Describe your local elections this fall

[Kevinstat]

I don’t know why I waited so long to post on this thread (I actually do know why – I’m lazy), but I actually will be voting in a non-referendum election this November (if not sooner, perhaps this Tuesday which is the one day of the week my town office is open past 4 p.m.).  There are five special elections for state Representative in Maine, one in my district, House District 83, where the Republican incumbent elected last November and the Democrat elected to replace her passed away less than five months apart.  There were contests in both party caucuses (Maine only has special election primaries for Governor and both houses of the U.S. Congress, where the last special election was for Governor in 1960) for placement on the ballot in the first special election in June, but both nominees were unopposed this time (I wonder why).  Part of the reason may be that the Democrat’s widow, apparently after being urged to do so by several people in the district, decided to run for the seat.

Only four Republicans showed up at the caucus to choose their nominee, compared to about 50 for the Democrats.  Republican cheerleaders at a conservative web site I frequent attributed that to the fact that the Republican caucus was outside the district at the Augusta Civic Center (I wish someone could have taken a photo of the four Republicans – the nominee was one of the four – from high in the bleachers – it’s a big enough place for High School Basketball tournaments to be held there) and the fact that a former Democratic representative (who was initially elected as a Republican and left the party after a turbulent first year in 2003 when he was the only Republican to vote for an anti-war resolution which almost passed; he had dissented from his party on other issues as well), who had sought the Democratic nod for the first special election, was rumored to be interested and that a lot of Democrats showed up to make sure their favored candidate won.  The Republican has had a lot of signs up and has had a truck with a big sign of his on a presumably unused extension of a driveway from Old Winthrop St. to Winthrop St. (U.S. Route 202, the most heavily travelled road in Manchester I’m sure) on most weekday afternoon, plus I’ve received a flyer of his while the Democrats just called us (my parents are registered Democrats and we pledged all three of our votes to the Democrat, so they probably felt no need to send us literature), but I think the Democratic widow will win with at least 60 percent of the vote).

Three of the other four state House seats up for election in Maine were held by a Republican (one resignation due to job pressure, one death, and one resignation after much pressure as the guy was living in Massachusetts doing ministry work and even had his children enrolled in school there), and one was held by a Democrat (who resigned allegedly due to work constraints but it was later revealed he had falsely reported almost $3,000 in campaign expenditures to keep the public money due to what he described after getting caught and returning the money as a “modest financial” situation).  The Democrat represented a seemingly safe Democratic seat in downtown Lewiston and the Democrats have allegedly nominated a conservative (the now scandal-tarred ex-Rep. was very liberal) so it’s unlikely the Republicans will win there even with the scandal to win although their nominee is campaigning hard and seemingly smart for that district, saying he will not cut any welfare benefits but focusing on abuse.  In two of the three “Republican” seats with special elections, I’ve heard on the conservative web site I referred to earlier that the Republicans are really well organized (in one of them) or that the Republican is running hard (in the other), but in the other won the Democrats are purportedly winning the sign war 5 to 1 (and perhaps more than that on private property).  Republicans haven’t won a special election for the Maine Legislature since the 1994 elections at least (and two of them were theirs, although one of them was a senate seat largely in Portland which arguably shouldn’t have gone Republican in the first place).  Two of the three “Republican” special election seats were held by Democrats as recently as 2002 (before the 2002 election) and the third was substantially redrawn in 2003 but most of the towns had been represented by a Democrat sometime since 1998, but I think Republicans won the overall state house vote in that district as it is now configured at least since 1994.  That’s the one which had been held by the absentee Representative (people had complained about his non-responsiveness – couldn’t they see it’s difficult to respond when you’re living in another state?), but House Republican leadership had put pressure on the Representative to resign (at least if his current residency status wasn’t going to change immediately) and was applauded in the papers for doing so.  That’s one of the districts where the local GOP apparently has their act together so they’ll probably hold that seat.  My current prediction is the Democrats pick up the seat where the Republican activist was nervous with the other seats being retained by the party which last held them.

Augusta, right next door to Manchester (which has its municipal elections in June), has a contest for an at-large council position, but I don’t know much about it and I’ve posted too much already.  I’ll let you know how the five specials turn out.  There’s a term limits extension referendum in Maine which will go down in flames unfortunately.

[Kevinstat]

Bump (I was kind of hoping to draw a comment or two, but perhaps my long post turned people off or perhaps people don't care enough about some minor elections in Maine to comment.  If so I understand.  I don't generally comment on the plethora of posts on NY, NJ and particularly PA elections, although Memphis, TN has perhaps replaced suburban Philly as the Atlas hub in the past year or so.)

[Kevinstat]

In Maine, the Democrats won the three seats I expected them to win, the Republicans won one of the others and are leading in the last one but with the Democrat's hometown yet to come in.  The term limits extension was defeated as expected.  It's down 66.95% to 33.05% with 83% of precincts reporting, according to the Bangor Daily News.  An Indian "racino" (non horse-race related gambling like slot machines at horse races) citizen initiative appears to have been narrowly defeated, which will likely lead to cries of racism as a similar but non-Indian racino citizen initiative was passed by the voters in 2003.  A larger Indian casino initiative was voted down handily that same year after initially leading in the polls.

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

I thought that the Maine House was already 90-59-2 after the Special election in June.

What probably got you confused is that although 88 Democrats, 61 Republicans and 2 Independents were eventually determined to have been elected to the Maine House in the November 7, 2006 General Election, one of the Republicans, an incumbent, had trailed on the election night count and although he led after the recount (and with the number of disputed votes not enough to affect the outcome), the Democrat refused to concede as the number of votes in that race was greater (by significantly more than the Republican's margin) than the number of voters from that district who had voted (the district consisted of part of the town of Standish a few towns to the west of Portland, and some voters in the smaller portion of Standish in the other House district may have been given ballots for the wrong district - that isn't unheard of in Maine, with several precincts, often one-precinct municipalities, being divided among state House districts, which is one of the reasons I think the size of the House should be reduced).

The Democrat eventually conceded, and the Republican incumbent was in office by the third business day or so of the Legislature in January, but not until after the December inaugaration session when that Democrat, and another Democrat whose Republican incumbent opponent eventually conceded (the number of ballots with that race on them in Presque Isle which is partly in that district was less than the number of voters who from that section of Presque Isle who had voted), were provisionally sworn in and seated (by virtue of having been the apparent winner from the election night count, according to state law).  So at the beginning of the Legislature there were 89 Democrats, 60 Republicans and 2 Unenrolled (Independent) provisional or non-provisional Representatives in the Maine House.  The tally was 88-61-2 from early January to GOP Rep. Abby Holman's death in early April, however, and Democrat Deane Jones's win in the special election to replace her brought the tally (back, in a sense) to 89-60-2.

[Kevinstat]

Republicans won the last of the five special elections for the Maine House of Representatives, but the Democrats still gained 1 (gross and net) additional seat.  The standing in the House will now be 90 Democrats, 59 Republicans and 2 Independents, with one of the Independents being pretty cozy with each of the two major parties.  The Democrats control the Maine Senate, 18-17.

Why is the split in the Maine Senate so tight compared to the House?

I need to be headed to bed (my last post took me longer than it should have), but see my post in the States where Republicans picked up legislature seats in 2006 thread from late July and early August.  In the House elections last year, the kind of factors that helped a Republican win my state Senate seat worked in reverse.  One incumbent House Republican in Augusta refused to meet with the editorial board of the local newspaper the Kennebec Journal, which had endorsed her leading opponent in 2005 in a city council election where she lost her seat, calling her anti-business.  Whatever her justification for not meeting the editors, it wasn't very tactful (the KJ heaped on her for that, and the Representative's mother wrote a letter to the editor basically attacking the KJ for picking on her daughter, who must have been in her 30s at least), and the Democrats ran a popular school committee member and won 61% to 39%.  In another state House district in Augusta, an open seat which had been held by a Republican from 1994 until 2002 and which the GOP targetted (with the wife of one of the higher-ups in the state party), a vocal social (and fiscal, but his focus was on social issues) conservative who handily lost the primary to the insider's wife failed to rally behind the winner, and the Democratic incumbent didn't withdraw until after the primaries and may have essentially tagged out (he had had his nose bloodied the year before in a city council race himself) and his replacement on the Democratic "ticket" (Maine got rid of the "big box" in the early '70s) may have actually benefitted his party's chances.  One Republican incumbent was sued by one of his constituents (a woman and her husband, actually, I believe), for statements he made about her in an op-ed or a letter to the editor in responce to a letter or op-ed of hers.  And a fair number of Republican candidates had to be replaced after the primary (many of those might have been placeholders), and while on a conservative web site I frequent some of the replacements were talked up but the results tell a different story.  Republicans have generally been more competitive at state Senate races (the Democrats didn't capture the Senate after the abborational 1964 Goldwater debacle until 1982, 8 years after they won the state House, and the Democrats elected a minority of Senators in 1994 (when Republicans won an 18-16-1 majority) and 2000 (when the Senate was 17-17-1 until the Democrats gained a seat in an early 2002 special election) while they have never done so in the house since 1974 (although they have dipped under half a few times due to partisan defections - never 76 Republicans though).  That may cause Republicans to put more effort in Senate races.  The smaller House districts may also help Democrats in that policy positions (Mainers aren't exactly happy with the high tax burden) can play second fiddle to a record of service in the community (although that shouldn't excuse Republicans for not fielding more candidates who are competative in that regard).

That's my take anyway.  I wasn't so brief here after all.