Wanted: The Blaine House
By Avery Yale Kamila
Businesswoman Nancy Gray hopes Pat LaMarche wins this November's gubernatorial race. "It would be the best thing that ever happened to this state" said Gray, who owns the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport.
One example of the news coverage she's receiving is a story published in June by the Portland Phoenix, where writer Lance Tapley called Woodcock "a fringe candidate" and Baldacci "weak." Tapley writes: "LaMarche, who ran for governor before, now has a real shot at being our first woman chief executive." |
Gray's comments to The Community Leader followed a press conference at the inn last week, where LaMarche unveiled an ambitious plan for providing universal health care coverage to all Mainers. Gray was joined at the event by other local business owners. All expressed the view that the LaMarche's health care plan would benefit their companies by reducing the skyrocketing cost of health insurance premiums and improve the overall business climate in the state.
Under the plan, the myriad ways the state currently funds health care, from hunting and fishing licenses to workers compensation premiums, would be replaced by a sliding-scale tax on payroll. LaMarche cited Maine Line Fence in Cumberland, saying the company would save $17,000 a year under her plan to provide health coverage for all Mainers.
Pollster Patrick Murphy, who heads Strategic Marketing Services in Portland, said LaMarche's focus on health care should strike a cord with Mainers.
"The big issue always in Maine is jobs and the economy," Murphy said and added that health care remains intertwined with economic issues. "When people are talking about health care, they're talking about the cost of health care, not its quality."
Murphy's firm conducted a phone poll in July that pegged support for LaMarche at three percent, with 27 percent of the electorate undecided. He said the firm will conduct another poll closer to the election, when more voters have made up their minds. Polling conducted more recently by other research outfits asked voters for their preference between the Democratic and Republican candidates, despite the fact that five candidates will appear on the November ballot.
"That's an unfair choice," Murphy said of such polls. "They're forcing you into a choice, which at this point in the race is iffy. It’s a cheap methodology, and that’s why they do it."
He predicts LaMarche will attract much more than three percent of the vote, saying "she has name recognition and a decent amount of credibility."
LaMarche, who lives in Yarmouth and is the Green Independent candidate, has been criss-crossing the state for months promoting her platform of fiscal and social responsibility. This isn't her first bid for political office. LaMarche was the national Green Party's Vice Presidential candidate in 2004, and she ran for governor in 1998, picking up seven percent of the vote in a race won by popular incumbent Angus King, an independent, who garnered close to 60 percent of the vote.
A big difference between this campaign and LaMarche's past races is the presence of public funding. Under the state's new Clean Elections law, LaMarche qualified for $1.2 million in financing.
"We're on new ground with third party candidates having a significant amount of money," said Sandy Maisel, director of the Goldfarb Center for Public Affairs at Colby College. He predicts that most of this money will be spent on television ads in the last few weeks of the campaign....
While she has the backing of the Green Independent party, LaMarche has worked to emphasize her appeal to voters of all political stripes. She's picked up the endorsement of Baldacci’s primary challenger Chris Miller, who was supported by 24 percent of Democratic voters. LaMarche also won the endorsement of Falmouth-based Maine Friends of Animals, headed by former Republican legislator Robert Fisk.
"She certainly has a pretty high profile," said Amy Fried, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Orono. "She's getting reported in the news. She’s not absent from the debates."
One example of the news coverage she's receiving is a story published in June by the Portland Phoenix, where writer Lance Tapley called Woodcock "a fringe candidate" and Baldacci "weak." Tapley writes: "LaMarche, who ran for governor before, now has a real shot at being our first woman chief executive."
As the Green Independent candidate, LaMarche has a head start against the other candidates when it comes to environmental issues. At the same time, she's staking out positions on a variety of issues, everything from pulling Maine National Guard troops from Iraq to supporting community generated energy.
"She needs to add all these other issues, because if she's perceived as a single issue candidate, then she'll only attract single issue voters," said Douglas Hodgkin, a professor emeritus of political science at Bates College.
