Jean Hay Bright tried once before to run against US Senator Olympia Snowe. It was back in 1994 and Hay Bright, a progressive Democrat, jumped early into a primary race for Congress that was later clogged with seven others and an eventual victor named John Baldacci. In 1996, the school-marmish, indomitably optimistic Hay Bright ran in another Democratic primary in a senate race against Republican incumbent William Cohen. She finished next to last.
This year, when she edged out political unknown Eric Mehnert of Bangor by about 600 votes (with a total of 22,582) to finally emerge victorious from a primary, Hay Bright, a 58-year-old organic farmer from Dixmont, found herself the Democratic candidate for US Senate in a race against a woman many consider to be an unbeatable political icon, a candidate known to most Mainers simply as “Olympia.”
And Jean Hay Bright, unless a meteor strikes Snowe’s headquarters, will almost definitely lose.
She could lose bad.
Some political pundits predict Snowe will approach, or break, the state’s standing record of winning 81 percent of the votes, set by former Democratic Senator George Mitchell against Jasper Wyman in 1988.
“People like . . . Jean think that they are well known around the state and they’re not,” says Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College. “I’m a Democrat but I think Olympia has done a great job and I think she’s going to win a tremendous victory. I don’t think there’s anything that Jean Hay Bright could have done to essentially change that result.”
Even though this year Republicans are catching a beating in polls nationwide thanks to worsening chaos in Iraq, a representative skeeving on teenage boys, the administration’s shoddy response to Hurricane Katrina, and a recent decision to suspend habeas corpus for enemy combatants, the future still looks grim for Maine’s peacenik senate candidate.
According to a September poll produced by Strategic Marketing Services, in Portland, Snowe is so far ahead of her opponents Hay Bright and independent Bill Slavick they might not be able to see her from the Portland Observatory with a pair of binoculars. Around 73 percent of the voters polled said they intend to vote for Snowe, around nine percent said they favor Hay Bright, and around two percent intend to go for Slavick. Snowe’s lead in the polls has only improved as her campaign has progressed. Which means Hay Bright’s prospects appear to have only worsened.
And, while Snowe is working from a tidy campaign chest of over $3.5 million, according to her October filing with the Federal Election Commission, Hay Bright’s June filings with the Federal Election Commission, the latest available, show she’s about $12,000 in debt. Her campaign now claims to have raised a total of $80,000, with about $12,000 left to spend. Hay Bright’s October filing, due on the 15th, was not available prior to press time.
Despite the obstacles, Jean Hay Bright swears she’ll win with as much fervor as she refuses to acknowledge any challenges facing her campaign. She says the polls and the pundits aren’t talking to the people she meets on the campaign trail — the voters from both parties who say they can’t stomach voting for a Republican this year. She says Mainers are specifically upset with Snowe’s recent votes, including those for two Supreme Court nominees with pro-life leanings.
