Peter Mills Officially Running For Governor

We all knew this was coming – Peter Mills is running for Governor of Maine once more.  Despite speculation that Mills would go the independent route, the state Senator from Cornville filed his paperwork today to run in the GOP primary.  As our friends at Augusta Insider correctly note, Maine has a one and done rule for elections, meaning that if he loses the GOP primary, he can not then simply run as an Independent. 

Inside baseball:  Pennsylvania also has a rule like this, which is what ultimately drove Senator Arlen Specter to change party registration, rather than face off with Pat Toomey in a GOP primary there.  He could not have then run as an Independent, and Specter really wants to stay in the cool kids club.

This means that Mills’ recent flirtations with the left were not setting him up for an independent run (something this writer personally thinks would have been a genius move on his part), but instead designed to appeal to the moderate/liberal wing of the Maine GOP.

Mills can correctly claim that the Maine Republican Party shot itself in the foot by nominating Chandler Woodcock in 2006.  Baldacci was extremely unpopular, and Mills (who has been described as a fiscal conservative and social moderate) would have likely coasted to the Blaine House were he to have been nominated, while Woodcock was a rock ribbed social conservative in a state that doesn’t particularly get too excited about social issues like many of our friends from the south.

In essence, he could have won, could have denied Baldacci a second term, and could have put some Republican fiscal sense into Augusta.

However, this is 2009, not 2006 and a few things have changed.  His courting of the left has shattered the faith many Republicans have in him, as he has broken with the party on a few issues that many within the GOP see as litmus tests for membership in the party:

• He voted for gay marriage
• He supported the tax reform bill
• He is cozying up to the left on healthcare reform, while hanging out with the SEIU and Moveon

Mills’ greatest argument was that he was a socially tolerant, fiscally conservative candidate.  I have long argued that this is exactly where Maine voters are ideologically – they don’t really want the government pushing social policy, and they really want some fiscal relief and sound management – and he could have filled that quite easily.

But with tax reform and now healthcare reform, Mills is blowing a hole in the idea that he is a fiscal conservative.  Many Maine Republicans are left wondering if he is center-left on social issues, and now appears to be center-left on fiscal issues as well, why should he deserve the support of the grassroots?

Only time will tell, and we shall see if he can deftly spin his recent breaks with the fiscal conservatives in his favor to convince the primary crowd to vote for him.  But he had better do something, as it appears there are several other candidates who mean business in the GOP field this year, none of which come with the social conservative baggage that Woodcock carried with him.

But still, at this point he is clearly the most well known (at least politically) figure in the Republican primary, he can clearly win statewide, and a lot of Republicans are sick of losing.  That makes a strong argument.