November’s defeat of Portland Green Independent Party state Rep. John Eder would seem to signal the weakness of the third-party movement in Maine’s largest city.
Having become the state’s first Green lawmaker in 2002, then having defended his redrawn West End legislative district against a well-regarded Democrat in ’04, Eder seemed a safe bet this year, even against a Donkey Party candidate, Jon Hinck, with a strong background in environmental issues and progressive ideals that nearly matched his own.
But Hinck, a first-time candidate, managed to eek out victory by about 100 votes, knocking off the Greens’ highest elected official and seemingly signaling an end to Portland’s love affair with this third party. Was it just a fling?
A closer look at election results shows this movement to be anything but a passing fancy. Though Eder lost a close one, the Greens made a close race out of the state House seat across town, where “Zen” Ben Meiklejohn came within a few hundred votes of denying Democrat Anne Rand a return trip to Augusta.
Even getting close to Rand’s total is no small feat, given that she’s previously served eight state Legislative terms (four each in the House and Senate) in Portland’s East End without breaking much of a sweat. But that was back when Portland was solid Democratic territory. Republicans could pick up an elected office here and there, but never, even to this day, could they give a progressive Democrat in Portland a real run for their money.
Enter the Greens. In 2001, after several failed attempts to get on the Portland School Committee, Meiklejohn paved the way for Eder by winning a citywide race for a school board seat – the Greens’ first municipal election victory, albeit in an officially non-partisan election. Meiklejohn won again citywide in ’04, and soon his party was close to attaining a majority on the school board, holding four of the nine seats going into this November’s electoral contest.
That majority proved elusive this year, as one registered Green, incumbent West Ender Stephen Spring, narrowly lost his seat, but another, Rebecca Minnick, won across town. Though geography and a deepening political divide between mainland Portland and Peaks Island helped Minnick, of Munjoy Hill, beat islander Mavourneen Thompson, considering Thompson’s extensive experience in education, state law and educational policy, this first-time candidate’s win is impressive.
It pales, however, before the gains Greens made on the Portland City Council. A registered Green had never served on the nine-member, non-partisan municipal body before. Now there will be two – Dave Marshall, representing the west side of the peninsula, and Kevin Donoghue, representing the east side (Munjoy Hill, Bayside and islands including Peaks).
Neither Green councilor-to-be had an easy time breaking this barrier. Both are first-time candidates in their late 20s, who beat challengers with more political and life experience.
Donoghue – who co-chairs the city’s Green political committee with Minnick – handily defeated incumbent Will Gorham, a 57-year-old with family and social ties on Munjoy Hill going back generations. Donoghue has lived on the Hill a few months, though he knocked on so many doors and sent out so many campaign postcards that Hill residents are likely familiar with him to the point of exhaustion these days.
Marshall beat back challenges from former Portland Planning Board chairman Cyrus Hagge, 53, and current planning board vice chairman Michael Patterson, 41, the hand-picked successor of veteran Councilor Karen Geraghty, who withdrew from this race shortly before nomination papers were due to get on the ballot. Geraghty’s last-minute exit put Hagge and Patterson behind Marshall, who’d been campaigning for months before the incumbent dropped out. But on election night, Geraghty said even if she’d withdrawn months before, Marshall still would have carried the district on the strength of his campaign.
So though the Greens in Portland lost Eder, they held their own on the school board, made a giant gain on the council, and darn-near unseated two popular and longstanding state legislators. That second state lawmaker is Democrat Herb Adams, 52, who almost lost his seat representing Portland’s Parkside and Bayside neighborhoods to 25-year-old Green newcomer Matt Reading, a political unknown before this fall. Adams’ lead was in the single digits before absentee ballots were counted, and he subsequently shot ahead by about 150 votes.
It’s this kind of grassroots, baby-steps approach to political power that has Portland Greens feeling optimistic, despite Eder’s defeat.
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