the county group, brought a draft of the platform to a subcommittee of the State Republican Committee charged with drafting an official version of the platform for convention review. They were rebuffed, Cowan and Dyer said. Senate Minority Leader Kevin Raye, R-Perry, who was at the same January meeting, said that he did not remember the amendment being brought and only heard about it at the convention.

Many delegates, lawmakers, and at least one gubernatorial candidate said they had not read the amendment before it appeared on screen and was voted on, although Cowan said that he provided convention organizers with a copy of the amendment, as required, Friday morning.

Sen. David Trahan, R-Waldoboro, said that he had heard that a campaign was in the works, but did not know how far it had come.

Cowan and many of his fellow organizers support Paul LePage for governor, although said that the candidate had nothing to do with their efforts to redefine the party.

Sen. Peter Mills, R-Cornville, and a gubernatorial candidate, called the effort "bizarre," and said that he doubted as many delegates would have supported the amendment if they fully understood its implications.

"This platform here can be used to defeat Republicans in the general election," he said. "The convention this year attracted a number of people I think who had not been to a convention before and came to highjack the platform."

Ethan Wilensky-Lanford -- 620-7016

ewlanford@mainetoday.com