State Rep. Barbara Merrill is dropping out of the Democratic Party and going independent – making the House evenly divided among Republicans and Democrats – and setting her up for a likely run for governor in November.
“I’m not announcing for the Blaine House right now,” Merrill said Tuesday morning, but “I’m coming very close.”
Merrill joins a group of other disaffected House Democrats who left the party within the past year. Biddeford Rep. Joanne Twomey announced in November she was going Unenrolled and Rep. Tom Saviello of Wilton decided to leave the party in July.
With Merrill’s announcement that leaves the House with 73 Democrats, 73 Republicans, one Green and four Unenrolled, including Rep. Dick Woodbury of Yarmouth, the original Unenrolled in the 122nd Legislature.
Her decision prompted House Republicans to call on House Speaker John Richardson to convene a leadership meeting Wednesday to discuss new power-sharing arrangements. House Minority Leader Rep. David Bowles said the meeting should deal with equity in committee chairs, committee assignments and staffing levels in the House Democratic and Republican offices.
Richardson said he already had planned a meeting with Republican leadership and said he will talk with them and decide “what, if anything, needs to be done. I want to hear them out before making any decisions.”
He said he already runs the House in a bipartisan fashion and listed critical bipartisan votes from the last session, including the governor’s tax relief plan, the gay rights bill and a supplemental budget.
The speaker said he was not surprised by Merrill’s decision, and she now will have to answer to her constituents.
“She needs to account for her decision with her constituents. She ran as a Democrat. She was elected as a Democrat,” Richardson said.
“I regret her departure. I’m not surprised given her recent statements to the press,” Richardson said, but “It’s business as usual here and it’s time for us to concern ourselves about what we need to do for Maine people.”
Merrill of Appleton acknowledged that if she runs as an independent for governor that likely will take votes away from Gov. John Baldacci. But, she says, she isn’t a spoiler.
“I’m sure I would take votes away from Baldacci,” Merrill said, but that doesn’t necessarily help a Republican win because she believes she has a chance.
In a letter to her constituents, Merrill outlined her reasons for leaving the Democrats, saying she was “very uncomfortable in a party whose state leaders balanced one budget by selling off future revenues from liquor sales, then proposed selling off the lottery, then passed a budget that relied on borrowing almost half a billion dollars, much of which would have been paid back by our children.”
“Under the leadership of the current establishment in Augusta, the Democratic Party has been transformed from a democratic institution to an old boys club,” Merrill said, and leadership quashes debate on bills they don’t like.
Now that the House is evenly divided among the major parties, Merrill said it’s time for Speaker Richardson to share governance of the body.
“If the independents are independent and if the speaker is fair, I think that he will recognize and appreciate the need to govern equally,” Merrill said.
Merrill and Twomey, and to a lesser extent Saviello, all gave leadership trouble in the last session during budget votes, and the two women actually voted against the Democratic proposals. Merrill said her decision to leave the party should change the way budgets are passed this session and do away with proposals that just squeak by versus having both Democratic and Republican support.
“If anyone breathes the mention of a majority budget this time they really ought to have their heads examined,” said Merrill, who was still smarting because a bill she had sponsored to help force bipartisan budgets and the creation of a surplus fund was killed last session.
“They wouldn’t even take it off the table and put it up for a final vote,” she said. “That kind of stuff won’t happen” this session, she said.
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