Like her veto of 2021’s L.D. 1708, a proposal to create a public electric utility; her support of the highly unpopular Central Maine Power corridor, and her veto of a bill to grant farmworkers the right to organize, Gov. Mills’ expected veto of the tribal sovereignty bill seems to be based on a belief that faced with a 2022 general election choice between her and former Gov. Paul LePage, progressives and liberals will have no choice but to vote for her.
But this could prove a fatal error.
As Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump amply demonstrates, the left does, in fact, have a choice: to stay home, or even to vote for LePage. Had Clinton won a total of 77,750 more votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, she would have won the election, and, according to National Public Radio, a total of about 216,332 voters in those three states who had voted for progressive Democrat Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primaries switched parties in the general election and voted for Trump.
The left has nowhere to go, Gov. Mills? Think again.
Lawrence Reichard
Belfast
Send questions/comments to the editors.
