“Party faithful” is not a phrase that lends itself to Maine politics.
Only two of Maine’s 16 counties can lay claim to dedicated voter blocs: Aroostook and Cumberland counties boast more registered Democrats than any other party or group of unenrolled voters.
In the remaining 14 counties, however, unenrolled voters hold sway.
In Lincoln County the numbers break out: Democrats (7733); Republicans (8952); Green (988); and, Unenrolled (10,048) for a total of 27,721.
Statewide, residents who register to vote without declaring affiliation for one party over another account for 37 percent of all voters.
Long has it been thus.
The Maine Secretary of State on Feb. 2 released the registered voter lists for 2010. Of the state’s 978,543 registered voters, 366,821 are unenrolled, which means they do not belong to any one of Maine’s three recognized, organized political parties.
Democrats account for 319,160 registered voters, Republicans 260,108, and Green Independents claim 32,454 voters.
The three parties gained just 15,271 voters between 2008 and 2010, while unenrolled ranks swelled by 20,446. Statewide, 35,717 additional people registered to vote between 2008 and 2010 – and the majority checked unenrolled as their political status.
Faced with the largest pool of gubernatorial candidates in recent memory, leaders of Maine’s three political parties believe it’s easier to bend the ear – and leanings – of most voters for any given election than to encourage registration for a specific party as November’s general election nears.
Arden Manning, former executive director of the Maine Democratic Party and now its chief campaign director, said unenrolled voters have greatly outnumbered party diehards for at least two decades.
His observation is supported for at least the past 18 years with records available on the Secretary of State’s website.
“Traditionally, unenrolled voters have carried the day in the state,” Manning said this week. “The (2010) numbers don’t sound out of line with what we’ve seen in the state of Maine in the past election, which is why Maine is not a Democratic and not a Republican state.”
Manning said Democrats will continue to reach out to independent-minded voters, a tactic that worked during last year’s presidential election that saw Mainers overwhelmingly supporting a split ticket of Democrat Barack Obama for President and Republican Susan Collins for U.S. Senator.
“Mainers are famous for splitting tickets and being willing to try an Independent, ” according to political science professor James Melcher of the University of Maine, Farmington. “The Longley ’74, Perot ’92 and ’96, and King’s elections prove it.
Thousands voted for both Collins and Obama on the same ballot last time.”
The Green Independent Party is also aware of the strength of unenrolled voters in Maine and believes it is gaining more registered voters each election cycle.
“That the independent bloc of voter base is growing works in our favor,” Green Independent party chair Anna Trevorrow said. “When people disaffiliate with the two major parties they have found some unhappiness in the parties and they are looking for an independent voice.”
Greens gained 5100 voters between 2008 and 2010, outpacing Republican gains.
Trevorrow believes the Greens are increasingly being viewed not as being “left of left,” but as being a party for the working class.
Melcher says Maine is one of the highest states in the nation for self-declared independents, or, as Manning says, “Independents with a lowercase ‘I.'”
Some of it is “old-fashioned Yankee independence,” Melcher said. “Some of it, too, is that northern New England has not had the patronage-oriented parties that, say, Illinois had that encouraged party membership and party organization. Party organization here is not as strong as in, say, Connecticut.”
Maine party officials seem to embrace the independent nature of Maine voters and to find common ground based on issues.
“We’ve reached out to independent voters to ask for support and to support our candidates in the past and that’s something we plan on doing again this year,” Manning said.
Charlie Webster, chair of the Maine Republicans, says Republicans plan to aggressively pursue Democrats in the June primary and again during the general election in November.
Webster will pursue the votes, if not necessarily the party allegiances.
“We haven’t made an active effort to register Republicans,” Webster said. “It doesn’t matter how they register; it is not a factor any more.”
Webster said Republicans will gain votes in November from those Democrats dissatisfied with the current Democratic leadership in Augusta.
“As party chairman I will try to make it clear to the Walmart workers of Maine, ‘if you care about your own family the Democrats don’t care about you anymore,'” Webster said of his party’s decision to target blue collar Mainers.
Webster knows party loyalty can be fickle; he left the Democratic Party after being elected to the Maine House of Representatives as a Democrat in the 1980s.
“Democrats are going to lose badly based on what they’ve done in Augusta,” he said.
Citing the 2006 election, Webster said he was successful in encouraging people to register as Republicans for the primary, which saw Chandler Woodcock win.
“We registered over 1000 Republicans and over 200 in Farmington area changed parties,” Webster said. ” We only had two people who refused to change party.”
Voter records indicate Republicans gained 1961 new registered voters between 2008 and 2010.
“I think if you took a survey [and asked people] what party they belong to, 10 to 20 percent would not know which party they are enrolled in,” Webster said. “No one votes that way anymore.”
Eliot Cutler is one candidate betting no one votes by party.
Cutler entered the 2010 gubernatorial race in August 2009 as an unenrolled, independent candidate and knows well the state’s predisposition for electing independent-minded politicians.
Angus King, Maine’s last independent governor, won election with 35 percent of the vote in 1994 and four years later stormed re-election with 64.7 percent of the statewide vote.
Those numbers are not lost on Cutler, who, like King, is largely financing his own campaign.
“I’m running as an independent because I am one,” Cutler said.
Cutler, whose political background includes working on the presidential campaign of Sen. Edmund Muskie and for President Carter, left the Democratic Party after growing dissatisfied with Gov. Baldacci’s policies in 2005.
“At heart I am a reformer and have been all my life,” Cutler said of his decision to run without party affiliation.
Leaving a party and running for governor “reflects a deep concern for the state and for the circumstances we are in,” Cutler said, “And my firm conviction that neither party – nor any candidate from those parties – is likely to undertake reform and changes we need.”
Cutler believes party representatives are “bound by relationships put in place over long periods of time that will be difficult for registered party faithfuls to break.”
Running as an unenrolled candidate is the only way to shake free of political stigma and preconceived responsibilities, he said.
“You can’t be a genuine reformer without being independent of the two parties,” Cutler said.
Melcher says Maine’s unenrolled voters don’t necessarily move with the wind.
“Just because people call themselves “Independents” does not mean that their voting doesn’t follow a regular pattern,” Melcher said. “Lots of self-declared I’s (Independents) like to think of themselves as Independent, but really vote one way most of the time – and political scientists have noticed that for a long time.”
“Maine people today are frustrated and angry and have lousy confidence in the political system and political parties,” Cutler said. “They hear what amounts to drivel. Maine people are smart and they are pragmatic and they don’t think either party is offering new ideas or a willingness to break with the past.”
While campaigning, Cutler says he is often asked if he is Democrat, or if he is a Republican. When he stretches out his hand and says he’s Independent, enough people answer, ‘I’m with you’ to indicate to Cutler Maine’s unenrolled voters aren’t likely to join party politics in the near future – gubernatorial election or not.
