Transcript

Mainely Politics · Politix

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SPEAKER_00: A lot of Democrats would rather lose the right way than win in a way that feels icky.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry if I'm triggering people, but I think that's just facts at this point.
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SPEAKER_01: Hi, you're listening to a free preview of the Politics Podcast.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: Brian is on vacation,
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SPEAKER_01: so I am joined this week by Alex Seitzwald of the Midcoast Villager,
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SPEAKER_01: an expert on Maine politics.
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SPEAKER_01: We're going to talk about Graham Plattner,
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SPEAKER_01: but also the kind of whole political scene unfolding in this state,
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SPEAKER_01: which is ground zero for a lot of different political trends in America.
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SPEAKER_01: So I hope you'll enjoy, especially if you want to upgrade to pay.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Hi, welcome to Politics.
0:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm Matthew Iglesias.
0:51
SPEAKER_01: Brian is on vacation.
0:53
SPEAKER_01: So joining me today is Alex Seitzwald of the Midcoast Villager in Camden, Maine.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Welcome.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Matt.
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And thanks for your hat.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Matt just did an event at the Villager Cafe in Camden,
1:06
SPEAKER_00: which we very much appreciate and love to see you rocking the merch.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's great.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
1:11
SPEAKER_01: just to contextualize for everybody,
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SPEAKER_01: Alex and I worked together a million years ago at ThinkProgress,
1:18
SPEAKER_01: and then you had a career in national political journalism,
1:23
SPEAKER_01: right, with MSNBC, Now, MSNBC, yep.
1:29
SPEAKER_01: And moved to Maine at some point and then switched into local news.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: Tell us about that.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: So yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: I spent 15 years in DC started
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SPEAKER_00: at ThinkProgress watching Matt produce like 15 blog posts a day,
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SPEAKER_00: much to my chagrin and jealousy.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Then most of the time there I was at NBC News for 10 years,
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SPEAKER_00: covered 2016, 2020, 2284 presidential races.
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SPEAKER_00: I moved up to Maine in the end of 2022 to help take care of my mom,
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SPEAKER_00: not at all looking to get into local news, kept working for NBC remotely here.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: After the 2024 election, I was kind of looking for a change anyway.
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SPEAKER_00: And this local newspaper was revamping.
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SPEAKER_00: They were rolling together the four historic papers that had gone back to the 18,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, whatevers.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: And I just got coffee with them because I was curious,
2:17
SPEAKER_00: but I was so impressed with the vision and the idea.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: And of course, I,
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SPEAKER_00: like every other journalist,
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SPEAKER_00: had talked about how,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, what a tragedy is that local news is struggling and how important it is.
2:29
SPEAKER_00: And they, you know, put an offer to
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SPEAKER_00: to me saying, I'm sure you're not going to want this, but just in case.
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SPEAKER_00: And I just kept thinking about all the fun things that we could do with it.
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SPEAKER_00: And I love this place.
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SPEAKER_00: There's so many amazing stories to tell.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: So I came on board a little over a year ago.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
2:44
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I mean, if you if you read The Villager, this really is a local paper.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm up in Maine now myself, but a little bit.
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SPEAKER_01: further up the coast or down east, as we say here, from your terrain.
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SPEAKER_01: You know,
3:00
SPEAKER_01: you've got lots of stories about what's happening in Camden,
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SPEAKER_01: what's happening in Rockland, these other areas.
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SPEAKER_01: But you're a natural person as Maine has become...
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SPEAKER_01: a big national politics story to sort of translate between these two media universes
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SPEAKER_01: because you're not just here,
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SPEAKER_01: but you've been focused for the past couple of years on covering the state locally,
3:24
SPEAKER_01: but you have the experience and you have the connections in national politics
3:28
SPEAKER_01: that I think can help contextualize these things.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So, you know- To main-splain, as I like to say.
3:35
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
3:37
SPEAKER_01: So obviously Graham Plattner is the most interesting thing that has happened
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SPEAKER_01: in Maine this year and last year.
3:45
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's sort of helpful to step back and talk about the larger context
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SPEAKER_01: of Maine politics,
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SPEAKER_01: because this is a large state geographically,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's a small state in terms of its number of people.
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SPEAKER_01: And there's a quite
4:02
SPEAKER_01: Setting Plattner aside,
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SPEAKER_01: there's like a quite like incestuous tangle of current and former governors
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SPEAKER_01: and elected officials coming on.
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SPEAKER_01: So, I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: I thought it might be helpful,
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SPEAKER_01: like just like Angus King, the senator not involved in this, like who's he?
4:18
SPEAKER_01: What's his deal?
4:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he's an independent, although he caucuses with Democrats.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: He's a Democrat for all intents and purposes.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: Democrats aren't against him, but he's an independent.
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SPEAKER_00: And I do think that's important because it speaks to this political culture in Maine
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SPEAKER_00: that is very pro-independence to the point of almost
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SPEAKER_00: Fetishizing Independence the state motto is dirigo which is Latin
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SPEAKER_00: for I lead it has this very kind of libertarian bent on both the left and the right
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SPEAKER_00: so people like the idea of politicians who buck their parties and that that is
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SPEAKER_00: the Angus King Susan Collins that is
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SPEAKER_00: the dominant main political culture going back decades you know Margaret Chase Smith
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SPEAKER_00: Olympia Snow and
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SPEAKER_00: Graham Plattner is completely not of that temperament or that ilk at all.
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SPEAKER_00: He's a fighter.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: And to your point about the incestuousness, you know, people call Maine one big small town.
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SPEAKER_00: And it does feel like that.
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SPEAKER_00: It's you're always like two or three degrees of separation.
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SPEAKER_00: There's these families that go back 13 generations, like literally to, you know, 16 whatevers.
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SPEAKER_00: And the governor, Janet Mills, comes from a big political family.
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SPEAKER_00: The guy who was almost the nominee, Democratic nominee in the second congressional district.
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SPEAKER_00: John Baldacci is the brother or Joe Baldacci sorry his brother was John Baldacci
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SPEAKER_00: the governor Hannah Pingree the Democratic gubernatorial nominee is the daughter of
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SPEAKER_00: the congresswoman there was a Bush running for the Republican office
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SPEAKER_00: so there is this this kind of you know I think
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SPEAKER_00: for like most Mainers politics is kind of
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Gauche or like gross but they also care about it a lot small town politics it's
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SPEAKER_00: the kind of place New England democracy like you show up to
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SPEAKER_00: to your town meeting once a year uh you probably know somebody who has served on
6:05
SPEAKER_00: the select board or you have served on the select board because there's so many
6:08
SPEAKER_00: of these positions that need to be filled out that they're kind
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SPEAKER_00: of sometimes you know dragging people in to do them uh so it's a it's a
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SPEAKER_00: Really interesting political culture.
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SPEAKER_00: And Grant Plattner is completely at odds with the way that that has been defined,
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SPEAKER_00: but also very much in keeping with the kind of look and feel and vibe
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SPEAKER_00: of especially coastal Maine.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so, okay, so take it back.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: So King was governor.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: Janet Mills is currently the governor.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: She ran for the Senate nomination.
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SPEAKER_01: She lost.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Before her, Paul LePage was governor.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And we'll come back to him because he's running again.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
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SPEAKER_01: Before LePage, John Baldacci was governor.
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SPEAKER_01: His brother was in the state legislature, and he ran for Congress and lost.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: And then King was the governor before Baldacci.
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SPEAKER_01: And so all four of those people,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: at least in family terms through the Baldacci's sort of continue to be present in
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SPEAKER_01: the politics of the current moment.
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SPEAKER_01: And King functions in DC, certainly as like a de facto Democrat.
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SPEAKER_01: But part of him being an independent is that he
7:22
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't endorse against Susan Collins He's not like involved in these primaries
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SPEAKER_01: Although his son ran for governor Right,
7:29
SPEAKER_01: oh yeah,
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SPEAKER_00: forgot to mention him in my rundown Right,
7:33
SPEAKER_01: so Angus King's son ran for governor He was kind of an also-ran candidate But
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SPEAKER_01: the eventual nominee in that race is Hannah Pingree Whose mother,
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SPEAKER_01: Shelley, represents the more liberal candidate
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SPEAKER_01: sort of congressional district in the House.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And then in her own right, Hannah Pingree was what?
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SPEAKER_01: She was president of the State Senate?
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SPEAKER_00: Speaker of the State House.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Speaker of the State House.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And she was actually Speaker of the State House before her mother got elected to Congress.
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SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
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SPEAKER_00: there's a lot of Nepo baby talk,
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SPEAKER_00: but you could argue that Shelley Pingree is
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SPEAKER_00: a Nepo mother riding her daughter's coattails into Congress.
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SPEAKER_01: It's a reverse Nepo situation.
8:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, an anchor Nepo situation, if you will.
8:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something like that.
8:18
SPEAKER_00: And just to add another layer to this,
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SPEAKER_00: when Susan Collins first ran for Senate,
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SPEAKER_00: her opponent was Shelley Pingree,
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SPEAKER_00: the mother who is now the Congresswoman and the mother of
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SPEAKER_00: the likely future Democratic governor of Maine.
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SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
8:34
SPEAKER_01: it's a sort of a tangled web across these different people
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SPEAKER_01: and these different personalities.
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SPEAKER_01: And then you also had in the governor's race, Troy Jackson.
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SPEAKER_01: who was the state senate president, right?
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SPEAKER_01: And not part of a family tradition that I know of.
8:54
SPEAKER_01: No.
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SPEAKER_01: He was kind of the left candidate in that race, but he fell by the wayside.
9:00
SPEAKER_00: He was backed by Bernie and Graham Plattner and a really interesting person.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of discussion about Graham Plattner as a faux working class.
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SPEAKER_00: Troy Jackson is a legit working class guy.
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SPEAKER_00: He's a fifth generation logger.
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SPEAKER_00: He's from Allagash, which is
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SPEAKER_00: Way up in the northwest corner of the state on the border with Canada, surrounded by woods.
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SPEAKER_00: Like, literally, there's nothing up there.
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SPEAKER_00: But he didn't...
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SPEAKER_00: He was kind of seen as too factional, you know, too labor.
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SPEAKER_00: And I don't think he was able to do the kind of code switching that
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SPEAKER_00: a grand platener could do to... Yeah, I mean, this is...
9:37
SPEAKER_01: This is an interesting contrast, actually.
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SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, Maine is obviously...
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SPEAKER_01: a largely rural state.
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SPEAKER_01: Although at this point,
9:47
SPEAKER_01: I think about a third of the population lives in the sort of Portland metro area,
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SPEAKER_01: which is, I don't know.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, depending on, I grew up in New York.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Portland is not like much of a major metropolis, but it has like an urban suburban kind of vibe.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: Troy Jackson, I feel like is the thing that
10:12
SPEAKER_01: Graham Plattner sort of wants to be seen as.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Which is that Troy Jackson is from, as you said, Allagash.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: Allagash, Maine is like a true middle of nowhere logging town.
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SPEAKER_01: I happen to have been there because it's at the end of
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SPEAKER_01: the Allagash Wilderness Waterway,
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SPEAKER_01: which is like a canoe camping trip that a lot of people do.
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SPEAKER_01: And there's like one restaurant in town there, you know, where I've been.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: And Troy Jackson, historically, was a culturally conservative.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Like labor liberal kind of guy.
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SPEAKER_00: Anti-abortion, but pro-labor.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a kind of mold of a politician that doesn't really exist anymore.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: And in that part of the state, there's a lot of...
11:02
SPEAKER_01: people who speak French natively, very Catholic, very culturally conservative.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: And those people had traditionally been Democrats.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: And like a lot of working class,
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SPEAKER_01: culturally conservative,
11:16
SPEAKER_01: labor populist type people, they've become more conservative.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Paul LePage,
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SPEAKER_01: who's running for that house district and served two terms as governor,
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SPEAKER_01: he is from Maine's Francophone communities.
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SPEAKER_01: And he very much also represents,
11:32
SPEAKER_01: like Jackson is like the old political alignment of those kind of people.
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SPEAKER_01: And LePage represents much more their new political alignment.
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SPEAKER_01: And a version of the pitch for Plattner is like,
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SPEAKER_01: this is like an old school throwback Democrat who's going to win back these kind
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SPEAKER_01: of voters.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: And it's notable that Jackson,
11:55
SPEAKER_01: who like very authentically represents that kind of person and that kind of place,
12:01
SPEAKER_01: he felt kind of flat in his primary ultimately.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Because there's not that many of those people left in the Democratic Party.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: Right.
12:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he has, Jackson has moved on those culture on abortion, on gay marriage.
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SPEAKER_00: He's moved to now the mainstream of the Democratic Party.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I mean,
12:21
SPEAKER_00: it's I saw the first time I saw Graham Plattner was actually at
12:25
SPEAKER_00: a Troy Jackson event near me on a farm where Plattner had been booked to cater as,
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SPEAKER_00: you know, his oysters.
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SPEAKER_00: And then he had announced like four days earlier.
12:37
SPEAKER_00: And so he showed up to do his job and then also went on stage and gave a little speech.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: But it was interesting, the contrast there.
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SPEAKER_00: And then they both got endorsed by Bernie like two days later in a joint endorsement.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: The contrast was really notable.
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SPEAKER_00: Number one,
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SPEAKER_00: I watched Graham Plattner teach Troy Jackson how to shuck an oyster for
12:56
SPEAKER_00: the first time.
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SPEAKER_00: And that's like the divide in Maine is,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: coastal, more liberal, more affluent versus inland, more conservative, more rural.
13:04
SPEAKER_00: And like, there you go.
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SPEAKER_00: The guy who is a fifth generation logger has lived in Maine his whole life,
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SPEAKER_00: but he doesn't know how to shuck an oyster because he lives 100 miles from the coast
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SPEAKER_00: and that's just like another world for him.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: And then also when they got on stage, the contrast was really clear.
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SPEAKER_00: I mean, Plattner, it's not interesting to say that he's a very good communicator.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: And you could just really see that Troy Jackson is just not that level.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: He's a level of communicator that got him elected to the state senate and
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SPEAKER_00: a state senate president.
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SPEAKER_00: And he just doesn't have that kind of passion and charisma.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: So these were people who showed up to see Troy Jackson.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: This was a Troy Jackson event.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And then talking to them, they're all like, hey, who's this Grant Plattner guy?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: and they ended up leaving much more excited about him.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: So, you know,
13:50
SPEAKER_00: candidates matter beyond,
13:52
SPEAKER_00: you need all the things and Plattner over optimizes for the charisma and
13:58
SPEAKER_00: under optimizes for the genuine working classness.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: But I do think in a Democratic Party that is educated and more affluent as
14:07
SPEAKER_00: the one is today,
14:08
SPEAKER_00: you kind of need somebody who went to GW or bartended at the tune in who knows how
14:14
SPEAKER_00: to speak that language
14:17
SPEAKER_00: in a way that I don't think Troy Jackson,
14:19
SPEAKER_00: he could get there maybe,
14:20
SPEAKER_00: but it doesn't come as naturally to him as somebody like Grant Plattner
14:23
SPEAKER_00: who grew up around,
14:25
SPEAKER_00: you know, more money and his dad was a lawyer, like more college educated people.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: He's more comfortable speaking at that level.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: And so the first time I saw Plattner was before he was running for Congress.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: He was shucking oysters at the Brooklyn General Store and
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SPEAKER_01: It captures the duality of coastal Maine,
14:47
SPEAKER_01: which is that Brooklyn is this ostensibly rural town of 900 year-round residents.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: But it's super liberal.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: This is like a Kamala plus 20 place.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: And the Brooklyn General Store is like
15:02
SPEAKER_01: an old-fashioned country general store going back to the late 19th century.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: But its current owner, co-owner, is the woman who created
15:11
SPEAKER_01: and created Dimes Cafe and Dimes Deli on the Lower East Side.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: She married a guy who grew up in Ellsworth,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: near here, same place Plattner grew up, and they moved back to Maine.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: they bought this country general store that was kind of failing under the pressure
15:32
SPEAKER_01: of competition from you know Amazon and the Walmart 40 minutes away and they kind
15:37
SPEAKER_01: of remade it as this like high-end foodie destination where they have
15:41
SPEAKER_01: an espresso machine and they were bringing a guy in on Thursday nights to do oysters
15:47
SPEAKER_01: and Plattner this is pre-politics but right but it's like
15:51
SPEAKER_01: The conceit of the Graham Plattner Oyster Show is that he's a fisherman.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: He's a mean guy, right?
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And he's got the shirt and the tats and all that stuff.
16:02
SPEAKER_01: But he's talking to this audience of affluent tourists and summer people.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: And he's making us like him, right?
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And he's good at it.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: And so there's an out-of-state critique of Plattner that he's fake.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: And there's something to that.
16:24
SPEAKER_01: But I also think it's the fakeness that actually makes it work.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Troy Jackson is too much, like actually a logging guy from Arista County.
16:36
SPEAKER_01: And like that Democratic Party is gone.
16:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: You know, whereas Plattner is what the modern Democratic Party at least wants to be.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Which is like in touch with the working man, but like also having oysters at Dimes Deli.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's awkward, you know?
17:01
SPEAKER_00: Totally.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's so fast.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, Maine is so weird and unique.
17:07
SPEAKER_00: And I know everybody thinks that their state is weird and unique, but I think Maine has some
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Special claims to the uniqueness and there is this phenomenon on the coast of kind
17:16
SPEAKER_00: of a intentional downward class mobility which Graham Platner is a perfect example
17:21
SPEAKER_00: of where like you know one generation comes in summers and then
17:24
SPEAKER_00: the next generation maybe moves here and stays
17:26
SPEAKER_00: but it's more professional he retains their professional identity like his father
17:30
SPEAKER_00: who was a lawyer and then the third generation goes full townie
17:35
SPEAKER_00: which is Graham Platner but he's just barely removed from you know
17:40
SPEAKER_00: that more affluent educated thing but the truth is like a lot of people on
17:44
SPEAKER_00: the coast are like that and you just have no idea if the lobsterman or
17:49
SPEAKER_00: the oyster farmer or the the farmer is like you know an ivy league educated person
17:56
SPEAKER_00: or grew up here in his sixth generation and you couldn't really tell the difference
18:00
SPEAKER_00: and to some extent in a tourist economy
18:04
SPEAKER_00: Everyone is cosplaying themselves a little bit.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: Like your point about Plattner,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:10
SPEAKER_00: he's being the local fisherman who's shucking oysters at the, and he's a smart guy.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: He knows exactly what he's doing.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: And whether it's conscious or not,
18:20
SPEAKER_00: everybody is like actively participating in creating this fantasy of Maine,
18:26
SPEAKER_00: both for the outsiders, but also for ourselves, because
18:30
SPEAKER_00: We moved here or we chose to live here because we like that fantasy and we want
18:33
SPEAKER_00: to participate in it.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: So I do think Platner is like a perfect encapsulation of that.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: And there's so many people who have liberal guilt or are kind of ashamed of
18:47
SPEAKER_00: the wealth or the privilege that they come from,
18:50
SPEAKER_00: who have, you know, family money, but kind of hide it on the sides.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And
18:56
SPEAKER_00: He is exactly that candidate.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: So when people ask me during the primary, like, is he actually winning working class people?
19:01
SPEAKER_00: My answer is,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
19:02
SPEAKER_00: but he's definitely winning Democrats who know that they want to appeal
19:07
SPEAKER_00: to working class people.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
19:10
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
19:10
SPEAKER_01: of course,
19:11
SPEAKER_01: a question, you know, anyone who's ever like read Slow Boring will know, right?
19:16
SPEAKER_01: It's like that I'm always asking is like,
19:19
SPEAKER_01: can you actually appeal to working class people through these kind of
19:24
SPEAKER_01: It's essentially an identity play, right?
19:27
SPEAKER_01: That like, you know, he's like a different kind of guy, blah, blah, blah.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Can you do it that way?
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Or is this really about policy ultimately?
19:35
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I think, you know, you referred to like downward mobility.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, to be a little more generous about it, right?
19:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's what you have in the coast is a lot of people who moved here for
19:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, for lifestyle reasons, right?
19:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know Platner's dad, but I met lots of people who are like him, right?
20:00
SPEAKER_01: And like you decide at some point in your life that it's like, well,
20:04
SPEAKER_01: if I switch from being a lawyer in Boston to being a lawyer in Ellsworth,
20:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to make less money.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: On the other hand,
20:12
SPEAKER_01: instead of with my extra money,
20:14
SPEAKER_01: having like a summer house in Maine that I get to for four weeks out of the year,
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I could just live there all the time and like be surrounded
20:21
SPEAKER_01: by all this natural beauty and have like a way better, you know, lifestyle.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And if you go around,
20:28
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the people running the local newspapers,
20:31
SPEAKER_01: it's the attorneys and the dentists and the doctors,
20:35
SPEAKER_01: it's a lot of the realtors, it's, you know,
20:40
SPEAKER_01: Wherever else you're...
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And in particular, it's a lot of the people owning the small businesses.
20:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Right?
20:46
SPEAKER_01: So like, you know...
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Farmers.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: There's a real artist class, like writers and artists who actually make their money.
20:54
SPEAKER_00: They're not making huge money, but they are supporting themselves.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: That is a weirdly significant chunk of the population here.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: I came to be here for the summer because my dad...
21:05
SPEAKER_01: was here in the summer because his parents bought a farmhouse in Brooklyn,
21:10
SPEAKER_01: Maine a million years ago.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: They bought it from another pair of writers.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: My grandmother lived here full-time for a long time near the end of her life.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: Before Zoom, before COVID, the people who could work remotely
21:31
SPEAKER_01: were these novelists and artists and things like that.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: E.B.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: White, famously, of your town.
21:36
SPEAKER_01: And E.B.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: White down the road here.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And so that existed.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: And Maine's real estate
21:42
SPEAKER_01: has really sort of gone nuclear since COVID and remote work
21:46
SPEAKER_01: because it's greatly increased the number of professionals who can move here
21:52
SPEAKER_01: for lifestyle reasons without taking that like Boston to Ellsworth,
21:57
SPEAKER_01: you know, hit to your income on things like that.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there's an important part of the state culture.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: I think it's also important,
22:05
SPEAKER_01: you know, you and I, I think we both just like, we know a lot about Maine.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: and so are more attentive to the way people gloss over these distinctions.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: But there's a big difference between coastal rural Maine and inland rural.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: They're both rural, but it's a completely different economic situation.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: And whether that's the relatively urbanized part of the coast where you live,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: By these standards or where Platner is up in Sullivan, which is a really small town.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: But nonetheless, like Sullivan is a town that voted for Kamala Harris.
22:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: Like it's a it's a place where that's become pretty upscale.
22:48
SPEAKER_01: And then if you go to towns inland, like that's where Maga Main exists.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Right, you don't have to go very far inland at all to get to MAGA,
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Maine, real Maine, you know, whatever, depending on your point of view.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: And like my newspaper,
23:06
SPEAKER_00: the Midcoast Villager, midcoastvillager.com, check it out, could only exist.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: It is a very local newspaper, but it's not your typical local newspaper.
23:15
SPEAKER_00: I worked at NBC News, and I am a perfect example of somebody who I took a 50% pay cut.
23:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I came to take care of my mom,
23:21
SPEAKER_00: so I had a family connection,
23:23
SPEAKER_00: but we stayed because we like it here,
23:25
SPEAKER_00: and I was willing to take a pay cut to live here.
23:28
SPEAKER_00: And costs are less than D.C., but they're not 50% less than D.C.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: my colleague was a senior editor
23:35
SPEAKER_00: of New York Magazine my other colleague was William Sapphire's research assistant
23:40
SPEAKER_00: like it's a kind of place that attracts these people intellectuals artists
23:44
SPEAKER_00: with like big pedigrees so it can support a charming oyster farmer or
23:49
SPEAKER_00: a really high quality local newspaper but yeah you go two towns inland and it's
23:54
SPEAKER_00: a completely different story and that's most of the state I mean
23:58
SPEAKER_00: the two congressional districts are pretty decent
24:02
SPEAKER_00: Heuristics for the two types of Maine.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: The first district is Portland and Southern Maine,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: which if you get all the way down to Southern Maine,
24:09
SPEAKER_00: you're almost more like Boston suburbs or,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: you know, the Southern New Hampshire and Portland is a decent district.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: economic engine.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: But the second congressional district is 92% of the state by landmass.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: It's the most rural and the biggest congressional district east of the Mississippi.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: It's enormous and very conservative, used to be Democratic.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: It's a quintessential Obama-Trump swing county.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: And
24:40
SPEAKER_00: No Democrat has won statewide without coming from the 2nd Congressional District
24:45
SPEAKER_00: because you need to do well or at least hold your margins in the 2nd District so
24:52
SPEAKER_00: that you don't get totally blown out.
24:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's what Jared Golden would do.
24:55
SPEAKER_00: He'd go out to all these small towns in Arrested County and try to lose
24:59
SPEAKER_00: by 10 points instead of 20 points.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think to your point on the difference of the coastal, the one place where you get to real
25:08
SPEAKER_00: Poor coastal Maine is even further down east beyond us,
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Washington County, that's on the Canadian border.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: That's the one place where Plattner really performed much better
25:20
SPEAKER_00: than other Democrats, like where he outperformed.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: But I think that's largely a coastal phenomenon that they saw a guy,
25:27
SPEAKER_00: to your point about the identity play, they saw a guy who looked like them, who's a
25:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, a coastal work guy.
25:33
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that quite translates into Troy Jackson County up in a rustic or further inland.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: And the small cities,
25:39
SPEAKER_00: you know,
25:40
SPEAKER_00: Lewiston, Waterville, Auburn, Bangor, these are all mill towns that vote like Ohio.
25:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: So, right.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: So, I mean,
25:49
SPEAKER_01: to sort of like,
25:50
SPEAKER_01: so to get the Washington County nuance,
25:53
SPEAKER_01: right, which is like the trajectory of coastal Maine,
25:57
SPEAKER_01: has been basically like gentrification, like you see in cities.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: And it's been spreading up the coast because the further you get from Boston,
26:08
SPEAKER_01: just like the less convenient it is for tourists to get there, right?
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Or if you're the novelist type or,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: you know,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: if you're a creative class person,
26:18
SPEAKER_00: you need to get on an airplane for your job every so often,
26:21
SPEAKER_00: the harder it is to get on an airplane.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to get there, right?
26:24
SPEAKER_01: And so when you get right now,
26:27
SPEAKER_01: when you get east of Ellsworth, you can see just driving on Route 1.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: that like the nature of the businesses changes.
26:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: And very rapidly,
26:41
SPEAKER_01: like Graham Platner's mom's restaurant east of Ellsworth on Route 1 is a restaurant
26:49
SPEAKER_01: and inn and it is catering to tourists.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's about the last business.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, it's not like the last, but east of there, like it changes.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: Things are local.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: And a difference that you have is that
27:04
SPEAKER_01: There's competition between like tourists,
27:10
SPEAKER_01: summer people,
27:11
SPEAKER_01: lifestyle people, people who like the beauty of the coast and working waterfronts.
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: Right.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: And so Washington County is the place where the fishermen and
27:22
SPEAKER_01: the working waterfront people have not yet been priced out of like
27:27
SPEAKER_01: the prime coastal land.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: And so
27:31
SPEAKER_00: I was talking to a lobsterman the other day who was saying that he and a few
27:35
SPEAKER_00: of his friends are thinking about,
27:37
SPEAKER_00: actively talking about moving to Eastport or up in there.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: It's the thing that they talk about when they're getting beers
27:44
SPEAKER_00: and they're complaining about how everyone's driving the prices too high.
27:48
SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of last refuge.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and so you used to see around where I am lots of lobster traps in the yard
27:55
SPEAKER_01: because it was lobstermen's houses.
27:57
SPEAKER_01: I don't see that anymore.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: You see them way inland, right?
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Like located very inconveniently to like doing the work, you know?
28:07
SPEAKER_01: And it's because, I mean,
28:07
SPEAKER_01: this is not that different from a story you hear about,
28:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Uber drivers commuting from Sacramento into San Francisco to drive their cars,
28:15
SPEAKER_01: right?
28:15
SPEAKER_01: It's like the lobstermen now have to live so far from the shore in the pricier parts
28:21
SPEAKER_01: of area,
28:21
SPEAKER_01: at least in times, because, you know, they're trying to find affordable housing.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: And so...
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Plattner, who,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: you know,
28:28
SPEAKER_01: whatever you may say about him,
28:29
SPEAKER_01: like, has been working on the water, he clearly speaks to those people, right?
28:37
SPEAKER_01: And if you assume that those people are identical to
28:42
SPEAKER_01: the Obama-Trump crossover voters of Inland Maine,
28:46
SPEAKER_01: then I think you'll be, like, really bullish on Plattner's prospects.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: I think if you understand that those are actually different situations,
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Like, you might be more skeptical.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Like, he ultimately, like,
29:00
SPEAKER_01: his coalition looked like the coalition you would find for a left-wing challenger,
29:06
SPEAKER_01: like, basically anywhere.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like younger and better educated people.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's...
29:12
SPEAKER_00: And in the New York Times poll that just came out,
29:14
SPEAKER_00: he's not doing any better with non-college educated people than,
29:19
SPEAKER_00: you know, you would expect a typical Democrat to do.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: So he is...
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that will change,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: but I think we can pretty clearly stick a fork in the idea that he's going
29:30
SPEAKER_00: to be some kind of transformational change figure who's going to bring
29:35
SPEAKER_00: the working class of Maine back into the Democratic fold.
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there'll be some massive sea change between here and November,
29:44
SPEAKER_00: but I've so far seen no evidence of that.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: There's pockets of it like lobstermen in Washington County, but you're talking about
29:51
SPEAKER_00: a few thousand people here a few thousand people here you're not talking about like
29:53
SPEAKER_00: an end mass migration but this is Maine like it's a blue state you don't need
29:58
SPEAKER_01: to win those people yes I mean this is a state Kamala won but here I want to talk
30:02
SPEAKER_01: about the exception right because
30:04
SPEAKER_01: so Kamala Harris won Maine Joe Biden won Maine Hillary Clinton won Maine Obama won
30:10
SPEAKER_01: Maine twice Kerry won Maine Al Gore won Maine Bill Clinton won Maine twice yep blue
30:17
SPEAKER_01: state um
30:19
SPEAKER_01: But they did elect a Republican governor during this whole span of time, right?
30:24
SPEAKER_01: Paula Page, who we talked about earlier.
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And so they'd inherited these moderate Republican senators, right?
30:30
SPEAKER_01: Susan Collins and Olympia Snow.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: And so it was like, okay,
30:34
SPEAKER_01: Maine's a blue state,
30:36
SPEAKER_01: a moderate Republican in the snow, Collins mode can win here statewide.
30:42
SPEAKER_01: But Paula Page is not in that mode and sort of shocked people when he won.
30:47
SPEAKER_01: So how did that happen?
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Very much not in that mode.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: He calls himself Trump before Trump was Trump.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's actually like a very fair characterization, self-characterization.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Other people have made that claim.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: He was a, in our Think Progress days, he was like a favorite, you know,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Boogeyman,
31:05
SPEAKER_00: not quite up there with Michelle Bachman and Steve King,
31:08
SPEAKER_00: but he was like a second tier,
31:10
SPEAKER_00: you know, person that would get liberals agitated about things.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: He would constantly do things that were good for like, yo, that's racist.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like blog posts, right?
31:22
SPEAKER_01: And he really was Trump before Trump in this sense, right?
31:25
SPEAKER_01: Like he would say stuff, we'd be like, yo, that's racist as if
31:30
SPEAKER_01: The RA was going to come in and be like, now you can't be governor of Maine anymore.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: You said the racism, but it only boosted him.
31:40
SPEAKER_01: That was his whole political persona.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he triggered the lips was his political persona.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: But the only way he won,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: and I'm not exaggerating here,
31:52
SPEAKER_00: although I'm putting it a bit provocatively, was because of a pedophile.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: You're going to have to explain that.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to unpack that one.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: So the only reason he won,
32:04
SPEAKER_00: I was talking about how Maine loves independence was because there was
32:06
SPEAKER_00: an independent on the ballot.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: There was a third candidate and he was a moderate who exactly in the kind
32:14
SPEAKER_00: of somewhere between Susan Collins and Angus King mode of, you know, the centrist.
32:20
SPEAKER_00: Why can't we all get along and be bipartisan and be, uh, uh,
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Eliott Cutler was his name so he ran the first time Paula Page ran
32:32
SPEAKER_00: and Paula Page won with I think it was like 36% or 39% of the vote and then
32:36
SPEAKER_00: the second time he ran again and Paula Page again won with I can't remember
32:41
SPEAKER_00: if it was 39 the first time and 36 the second time but you know he won with
32:44
SPEAKER_00: a minority of the vote basically like you see that same number cropping up around
32:48
SPEAKER_00: the country that's like roughly the MAGA
32:52
SPEAKER_00: is around somewhere in like 36%.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: And that was how Paula Page won.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: It was enough to win, but people love the independence here.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: I say the pedophile thing,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: it turns out years later,
33:02
SPEAKER_00: Elliot Cutler is now in and out of jail constantly because he was caught with
33:06
SPEAKER_00: a bunch of child pornography and he keeps violating his parole for that.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: But he was kind of the quintessential, like no labels, nice person.
33:17
SPEAKER_00: Businessman in khakis and a button-down shirt guy who appealed to a lot
33:22
SPEAKER_00: of people here and Democrats argue,
33:27
SPEAKER_00: if I think correctly, gave Paula Page the governorship in the process.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: And that, more or less, is why Maine adopted Frank Choice Voting.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
33:40
SPEAKER_00: To prevent another...
33:41
SPEAKER_00: Pedophile from letting fall of age win the governorship.
33:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm being facetious here.
33:47
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, the idea was to, you know, okay, you're interested in third party.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: Third parties have always done well here too.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: You're interested in third party candidates and independent candidates,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: but it can lead to these unanticipated consequences.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Great.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: Let's let you do that.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: But rank choice turns out, whoops, there's a provision in the state constitution that says
34:08
SPEAKER_00: To be the governor,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: you have to win a plurality of the votes,
34:11
SPEAKER_00: which doesn't work, and that's not how ranked choice operates.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: So ranked choice has now been,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: by the state Supreme Court,
34:18
SPEAKER_00: has now been removed from the governor's race and only applies to primaries,
34:26
SPEAKER_00: which is why we have this very long process to figure out who won
34:30
SPEAKER_00: the nominations this time around for governor.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's, I mean,
34:33
SPEAKER_01: it's a kind of funny thing where it like,
34:36
SPEAKER_01: but the impetus for it was the general election for the governor.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: And now we're using it in Democratic Party primaries and not actually in the governor's race.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: But I think the significance of LePage or part of the significance of LePage is
34:53
SPEAKER_01: that, you know, people have a lot of takes about Donald Trump.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: But LePage...
35:02
SPEAKER_01: Was just like literally before Trump.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And he, even though the only way he got to a majority in a blue state was
35:09
SPEAKER_01: with this color vote splitting,
35:10
SPEAKER_01: he really dominated with people who would later become Obama
35:15
SPEAKER_01: to Trump crossover voters.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: He had a message,
35:21
SPEAKER_01: like a substance to his message that would be familiar to people
35:26
SPEAKER_01: who watch Trump's national campaigns, which really had a lot to do with immigration.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: Right.
35:33
SPEAKER_01: And like,
35:33
SPEAKER_01: not even with like,
35:35
SPEAKER_01: not with the security of the border with Canada,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: but with the idea that refugees,
35:41
SPEAKER_01: particularly Somalis, I think, in Lewiston were like wrecking the state.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: And
35:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, like a lot of people just seem to agree with that.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a fascinating history there.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: Like one of the many superlatives for Maine, it is the whitest state in the country, literally.
36:01
SPEAKER_00: And in the early 2000s, there was a population of Somali refugees settled in the Lewiston area.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Lewiston is this,
36:09
SPEAKER_00: you know, very depressed, former post-industrial mill town where Bates College is.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: I went to Bates for a year and a kid in the class above me got stabbed at a local bar.
36:21
SPEAKER_00: The KKK, which existed at the time, staged a protest against the Somalis coming in.
36:27
SPEAKER_00: And then there was this counter rally that Susan Collins headlined on
36:31
SPEAKER_00: the Bates College campus where like 4,000 people turned out and they kind of,
36:37
SPEAKER_00: oh, and the mayor of Lewiston was against the Somalis coming in.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: So there's this counter rally and everyone kind of declared victory and like,
36:42
SPEAKER_00: yay, we defeated racism.
36:44
SPEAKER_00: Somalis are welcome.
36:46
SPEAKER_00: But actually,
36:47
SPEAKER_00: the mayor of Lewiston and a lot of other people, the resentment lingered and grew.
36:54
SPEAKER_00: And there's been more refugees who have come in.
36:57
SPEAKER_00: And then just the kind of like cultural or racist,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: you look at it like the idea of like,
37:03
SPEAKER_00: you know, you're changing the nature of the culture of this population.
37:06
SPEAKER_00: And the page has tapped into that very much.
37:08
SPEAKER_00: And like Trump, he has never gone away.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: Like he ran for
37:13
SPEAKER_00: and won for governor two times.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: He tried to leave.
37:15
SPEAKER_00: He went to Florida.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: He literally said, I'm done with Maine politics.
37:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm done with Maine.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to Florida.
37:20
SPEAKER_00: But he got basically drafted into running again against Janet Mills and lost.
37:25
SPEAKER_00: And then he got out again and then got drafted back into running now for Congress in
37:30
SPEAKER_00: the second congressional district because he is the best and kind of only Republican
37:38
SPEAKER_00: in the state who speaks to that MAGA base because the
37:42
SPEAKER_00: Republican establishment,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: such as it is or was,
37:44
SPEAKER_00: was of the Susan Collins Olympia Snow mold that wanted nothing to do.
37:48
SPEAKER_00: They were at the counter protest to the Paula Page faction, not the Paula Page rally.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: And he's tapped into that.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Also a fascinating personal character.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like a Dickensian...
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Life Story.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: He literally grew up sleeping on a bar floor with an abusive father,
38:10
SPEAKER_00: alcoholic father,
38:11
SPEAKER_00: never finished, I don't think he even finished grade school, let alone high school.
38:15
SPEAKER_00: French was his first language.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Just absolutely abysmal stuff that you can't imagine.
38:22
SPEAKER_00: And then pulled himself up by the bootstraps, according to his narrative, and became governor.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: And that
38:29
SPEAKER_00: personal story,
38:29
SPEAKER_00: that narrative,
38:31
SPEAKER_00: the role of religion in that like very much appeals to a lot of people
38:38
SPEAKER_00: in conservative rural parts of the state,
38:40
SPEAKER_00: just like it does,
38:40
SPEAKER_00: you know, rural New England is just like rural anywhere else in America.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:45
SPEAKER_01: No, I mean, so here, we can take a break and come back and talk about LePage's sort of comeback.