Tag Archives: Gov. Paul LePage

Picking the primary winners: Republican edition

Last week, I laid out my predictions for the Democratic primary for governor. This week I’ll continue the wild speculation with my thoughts on the Republican primary. Where the Democratic primary is shaping up as a battle between the various factions within the party, the GOP primary is more of a contest between individuals seeking […]

Picking the primary winners: Democratic edition

With eight weeks to go until Maine voters select their party nominees for governor, the Republican and Democratic primaries are still wide open. No obvious frontrunners have emerged, and no public polling has been released. So, in the absence of quantifiable data, I’ll make some very subjective guesses about where these races are going. I’ll […]

GOP should learn from mistakes that began in 2010

We’ve seen this movie before. A bumbling political outsider with inchoate political views, leveraging the anger of the day to remake himself into a “lifelong conservative.” A businessman who’ll run government like a successful company, but who assembles a campaign team that can’t successfully execute the simplest tasks. A terrible public speaker with a loose […]

With logging dustup, LePage may have opened Pandora’s box

If Gov. Paul LePage has nothing to hide, he sure isn’t acting like it. The Legislature’s Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry Committee sent a request for information to LePage’s conservation commissioner last week, and the governor came utterly unglued. The committee is asking about the decision to withhold timber shipments from several Maine sawmills whose owners […]

‘Skinhead lesbian’ incident a pivotal moment for Maine GOP

Maine Republicans took the national stage once again last week, continuing their weeks-long descent to the rarest depth of notoriety. This time, it was GOP State House candidate Les Gibson who put the Pine Tree State on the map. In the aftermath of the tragic school shootings in Parkland, Florida, Gibson took to the internet […]

Team LePage’s really bad month

It’s been quite a month for the LePage wing of the Maine Republican Party. In February, the party’s executive director, Jason Savage, was outed as the anonymous author of a fake news website, The Maine Examiner. Savage had previously denied involvement in the site, but was forced to admit his role once his digital fingerprints […]

Shawn Moody — LePage’s Mini Me

In politics, authenticity has become the coin of the realm. Voters value “straight talk” over ideology and style. The ascension of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, two men who never would have been serious contenders for the presidency 10 or 20 years ago, shows the value voters now place on people willing to speak […]

Grab the popcorn — this legislative session is going to be a doozy

Maine’s next legislative session is going to be a madhouse. To begin with, this is Paul LePage’s last legislative session as governor (cue the hallelujah chorus). It’s pretty hard to guess what move LePage is going to make next, but he loves attention, and will go to almost any length to get it. As the […]