There wasn’t much suspense in Maine election results on Tuesday. Question 3, the big-ticket item proposing a new entity called Pine Tree Power, couldn’t muster even a third of the vote — a sure sign it didn’t belong on the ballot.
Question 3 would have expropriated Central Maine Power’s and Versant’s assets without any clear plan for governance, or any convincing evidence it would save ratepayers money, presumably the prime reason for such a radical shift.
Yet the results shouldn’t be misread, especially in light of solid backing for canceling the Hydro Quebec power line in 2021, which had the unfortunate feature of being unconstitutional – another question that shouldn’t have gone to voters.
CMP is massively unpopular, its remote out-of-state management thoroughly alienating Mainers, though it’s made improvements on outages and customer service while facing possible extinction.
Question 3’s biggest flaw is that it tackled the wrong end of the electricity equation. We don’t need a takeover of transmission, heavily regulated – including profits, despite claims by the referendum’s backers.
What we must have is a new state agency directing and planning Maine’s enormously challenging transition to renewable energy, for which generation is the key component.
The brilliance of a public power authority – first on the ballot in 1973, but unfortunately buried by utility lobbying – is that we could do it tomorrow. No legal impediment stands in the way, unlike the huge debt Question 3 entailed.
What has prevented action is inertia on public policy endemic to both political parties. Doing something big, intelligent, and potentially highly popular seems beyond the capabilities of our governor and Legislature.
Yet nothing could bring warring factions of the Democratic Party together faster and attract Republicans who understand the depth of voter discontent about utilities.
We’re not likely to get this through the legislative gauntlet in 2024, but a bill creating a top-level study commission should be routed to the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee forthwith. That’s the only way to satisfy the public’s demand for better service, and craft a sound plan for the future.
Elsewhere in Maine elections, Democrats did just as well as nationally, though nonpartisan municipal elections disguised that fact.
Democrats won big in Auburn, Lewiston, Augusta and – of course – Portland, where the Republican Party barely exists.
The most significant shift was the defeat of Auburn Mayor Jason Levesque for a third term, who openly teased running for governor as a Republican in 2026.
Levesque made commendable reforms to downtown zoning, including abolishing parking requirements preventing new construction – a measure first taken by Burlington, Vermont, home of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ political machine.
But Levesque erred in pushing his pro-development policies toward Lake Auburn, the city’s water supply – the issue that caused his defeat.
Across the river in bereaved Lewiston, voters ousted three Republican-oriented city councilors whose behavior at meetings can only be described as obnoxious.
Republican hopes in Augusta, where they organized concertedly, were dashed with the easy reelection of at-large Councilor Courtney Gary-Allen and other contested council and school board seats, though perennial Republican legislative candidate James Orr did win a school board seat.
In Portland, the state’s largest and most prosperous city, voters may finally have elected a mayor to validate the promise of the fulltime position created by charter in 2010.
The early results were bleak: three one-term mayors, the last, Kate Snyder, declining even to seek reelection. Michael Brennan and Ethan Strimling, two former state senators and longtime rivals, were trounced.
It wasn’t entirely their fault. The new charter, while creating a powerful mayor, left undisturbed the powers of the city manager, who runs departments and, with the council, creates the budget.
This led to endless conflict, especially between Strimling and former manager Jon Jennings, both trying to run everything themselves.
An attempt to rationalize the mayor’s powers in a 2022 charter commission foundered when the commission unaccountably threw in a council expansion no one asked for; it was soundly defeated.
So the new mayor, Mark Dion, won’t have a clear charter mandate, but he does have a knack for independent thinking and skillfully weighing competing interests. Disclosure: I worked on Dion’s statewide campaigns, but not this one.
Dion, like Brennan and Strimling, served in the Legislature, but unlike them he was a path-breaking deputy police chief in Portland who took community policing seriously. He was also Cumberland County sheriff for 12 years, fixing dismal conditions at the jail, the state’s second largest correctional institution.
If anyone can cut the mayoral Gordian knot, it’s Dion. Potentially, it’s the state’s most important elected executive position after the governor.
Not only for Portland’s sake but for Maine’s as well, we should hope he succeeds.
Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter since 1984. His new book, “Calm Command: U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller in His Times, 1888-1910,” is available in bookstores and from Maine Authors Publishing. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
Send questions/comments to the editors.
