The Republican Gubernatorial Scrum

With Peter Mills filing for Governor as a Republican, and three other candidates already (we fully expect Otten to actually run), the Republican gubernatorial primary could be quite a scrum. We don’t expect it will be the most crowded ever, but it will come close.

With a large primary, you could win with 20% of the vote, so it’s anyone’s race. The last time there was a crowded Republican statewide primary in Maine was in 1994, when the Blaine House was open after McKernan. That year the GOP had an eight-way primary and Susan Collins won with 21.3% of the vote.

Crowded primary fields are unpredictable, especially in the Maine GOP. Collins defeated Lipman by less than 4,000 votes in 1994 out of almost 90,000 votes cast. If she’d lost, Maine could have ended up looking very, very different over the next 15 years.

This year, we expect that a competitive Republican gubernatorial primary would be in the 75,000 – 80,000 vote range, so the difference between the top two finishers could be even smaller. So far, all of the declared Republicans look like top-tier candidates. There doesn’t seem yet to be a minor candidate, and there are quite a few plausible top-tier candidates yet to declare their intentions:

Steve Abbott, Senator Collins’ Chief of Staff
Peter Cianchette, former U.S. Ambassador to Costa Rica, 2002 nominee
Kevin Hancock, businessman
Paul LePage, mayor of Waterville
Kevin Raye, Senate Republican Leader
Josh Tardy, House Republican Leader
Peter Vigue, businessman

So maybe the GOP will have another eight-way primary. There are a variety of interlocking relationships in there, of course – all six of those candidates are highly unlikely to run against each other. Raye and Tardy seem to get along very well; we don’t think they’d run against each other in a primary. We also can’t imagine Cianchette running against Vigue. Others may emerge as well that we haven’t considered, of course.

In a PPH profile earlier this year, Steve Abbott was mentioned as a possible gubernatorial candidate, and he certainly would be formidable. He’s well-known and well-connected amongst GOP activists and fundraisers, and would instantly be a top-tier candidate.

Peter Cianchette would be in a similarly strong starting position. He would face some criticism about how he handled the 2006 race, dropping in and then out, but could overcome it. Many Republicans around Maine are still loyal to Cianchette.

Kevin Hancock (of Hancock Lumber) would be a bit of a wild card. Although he was often mentioned earlier, he doesn’t seem to be setting up any sort of a run. With three other businessmen running, he may have decided to sit this one out.

Paul LePage, the mayor of Waterville, would face a tough race. Although his victories in a Democratic town are impressive, he barely won re-election and isn’t well-known statewide. He made some noise about running earlier this year, but hasn’t yet followed through.

Kevin Raye is already very well-known from his 2002 Congressional run, and has made a name for himself as Senate Republican Leader. A former aide to Olympia Snowe, it would be interesting if both he and Abbott were in the race, a sort of proxy battle.

Josh Tardy is also well-known to GOP activists, though perhaps not to the general public. The successive failures of the GOP in the Maine House campaigns may be a notch against him, but they were difficult years. It would be interesting to see how many members of his caucus would instantly support him in a gubernatorial primary.

Peter Vigue is another successful businessman with no political record. He’s also known as an idea man who’s been working on innovative policy not just in his company, but for the state.

As these other potential candidates make decisions, current candidates Matt Jacobson, Peter Mills, Les Otten and Bruce Poliquin will have to adjust their strategies accordingly. Jacobson, Poliquin and Otten all entered early because they could afford to, both in dollars and time. None are current office-holders and all could take time away from their careers to campaign full-time a year early. That will serve them well if this becomes a scrum, as they will be considered serious candidates even before the crowded field emerges. After campaigning hard, Jacobson and Poliquin have put themselves into top-tier status; Mills and Otten almost start there. None of them will be pushed down to minor-candidate status just because someone else enters the race.

So, the GOP field is still nebulous, but will likely become very crowded. The game in the GOP primary will be to work hard, don’t screw up, and you have a good shot at winning it. All candidates are basically equal, and it’s everyone’s race to lose. Any one thing, on any one day, could be what pushes you underwater or over the top. In some senses there’s a very small margin of error in a race like this, because every single vote, every single donation, every single volunteer counts.

The game in the Democratic primary – which we’ll take a look at later – is very, very different.