In the past week or two, the state of the race has become a little bit more clear. The muddled field is still muddled, and there are still a dozen different potential outcomes today, but at least now we seem to have learned a few things. In short, we at least know what to expect.
Of course, in this volatile year of politics across the country, sometimes you have to expect the unexpected, so what you read below could very well be wrong. But at this point it is my best evaluation of the state of the race right now. It should also be noted that with only 70-80,000 votes in each of the primaries (approximately), the potential for wildly unexpected results occurring does go up, because what it would take to pull of something crazy is much lower than usual, especially in the Republican field.
All that hedging aside, I’ve been talking to campaigns a lot in the past few days. For those of you unaware, I am on vacation right now and am actually on the ground here in Maine. What I’m hearing from journalists, activists, campaigns and candidates is all pointing to the same set of eventualities, so I feel pretty confident I have “conventional wisdom” pegged.
It goes a little something like this.
Republicans
More than one campaign has done some internal polling here at the end of the race, and I have heard something from many of them that I think most of you probably either won’t believe, or will find incredible: they believe Peter Mills is going to win this race.
The internals have been showing for a couple months now that Mills was much stronger than most observers initially thought he would be. He has been consistently running in the top three all along, but in the beginning most simply thought that was a factor of him having run before, having good name ID, and having thousands of people who had already voted for him once.
However, as the race has played out and some of the candidates began to sort into the top, middle, and lower tiers of support, Mills continued to stay up top. After Les Otten spent $2.5 million dollars of his own money, Mills continued to be in second place, and in more than one internal poll, actually pulled ahead of Otten. A recent internal from one of the middle of the pack candidates showed Mills surging in support, while Otten remained stagnant and the other candidates tried to play catch up.
Les Otten doesn’t intend to go quietly into the night. No one who sunk that much of his own money into the race is going to end up uncompetitive, and almost every single poll – public or internal – has shown him either leading or in a very close second. His support is very soft, however, with a big chunk of “leaners” who might ditch him at the last minute, so just how strong that “lead” is remains a question. But hey, if his dad can single handedly defeat Hitler (wtf), why can’t Leslie win the nomination?
Steve Abbott has been making a very, very aggressive late push. His team is optimistic, but cautious. The consolidation of, well, pretty much the entire establishment machine in the state around Abbott did not initially provide him with a big boost. Until recently, he has been a somewhat distant third or fourth in all polling conducted, struggling to break into that double digit territory. However, the endorsement and support from both the Chamber of Commerce and Maine Today Media has significantly raised his profile much higher than he could have done on his own, his ground team is probably the best in the race, they do in fact have a lot of organic support, and he has been endorsed by about a million people. All of this means that he is going to be in the running today, no matter what.
Paul LePage remains the wild card. I just don’t see his path, but with the strength of the only real enthusiastic and devoted base of die hards lifting you up, anything remains possible. His success or failure will largely be theirs – that is, if the “movement” that we have seen breathe life into the campaigns of Doug Hoffman in New York and Dr. Rand Paul in Kentucky is strong enough in Maine, there does remain a possibility that he could surprise me and pull out a win. I don’t think it is strong enough in Maine.
Bruce Poliquin’s people know he is going to lose. While “anything can happen”, the writing is apparently on the wall that the candidate just “never took off” among the electorate (can’t say I didn’t see this coming like six months ago), and will likely be fighting for third or fourth place in this election. They decided at some point to not bother competing with Otten on spending and rather sink all of their money, time and effort into GOTV efforts. The problem is, without the backup of raising name ID and winning the message war, there is nobody to “get out” to the polls on your behalf. The candidate just never was able to rally.
Matt Jacobson and Bill Beardsley are clinging to hope, but their chances remain very low. Jacobson could – and I believe probably should – have been a significant threat for the nomination, but the unique nature of this seven way race, and specifically the “drowning out” effect of so many candidates and so much money being spent meant that the shoe-string budget had a much thicker wall to penetrate to get noticed. He has been pinning most of his hopes on turning out veterans and capturing enough support in the rest of the field to sneak in and shock the world. I do have to admit, if somehow it happened it would be quite a site to see.
The verdict? In the end, the signs are pointing to an Otten-Mills death match, with an outisde shot of an Abbott win. If it is between Otten and Mills, as many of the polls suggest, then I have to predict that Mills will have an advantage, given his (in my mind) superior GOTV operation, experience in elections, and loyalty among potential voters. He has had nearly 30,000 people vote for him once four years ago – and that counts for something here.
The real test will be if Abbott has identified enough voters and is able to turn them out to compete with Otten and Mills. If so, this becomes a three way GOTV death match.
And of course, if the base LePage voters is more numerous and stronger than I believe them to be – watch out.
But for me, I think it is Otten or Mills, and count me firmly in the Mills camp if that is the case.
Final prediction:
- Peter Mills
- Les Otten
- Steve Abbott
- Bruce Poliquin
- Paul LePage
- Matt Jacobson
- Bill Beardsley
Democrats
This one is much more difficult for me, because obviously I don’t have the inside track to Democrats’ internal polling or any of the really juicy, informative stuff that could help me make a better call here. No, for this I have nothing more than my gut and personal observations about the race.
First of all, I don’t mind being a little more open about my feelings about these candidates. Having a preference here is unimportant to my political analysis since I deal mostly with Republicans, and talking openly about my choices there would be a bad idea. But in any event, I remain conflicted about who I want to see win the Democratic nomination.
Part of me wants Libby Mitchell, even though I personally believe she would be the most destructively bad Governor among the Democratic field. She is easily the most beatable Democrat in the race. In fact, almost every single leading Republican campaign in this race has been salivating at the chance to run against Libby. She is everything that is wrong with politics, both nationally and in Maine. She is a career politician – literally running to complete a public service trifecta – in a year where “career politician” sounds an awful lot like “hardened criminal” to the electorate. One campaign told me that they believe there is no way she could win, and that she would in fact come in third. They want her as their opponent. Bad.
Part of me wants Pat McGowan to win, because I actually like the guy. This part of my psyche says, “well, gee, if Doomsday happens and a Democrat has to win the Blaine House again, I want the one who will be the best Governor out of the four to be the guy”. This is the part of me that is deathly afraid of what would happen if the GOP got what it wanted and ran against Mitchell, and then something went wrong and she won. This part of me wants to build in a buffer so that if the Republicans do lose this year, they at least lose to a sensible human being who cares about the whole state, is sensitive to the lifestyle of rural Mainers in the 2nd district, and has some knowledge of the plight of small business.
A good part of me used to say those things about Rosa Scarcelli - but that ship has long since sailed. She is – to me – not ready for prime time, and whatever chance of my having an interest in her died a quick and painful dead the moment I saw “Ayuh, we can”. That is the single most offensively pathetic attempt at pandering I have seen in a very long time, and it was done by the absolute wrong messenger. I’m sorry, but I’ve heard Rosa talk, and spoken with her on the phone – not one ounce of me believes she could pronounce “ayuh” in any way that wouldn’t sound phony. As a candidate and a campaign, you have to be who you are, and playing to the gritty salt of the earth “ayuh” speaking voters in that Democratic primary is simply not who that woman appeals to. Trying to appeal to them in such a transparently condescending and lame way made me lose my lunch.
And then there is Steve Rowe, the most boring candidate in the entire race on either side of the isle. I am so indifferent to him that I can’t figure out if I want him to win, or don’t want him to win this primary election.
But, you don’t care what I think of these people, do you? You want to know what I think will happen.
Well I’ll make this one quick and painless.
Rosa Scarcelli is out. She didn’t have the late money to really rally around, she never really took off, the public polling we have seen has put her in fourth and there aren’t any signs of a surge. Oh yeah, and then there is the whole “ayuh we can” thing. If she didn’t lose votes from that thing, I’ve lost my faith in people.
Steve Rowe is probably out. He too had no late money, his last ad buy was offensively small, and there is no real energy on the ground for him. Oh, I know he had quite an impressive cadre of supporters at his party convention – but let’s be honest here, that isn’t hard to do. I’ve never been particularly impressed with his campaign organization, and I most certainly have not been impressed by the candidate himself. I just don’t see it.
Which means it likely comes down to a battle between the two publicly funded candidates who had the late money: Libby Mitchell and Pat McGowan. Mitchell has had the better poll numbers, the better name ID and has essentially been the front runner this entire campaign. McGowan has never shown a surge at any point that I can see, but has a great campaign, a hard working and likable candidate, and of course mad cash for the late push.
My instincts tell me that Mitchell will pull it out, but again, that is based on nothing more than anecdotal observations and a gut feeling.
Final prediction:
- Libby Mitchell
- Pat McGowan
- Steve Rowe
- Rosa Scarcelli
Now watch, we will be looking at a Bill Beardsley vs. Rosa Scarcelli general election. Just you wait.
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