.jpg)
Here are five Big Things about the recent primary election (and a recent Critical Insights poll) that were missed or underemphasized by what we old-timers of the alternative press tenderly call the “straight” press:
1. Chandler Woodcock is a fringe candidate.
The smiling, down-to-earth, from-out-of-nowhere state senator who won the Republican nomination for governor is not just a social conservative. In Maine terms, he is from the right-wing fringe. He not only opposes abortion and gay rights, he wants intelligent design taught in schools. He captured a major-party nomination with 2.6 percent of registered voters, in part because of a get-out-the-vote effort by Christian fundamentalists. “He focused in on the churches,” says second-place finisher state senator Peter Mills.
Woodcock had an intelligently designed campaign. He saved many TV ads until the last days before the election when voters made up their minds. More important, “we were shooting for those folks who were going to vote,” says Chris Jackson, his campaign manager.
Most important, his campaign made sure Woodcock’s side voted. Their grass-roots effort in Franklin County produced over 900 votes for Woodcock in Farmington alone, in a statewide race decided by about 2300 ballots. This is Woodcock’s home turf, but “even I was a little blown away” by such numbers, says Jackson.
Charles Webster, a conservative former Farmington legislator, worked hard for those votes. He says he brought in about 350 absentee ballots, many from Democrats who changed their registrations. Mills says Webster is “obsessed” by such issues as gay marriage, but Webster denies emphasizing social issues. “It was blue collar,” he says — meaning he convinced working-class folks that Woodcock was their guy.
Statewide, an effort was put on by the Maine Jeremiah Project, a several-hundred-strong, fundamentalist political group run by Bob Emrich, pastor of Emmanuel Bible Baptist Church in Plymouth and a Republican State House aide who personally worked on Woodcock’s campaign.
“Yes, we did a lot of get-out-the-vote effort, but we didn’t say vote for Chandler,” Emrich claims, while admitting the Jeremiah Project helped the candidate. He says he was mindful that efforts directly on behalf of Woodcock could have triggered more matching funds for the publicly financed Mills.
Jackson “absolutely” expects Democrats to go after his man on social issues with their advertising. Normally, a candidate with Woodcock’s views would have little chance to win high office in Maine. Even two Republican political experts do not give Woodcock a chance.
“I can’t imagine the people of Maine choosing a governor who is pro-life and doesn’t believe in evolution,” says Bowdoin government professor and pollster Chris Potholm. “It’s not 1906, it’s 2006.”
“Baldacci is probably going to crush Woodcock,” says Joseph Reisert, Colby government department chairman and the Waterville and Augusta newspapers’ Republican columnist.
But . . .
2. John Baldacci is REALLY weak.
“Miller got 45 percent of the vote in Washington County; that’s the [uncovered] story” of the primary election, says Roy Lenardson, who ran Peter Cianchette’s Republican campaign against Baldacci in 2002.
The governor’s primary opponent, Chris Miller, a complete unknown who spent almost no money, got 24 percent statewide. In Somerset County, he received 34 percent and in Piscataquis 33 percent.
