How does a green party candidate who was arrested for drunk driving get 10% when the party cannot do that well statewide in MA?
I wondered if anyone outside Maine knew about that. One of her arrests was during the time she was running for Governor in 1998, I believe after she had made some committment to be more responsible. But 8 years is a long time in politics, and LaMarche seemed to work hard to present a more together image this time around and she she may have earned points for calling Baldacci's controversial Dirigo Health Program the "Dirigo disaster" (although her alternative was Single Payer). Still, she did worse than some polls had her at I believe and worse than she expected I'm pretty sure. I have an aunt who's a big Green and I actually met Pat LaMarche a couple/few weeks ago when I was finishing up as a Hospitality team member at the Red Robin in Augusta. She was wearing (IMHO) a little too much makeup then, but she was quite receptive to me, a complete stranger (although she knew my aunt), introducing myself.
I remeber thinking before the election that if she was arrested for drunk driving again, during the campaign, she might well finish below 5% of the vote and lose the state's Green Independent Party the offical ballot status she gained them in 1998. As it was, the Maine Greens did lose their only elected official in a partisan office, as state Representative John Eder was defeated for reelection by 3% after being fined $100 by the state's ethics commission for phone calls which didn't mention that they were paid for by Eder (see the
Wikipedia article on Eder).
The Maine Green Independent Party will now have official ballot status through 2010 and will not have to collect signatures to get their party's Presidential/Vice Presidential ticket on the ballot like they had to for LaMarche this year (that was their excuse for only fielding 12 candidates for the Legislature - two of whom withdrew too late to be replaced, one before the primary and one after), but they have most likely lost a lot of momentum (although they did elect a couple city council members in Portland for the first time this year, but those are technically non-partisan offices and one of their school committee members there was defeated for reelection) and if they don't win any seats in the legislature or other partisan office in 2008 they may have a hard time holding onto enough support to keep their official ballot status in 2010.
