A GOP house divided by Gov. LePage

Public domain image.

(Public domain image)

Gov. Paul LePage is doing his best to draw and quarter his own political party.

The governor came riding into the year high after winning re-election. Many Republican leaders were convinced that he had set the stage for the party’s ascendancy.

Many Republicans crowed that LePage would set the stage for the GOP for a generation to come.

Pfffft.

Karl Rove had a similar dream about the “permanent Republican majority” during his time with President Bush.

It hasn’t worked out that way for any of them.

For all of his potential, LePage has traded away his influence and his ability to lead.

And now he has even turned on other members of the GOP, and he is using the party apparatus as a weapon in his private war.

He’s demonstrated that he’s willing to put his own ego ahead of the best interests of the state — and even the rest of the Republican Party.

Now, the real question is not whether the Republicans will build a new, lasting majority in the Legislature, but whether or not they can survive next year’s election.

Or, if instead, they’ll be pulled down a LePage-created referenda rabbit hole.

In a presidential year, Maine acts a lot differently than it does during off-year elections.

It’s a problem that has plagued Democrats and Republicans alike. Democrats are able to win legislative majorities during presidential years, but struggle to hold them in off years, when fewer people vote and the ones who do are more conservative.

Republicans, too, haven’t been able to hold onto their recent off-year gains.

After an impressive win in 2010, political overreach and electoral numbers doomed them to lose the majority in both the House and Senate in 2012, a presidential year.

And in 2014, after again winning the Blaine House and a majority in the Senate, political overreach by the governor and math are working against them again.

But in 2016, it appears they’re also going to be facing an even stronger LePage-fed head wind.

The governor told MPBN this week that he’s basically finished with the Legislature and will take his policies straight to voters through the referendum process.

He’s called members of both parties liars and has promised to campaign against even his former allies who dare to disagree with him.

In the process, he’s co-opted the state’s Republican Party and convinced it to lead the campaign on two controversial and highly charged initiative questions.

As leaked details of the potential referenda, reported by the Bangor Daily News’ Chris Cousins, show, the questions involve a poorly designed scheme to reduce income taxes and a catch-all effort to villainize poor people and attack refugees and asylum seekers.

If they move forward, the two initiative questions will place enormous stress on the Republican Party. It’s expensive to gather enough signatures to place a question on the statewide ballot, and it takes time and energy.

It can easily cost $200,000 or more to gather signatures for a single question, and, if successful, you then have to run a campaign. Even in Maine, that adds up to serious dollars.

A campaign for a question without real opposition can cost millions of dollars. Highly charged issues such as taxes and aid to working families are likely to cost even more. As previous tax fights at the ballot have shown, the public has a critical eye for initiatives that promise more than they can deliver, and they’ve rejected empty tax promises like this one before.

And, while it may seem like money in politics comes from a bottomless cup, there are limits.

In a presidential year, with 186 seats in the Legislature up for grabs, two congressional races and the White House at stake, running two citizen initiative campaigns through the state party could easily turn into robbing Peter to pay Paul (LePage).

While it’s safe to say that most Republicans legislators favor lowering the income tax and reducing access to programs such as MaineCare and General Assistance, their support for the governor’s end run around the Legislature has so far been muted.

Maybe that’s because they know that every dollar the state GOP spends on the referenda, every hour volunteers collect signatures, and all the effort used chasing LePage’s Holy Grail is less time spent on the hard work of electing Republicans.

For Republican lawmakers in tight elections next year, a state party and governor focused on calling them names and chasing election-year wild geese is a recipe for defeat.

David Farmer

About David Farmer

David Farmer is a political and media consultant in Portland, where he lives with his wife and two children. He was senior adviser to Democrat Mike Michaud’s campaign for governor and a longtime journalist. You can reach him at dfarmer14@hotmail.com.