No on the date moving

Yesterday I reported that the LePage administration was interested in having discussions about the possibility of moving the March 15th primary filing deadline, to accomodate the political fallout from the sudden and unexpected retirement of Senator Olympia Snowe.

I am told that those talks are now dead.  Speaker Nutting is on record opposing such a move, and the legislature as a whole is apparently uninterested in moving on the proposal, with one very high ranking Republican characterizing it to me thusly:

…it doesn’t seem fair to me.  I am told that a similar situation occurred when George Mitchell and Bill Cohen dropped out late.  Just because we are in the eighth inning and don’t have enough players on the bench to suit some, doesn’t mean that we extend the game by a couple of innings.

So it looks like the scramble for March 15th continues.

Matthew Gagnon

About Matthew Gagnon

Matthew Gagnon, of Yarmouth, is the Chief Executive Officer of the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a free market policy think tank based in Portland. Prior to Maine Heritage, he served as a senior strategist for the Republican Governors Association in Washington, D.C. Originally from Hampden, he has been involved with Maine politics for more than a decade.