Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has a primary challenger

[Kevinstat]

It's late and I'm tired and lazy right now, so I'm just going to provide links to the candidate's web site ( http://www.scharlestamboia.com/ ), a link to a thread on a conservative web site in Maine discussing his candidacy ( http://www.asmainegoes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20016 ), and to the Maine page of Ron Gunzburger's awesome Politics1.com site ( http://www.politics1.com/me.htm ) that lists other candidates for Senator (as well as Governor and the lower house of Congress) in Maine.

Note that the Veterans Party, which recently tried to get official ballot status through the petition process but apparently failed to get enough signatures by the mid-December deadline, has announced candidates for Governor, U.S. Senator, and U.S. Representative in the more southern and coastal First District.  Their two congressional candidates are people I had never heard of before I first read their names mentioned as candidates yesterday.

With an announced primary challenger to Snowe, a likely contested Democratic primary and a seemingly announced candidate of a new (to Maine, at least) third party, this U.S. Senate election in Maine looks to be an entertaining if not very suspenseful one.  But there's always a chance that the Republican primary challenger to Snowe, S. Charles Tamboia, won't collect enough signatures to get on the primary ballot or will withdraw before the filing deadline, and Veterans Party candidate Raymond Stankiewicz might not end up being on the general election ballot either.  We'll just have to wait and see.

So much for a brief post.  He he.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays and life in general to all,

Kevin Lamoreau

[nini2287]

Not even worth a post   Snowe is safe.

[Moooooo]

Does Maine have an opinion primary?  If not, she could get a little scare in the primary.  Obviously not enough to derail her re-election bid.

[Kevinstat]

Not even worth a post   Snowe is safe.

Hey, when you're a political junky and you live in a state with as entrenched incumbents in Congress as Maine, your standards for what is post-worthy can go down.  I agree that she is safe though.

Does Maine have an opinion primary?  If not, she could get a little scare in the primary.  Obviously not enough to derail her re-election bid.

Maine has what a professor of mine in college called a "semi-open primary."  Only voters who are enrolled in the political party in question can vote in that party's primary*, but Unenrolled (Independent) voters can enroll in a political party on primary election day and be eligible to vote in the primary.  Voters switching parties have to do so at least 15 days before the primary (or it may be 16 days, as one clause says that "a voter may not vote at a caucus, convention or primary election for 15 days after filing an application to change enrollment," but I think those 15 days begin with the date the application was filed) to be eligible to vote in their new party's primary.

One then-Independent state Representative said back in 2002 or thereabouts that he would routinely enroll in the Republican Party just before (or perhaps the day of, I don't know) the primary to vote in that primary and then change back to an Independent shortly thereafter.  That was the same state Representative who got censured for telling a female state Senator "you have no balls" and who used the N-word on the radio when describing how political opponents were trying to put him in his place, so the fact that he did something doesn't mean many people did.

*There's an exception to that rule actually.  A political party can allow Unenrolled (Independent) voters and/or enrolled members of other political parties of their choosing to vote in their primary, but I don't know of any of them ever having done so and I believe many politically-minded and fairly politically informed people don't even know about that rule.  I one time suggested it to the state's Green Party at their discussion board that they allow non-Greens to vote in their primary, as they hardly ever have contested primaries and even had a candidate on the primary ballot for state Representative in 2000 get no votes in the primary and thus fail to get on the general election ballot.  I got chased off the discussion board by someone there because I was not a registered Green, although I actually wasn't forced off.  I didn't want to have to deal with this rabid Green getting angry with me in the future though.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau

[minionofmidas]

The Green Party's major problem with the primary system is to keep unwanted nutters and suspected plants off the ballot (not sure if that's the situation in Maine, though), so I can sort of understand him...

[Kevinstat]

Good point, Lewis.

It was actually a woman who took objection to me posting on that forum, not that that matters toward the validity of your point and my responce to it.

In Maine, only enrolled members of a political party may sign a candidate's petitions to get on the primary ballot.  And a candidate for nomination by primary election can't have switched parties prior to January 1st unless that candidate had changed his residence from one municipality to another (don't ask me why that loophole exists, but it is clearly stated and not just an unintentional loophole).  One loophole that might be unintentional is that the law doesn't say that a candidate for nomination by primary election can't have been enrolled in another party on or after January 1st of the year of the election, so perhaps candidates can unenroll from one party on or after January 1st and then enroll in another party shortly thereafter and qualify as a candidate for the primary election ballot.  I think I remember reading a standardized election form that a municipal clerk had to sign in which he/she certified that the candidate had not been enrolled in any other party in that municipality since January 1st.

As far as I can tell, people can sign petitions for candidates to get on the primary ballot immediately after switching parties or joining a new party, which is less restrictive toward party switchers than a primary election (parties couldn't allow party switchers within the last 15 days to vote in their primary even if they wanted to), so opening up a primary to non-party members could slightly facilitate the nomination of intentionally embarrasing nutters or plants of other parties, but I think the increased chance of such things occuring is rather small.  I just thought opening up the Maine Green Independent Party's (that's their official name) primary to non-party members would be a neat move on the part of the Greens and would give their candidates greater stature in the general election as well as help ward off the possibily of what happened in 2000 happening again (the candidate for state Representative who failed to get any votes in his primary, not even his own, had actually been quite active in getting himself on the ballot, enrolling several new voters in the party as there were apparently not even the requisite 25 Green Independents in his state House district to sign his petitions at the time he started collecting signatures, so this was clearly not a situation in which a non-Green party member voting in the primary would have caused the party embarassment - there is a threshold of twice as many votes as required primary petition signatures for write-in candidates in the primary qualifying for the general election ballot, and while that usually happens at least once every election it would have been unlikely to happen in this case even if non-Greens could have voted, while one voter in that district would most likely have voted for the unopposed Green candidate in that primary).

How's that for a reply?

Still, good point about undesirable candidates getting on the Green Party's nomination though Lewis.  I suppose I've made it clear that allowing non-Greens to vote in the primary wouldn't directly at least make it any easier for nutters or suspected plants getting on the Maine Green Independent Party's primary ballot.  Well, I have now anyway.

Sincerely,

Kevin Lamoreau