Remember when Gov. LePage told Republican legislative candidates that he was planning to shake up their campaigns?
That was back in August when he was surreptitiously recorded in a Bangor brew pub, telling candidates and contributors about his secret plan to “push the envelope” and call the Legislature back into a special session before the election.
He couldn’t say what he had in mind, but it was going to be big. “And the Democrats, if you think they hate me now … wow!” he promised.
It’s less than a week before Election Day, and none of that ever materialized. Perhaps someone told the governor that if getting the Democrats to hate him was the goal, Game Over – you win!
More likely, he was convinced to go back to the strategy he used so successfully in 2010 when a series of gaffes and temper tantrums looked like they might cost him an election that was in his grasp. New staff came on board, and we started seeing and hearing a lot less of candidate Paul LePage.
He blew off debates, he stopped giving interviews and before you knew it, he climbed back to a commanding 38 percent in the polls and never looked back.
The less people saw of him, the more they liked him. The guy suffered from guilt through association with himself.
Still, we’ve been wondering what the governor has been up to this fall with the campaigns in full swing without him, so it was a great relief to hear last Saturday’s radio address.
It turns out, he’s been reading.
Presidential biographies are his favorite, he said, and he reported in his radio address that he’d spent the previous few nights reading a book about Abraham Lincoln.
Sorry, Emily Cain and Justin Alfond, it wasn’t Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” It was “Killing Lincoln” by Fox News loudmouth Bill O’Reilly. LePage told his listening audience that he has read many books on the Lincoln assassination, but assures us that O’Reilly’s is the best.
The radio address was not just a history lesson. The governor had a point to make about the current election in Maine. We have entered the “mean season,” LePage said, where negative ads and false charges are hurting the state and the nation.
“We have two basic political philosophies – liberal and conservative – but regardless of our views, we must learn to debate the issues with civility and integrity.”
I think I speak for most Mainers when I say … wow!
What happened to Gov. Kiss-my-butt?
I’m having trouble reconciling two images. One is of Gov. LePage sitting by a fireplace with an afghan on his knees, sipping a mug of cocoa while turning the pages of a thick book and ruminating on the need for civility in a functioning democracy. The other is the guy caught on tape in a brew pub promising candidates and donors to use a special session of the Legislature to “push the envelope” in this year’s campaign.
Is it just a coincidence that we are getting a glimpse of this new side of the governor in the last days of the campaign? Or have the Republican strategists decided, once again, to hide the bombastic Paul LePage who we’ve come to know while they try to hold on to their majorities in the House and Senate? It worked in 2010.
This might be why we see moderate icon Sen. Olympia Snowe and not LePage down at Falmouth Town Landing with Republican candidate Chris Tyll in Tyll’s state Senate TV ad. Of course, if Tyll wins his race against independent Dick Woodbury, LePage will be in the picture while Snowe enjoys her retirement in some place far from Augusta.
It will be Gov. LePage setting the agenda and – just guessing here – it won’t be kindly Uncle Paul reading him a bedtime story about respecting the other guy’s point of view.
According to the polls, LePage is just as popular as he ever was, which means he is very popular in some areas and very unpopular in others. So some Republican legislative candidates play up their cozy relationship with the occupant of the Blaine House, while others prefer to stress their independence.
But the governor’s early hibernation should not distract voters about what’s at stake for LePage in this election.
On Nov. 7, he will come out of his hole, and if he sees a Republican majority, there will be at least two more years of LePageism.
If not, maybe he will have more time to read.
Greg Kesich is the editorial page editor. He can be contacted at 791-6481 or at: gkesich@pressherald.com
Send questions/comments to the editors.
