There were a few surprises in the the June 14 primaries. Justin Chenette, a 25-year-old House member from Biddeford, won a Senate nomination over Barry Hobbins, a veteran Democrat who’s served eight terms in the House and five in the Senate, and was attempting another switch when Chenette ambushed him.

Hobbins was Senate leader from 2011-2012 when he signed off on what Republicans call “the largest tax cut in Maine history,” despite recession-depleted revenue. He made a virtue of cooperation with Gov. Paul LePage, and it may have ended his political career.

Among Republicans, LePage’s endorsement helped Guy Lebida oust Sen. Linda Baker, a moderate in a swing district, making it even more likely the Democrats will win back the Senate.

Yet the main November event will not be legislative elections, though all 186 seats are available. Instead, five initiated referendum questions — a record — could set a new policy agenda that is, for Maine, revolutionary in scope.

Tops on the list is increasing the state hourly minimum wage from $7.50 to $9, with further annual one-dollar increases through 2020 to $12. It looks like a sure winner. Most voters strongly believe wages should be higher.

It was a measure of Republican desperation, akin to “stop Trump,” that during the legislative session they pushed for an immediate increase to $10 to avert the referendum — after voting consistently against any increase for years.

The second big item, of potentially even greater significance, would fund state aid to education at 55 percent, requiring an additional $167 million, to be raised by assessing an additional 3 percent from the incomes of the top 2 percent. It reflects state law, created by a Maine Municipal Association-backed referendum passed in 2004 that set the standard but provided no money. The Maine Education Association is leading a coalition to pay up, from those who can manage increased taxes most readily.

This, too, will likely pass, not because voters are clamoring to raise taxes, but because they support public schools and want to lighten the burden on property taxpayers, who shoulder an increasing share.

Aside from putting money where it’s long been supposed to go, the school funding referendum is significant as a rebuke to tax policies of Republicans and Democrats alike, who together cut the top income tax rate from 8.5 percent to 7.15 percent because — well, we know about Republican ideology, but Democrats never really explained their stance. The ghost of Ronald Reagan, possibly.

There’s symmetry here. If the top rate goes to 10.15 percent, it will be slightly above the 10 percent that pertained before the Reagan tax cuts convinced state lawmakers to lop off the top bracket. A state budget starved of revenue for the past 10 years will get a reprieve, and perhaps even higher education will get a long-overdue inflation adjustment.

This isn’t radical. In 2012, California voters raised their top income tax rate to 13.3 percent, highest in the nation. The state’s economy has boomed, growing 4.1 percent in 2015, twice the national average.

Meanwhile, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback pushed through a 25 percent income tax cut that closed dozens of schools and cost thousands of teachers their jobs — and prompted a state Supreme Court order to cease and desist. Kansas’ economy was in recession by the end of 2015, growing only 0.2 percent for the year, among the lowest of any state.

So we now know that taxing upper income brackets, where most of the nation’s wealth has gone over two decades, doesn’t hurt the economy, and may help it. Even more emphatically, cutting income taxes doesn’t promote growth and may depress it. Reagan orthodoxy has crumbled.

If you’re of a progressive turn of mind, there’s more on the Maine ballot. Voters can legalize marijuana for adults over 21, as other states have done and Mainers seem inclined to.

We’ll also decide on comprehensive background checks showing if gun purchasers can do so legally. This is accurately described as common sense, and several national groups are campaigning in favor. The NRA is against, of course, and so is the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, a hunters’, not gun, lobby. SAM hasn’t clearly explained, to date, why it opposes the measure.

Finally, there’s a question to established “ranked choice” voting in all state elections, another progressive-inspired measure that raises complicated questions, best addressed in a separate column.

If the minimum wage and school funding questions pass, it will point Maine in a new political direction. Raising up the working and middle class, improving public services, and assessing the costs on those who can afford to pay — it’s almost as if Bernie Sanders won, after all. Perhaps he did.

Douglas Rooks has covered the State House for 31 years. His new book, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” has just been published. Comment is welcomed at: drooks@tds.net

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