No vote we cast next Tuesday will have more effect on our lives here in Maine than the one we cast in the race for governor — though our votes in the state legislative races come a close second.
The choice we face this time resembles almost exactly the choice we faced four years ago: a colorful Republican reformer against a bland Democrat, with the same pugnacious independent making the election a three-way race.
The fundamental issues remain the same, too. Apart from the first two years of the LePage administration, Democrats have functionally controlled state government for almost all of the last 40 years.
What have the decades of Democratic dominance gotten us? In my almost 20 years in Maine, I’ve never known a time when people did not complain that Maine’s economy was sluggish, and when people didn’t fear that their children will be unable find success here in Maine.
It is not only Republicans who say these things: This election, it is Mike Michaud, the Democratic candidate, who has been running ads lamenting that Maine’s business climate is among the worst in the country.
Which is odd, because it is thanks to the years of Democratic rule that Maine already was languishing at the bottom of those same economic rankings before Gov. Paul LePage took office in 2011.
When LePage and the Republican Legislature came into office, they immediately took steps to improve the state’s business climate, beginning with a substantial regulatory reform (L.D. 1) and tax cuts for all of Maine’s taxpayers. Both these proposals eventually passed with bipartisan support, but neither would have been proposed at all had the Republicans not been in the majority.
The benefits of these reforms thus far have been modest, but real: Maine’s unemployment rate has done better, relative to the national average, than it did under the previous governor. But it is clear that if we are to change the state’s long-run trajectory, we need more and deeper reforms.
Michaud, however, promises more regulation and more spending, a turn away from LePage’s reform efforts and back to the same policies that have failed Maine for decades.
The main argument of Michaud’s campaign, however, is not about what he will do in office — which is really what affects our everyday lives — but about what he won’t do: Michaud insists that, unlike LePage, he won’t say anything sufficiently colorful to make national news.
Fair enough: as a sometime member of Roll Call magazine’s “obscure caucus,” it is unlikely that Michaud will make any news at all.
The bigger question is, if we send him to the Blaine House, what will Michaud do?
Expect a Gov. Michaud to be a lot like Gov. John Baldacci. Like Michaud, Baldacci is a nice guy, who also represented Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, and who never made news for saying anything colorful, and who never deviated from the basic Democratic agenda of high taxes, high spending and ever more intrusive regulation.
What did “nice guy” Democratic government get us last time?
The Democrats expanded eligibility for MaineCare but made no provision for paying hospitals for the mandated treatments. Instead, the state government made vague promises of payment, and when LePage took office, the hospitals were owed almost half a billion dollars.
Similarly, the Democrats had for years promised generous retirement benefits to state workers, without setting aside enough money to pay for those benefits. In the short run, that’s a good deal for Democratic politicians, but in the long run, as the workers and retirees of bankrupt Detroit are now discovering, it is a terrible deal for the workers who suddenly end up with far less than their nice Democratic rulers had once promised.
LePage may not be nice, and he certainly isn’t bland. He also has proved that he’s able to reform state government.
With our former State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin, LePage found a way to make our state pension system sustainable, so that the promises we now make to state workers will actually be kept. And thanks to LePage’s efforts, the Legislature found a way to repay the state’s debt to the hospitals.
The choice we face is stark: we can return to the pre-LePage status quo of unsustainable spending and economic decline, or we can re-elect LePage, and embrace his reform agenda. And, if we really want to set our state firmly on the path of reform, we should help our governor by electing a Republican Legislature as well.
Joseph R. Reisert is associate professor of American constitutional law and chairman of the department of government at Colby College in Waterville.
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