Politics & Other Mistakes: A tale of two cities

Two takeaways from last week’s election:

Portland is out of touch with the rest of Maine.

Lewiston is out of touch with reality.

Portland voters strongly supported Democrat Mike Michaud for governor, even though he performed in TV debates like a football lineman trying to dance ballet while suffering from a concussion. Meanwhile, much of the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which Michaud represented in Washington for six terms, enthusiastically backed Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who debates like a football lineman in a bar brawl handing out concussions.

Portlanders went all warm and fuzzy over the referendum to ban most forms of bear hunting, heaping praise on themselves for trying to save Winnie the Pooh. Rural Mainers turned out in droves to defeat the measure, recognizing it would have been an economic and environmental disaster for their part of the state.

Which is most of it.

After the results were in, Portland pundits performed bizarre numerical contortions in an effort to convince themselves that Democrat Shenna Bellows has a political future. Bellows spent over $2 million to garner just over 30 percent of the vote in a futile attempt at making Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins look vulnerable. Given the location of the few precincts where Bellows ran credibly, her best bet for winning public office might be a bid for the Portland City Council.

Portland’s misalignment with the rest of the state isn’t hard to understand. Maine’s most populous municipality has a vibrant economy, while the hinterlands suffer from conditions ranging from frequent bouts of recession to semi-permanent ghost towns. The news media (and that includes bloggers, podcasters, assorted Internet trolls and the Bangor Daily News) is relentlessly Portland-centric, requiring an Ebola panic or a two-headed turtle before deeming a story important enough to venture beyond the confines of Cumberland County.

And Portland and its wine-and-brie suburbs are the only places in Maine where anybody still believes an endorsement from independent U.S. Sen. Angus King is worth more than deer scat. Not that anyone there would recognize deer scat if it was served to them on a silver platter with imported water crackers and a nice merlot.

As for Lewiston, Maine’s second largest city, its voters are so delusional they regularly include deer scat on the hors d’oeuvre menu. Over the years, Lewiston has earned a reputation for having enlightened social views – for the 14th century. The good citizens of the Lew have rejected the burning of witches, accepted the possibility the earth orbits the sun and are willing to concede their efforts to turn lead into gold are probably futile.

In 1993, Lewiston rejected an ordinance banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, thereby setting the gay rights movement in Maine back several years. More recently, the city has proved hostile toward proposals to legalize same-sex marriage, even as the rest of the state came around to the idea. And if you think Lewiston’s attitude toward homosexuals has changed, consider that this year marks the first time Michaud has failed to carry the city. It’s also the first election since he announced he was gay.

Coincidence? Not hardly.

Lewiston acts like it’s on drugs. But that seems unlikely, because the city has the distinction of being one of the few places in Maine opposed to legalizing marijuana. In last week’s balloting, it turned down a largely symbolic ordinance that would have ended the ban on possession of small amounts of pot by adults.
Scott Gagnon, director of the anti-drug group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told the Lewiston Sun Journal that support for legal weed, which has already passed in Portland and South Portland, grows weaker the further north one goes.

Uh, Scott, it just passed in Alaska.

Lewiston isn’t a bellwether. It’s an anomaly. From the hoity-toitiest condo on Portland’s Munjoy Hill to the grubbiest shack covered in tattered Tyvek deep in the North Woods, the one issue on which yuppies and yokels agree is that legal restrictions on cannabis are stupid.

To be fair to Lewiston, I should note that the Marijuana Policy Project chose that city for its test referendum, apparently too zoned out to realize its message wouldn’t resonate there. The MPP insists on campaigning for lifting restrictions on the kind herb by denigrating demon alcohol. In Lewiston, that’s akin to slandering the Catholic Church, hockey or poutine.

So chalk part of the loss up to poor strategy, keeping in mind that equally inept efforts to trash beer and booze have worked for pro-pot forces in less loopy places.

In the end, Lewiston and Portland have proved themselves to be outliers on the Maine political landscape. If that causes the new Legislature and the old governor to ignore their (occasionally) legitimate concerns, these two places have only themselves to blame.

Next up: legalizing pot for baiting gay bears. Email your vote to me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.