Transcript

Jason Savage · Newsradio WGAN

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And an opportunity to speak with our friend Jason Savage,
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executive director of The Maine Republican Party.
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And every time I talk to him, we inch closer and closer to 0
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hour. Primary day is right around the
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corner. Voting has begun.
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People will be making decisions in the next week or so.
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It's unbelievably exciting. How are you doing this morning,
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Jason Savage? I am good, Matt.
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And so we March on. That is exactly how I feel.
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Right now. And so we March on here.
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Tell me a little bit, Sir, about your reaction to the UNH poll
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that you saw yesterday. There's obviously many results
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inside there, including Collins V Plattner.
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You have the primary and the Democratic Party.
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The primary and the Republican Party in the CD Two race for the
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Democrats, which I was just highlighting for the audience,
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said that Jordan Wood was winning.
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I don't know what your reaction to, frankly, all this polling
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is, right? We don't get much of it.
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And when we do, I'm always sitting here dumping on it.
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And it may, I feel like a little guilty about it.
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Like, you know, I'm just, I'm just, you know, a naysayer.
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But boy, I find so little to to like in in what I'm seeing here
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in terms of what their methodology is and and the
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results that they're getting being out of alignment with what
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I really think is really going on out there.
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What do you think is actually happening versus what they're
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showing? Well.
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Again, I mean, I, I believe that the trend is your friend, so to
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speak, but the polling has to be done professionally and
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accurately. You know there at least like the
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sample on this one is like almost a quarter independence
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and I I mean. It's not going to be on Election
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Day. Let's.
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Just no, it's not going to be. And, and that's the thing, like
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I watch people spend a lot of money trying to get independence
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to vote in primaries and, and it just doesn't really happen.
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And, and so if you, if you want to live in the, the timeline
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where 23% of the primary electorate is independent
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voters, then that that might be a, a, you know, a reasonably
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accurate poll. And then the, the, the general,
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the head to head in the Senate again.
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It's like, if I remember correctly, Senator Collins wins
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independence by three, but somehow they end up with her
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down. Not like it's like the last one
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where she, you know, the, the gender gap in law.
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It's just somebody's, it's like the poles are smoking crack or
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something. I don't know.
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Yeah. I mean it's a nine point lead
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for Plattner. And the last time that I will
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say this, I mean you said the trend is your friend, right.
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If you go back to their February poll, you know Plattner was
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leading by 11. So the margins actually going
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down there. So whatever reality is, whether
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he is up 10 points or whether he's down 10 points, that might
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tell you a little something, that it's starting to edge more
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narrowly between the two of them wherever reality may fall.
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But I just, this ain't reality. I mean, I, I, you know, I know,
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I, it's a dangerous thing to constantly bring up that they
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were wrong so badly in 2020, the last time the Collins ran.
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Because, you know, they're wrong until they're right.
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And you can't just guarantee that they're wrong and wrong by
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the same margin every time, obviously.
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And yet it was the same polls. It was Pan Atlantic, it was UNH,
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it was these pollsters that don't have a lot of experience
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in Maine and have suspect methodologies that just didn't
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get it right before. And I don't see any sign of
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improvement in what they're doing that would give me any
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confidence that their numbers are reflecting reality.
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It, it's one thing to be wrong, it's another one to be wrong to
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such a scale that it's like leading to arrogance and, and
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you know, cockiness and destructiveness.
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And, and in 2020, you know, it was like, it was like the
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polling being wrong in 2020 was rocket fuel for the left.
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And they kept, they kept putting more money in because they
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thought they were winning and they were, they were never
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winning. And but it was, it was like
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rocket fuel. They were, they were doing it.
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I, I really feel like it was every time something came out.
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The said Gideon was ahead of Collins.
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It became this big thing where they got another push, another
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wave of donations, and so it started to feed on itself.
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And I think that that's what's happening here, too.
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Yeah. Jason Savage joining us,
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executive director of The Maine Republican Party.
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And you know, the other thing that it, it strikes me as being
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illustrative of is that you had a narrative form because of
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those polls that were existing in 2020.
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Every, I mean, every single one of them for the better part of a
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year plus said the same thing, some version of Gideon +4 to
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Gideon plus like 9 or 10. And every media report that was
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written in main media sources, certainly Bangor Daily News in
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the Press Herald, but also national outlets.
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I mean, Gideon wasn't on the cover of Time magazine or
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anything, but, you know, every New York Times piece, every
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Washington Post piece, everything that you saw in the
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national news was talking about Gideon as though she had already
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won. And that, like, Collins was
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doomed and like, you know, her time is over and all this other
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stuff. And then as soon as the election
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happened and that was all wrong, they just sort of ignored that
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year of their hype. You know, they that that hyping
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up of this candidate and this loss that never materialized.
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It's just like it never happened.
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They just moved on. Big, no big deal.
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Yeah, sure. We were wrong for more than a
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year. No introspection because the
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goal here was not to be accurate.
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The goal was to keep adding fuel to the fire.
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And you know, Sarah Gideon's name was not synonymous with
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porta potties and Nazi tattoos. So there's a, there's a, a
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different, a disconnect there as well.
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So, you know, I think, I think that that lack of introspection
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is just, it kind of goes to motive, right?
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If, if your motive is to continue feeding the narrative
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of the left, then you do it until you are wrong.
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And then you take a break for a year and then you do it again.
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Because your your objective is to destroy somebody on the right
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side of the political spectrum. It's not about being right and
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and worrying about your reputation, which is kind of the
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whole thing right now, I guess with that with a lot of people
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over there. Jason Savage turning our
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attention to the Republican primary.
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Obviously in the position you're in, I'm not going to ask you
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about who you're you're going to be voting for or who you think
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is really winning or any of that nonsense.
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Won't go there. But I do have a question for you
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as it relates to the system that we're using to select this
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nominee. Rank choice voting will be used
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in Maine. Do you have a recommendation?
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I know that you get asked as probably often as I do, you
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know, hey, what do I, what should you do?
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Like what, what, what am I going to do?
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Like, you know, should I rank? Should I not rank?
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Should I partially rank? Should I do bullet voting?
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Like what should I do? Do you have a recommendation or
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advice for people and how they approach this?
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Sure. Yeah.
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And actually just a couple weeks ago I did AI did a seminar with
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Laurel Libby on this. My best advice is you can vote
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for one candidate straight across.
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You can rank your candidates. My best advice is to finish your
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ballot one way or the other. And I tell people that because
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you you want to establish voter intent, you know, you want to
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show and by. By finish your ballot you mean
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go all the all 7 rounds with either a bullet vote or ranking
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all 7? Yep, Yep, Because then you're
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establishing that you there was intent there.
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I, I'll give this example. My, my wife is left-handed and
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one of the things that being a lefty that she experiences
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sometimes she writes in her hand like sweeps on the ink and like
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smudges it. And you know, for somebody who's
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left-handed or for some maybe the machine, like the ballots
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got a little crease in it or something.
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You, if you Dean gets like smudged or, or whatever and it
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doesn't read the first round, then it will continue reading
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the second third. If you go to a recount and you
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know, the lawyers are looking at it and they can see that, you
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know, that ballot in the first round was for this candidate and
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it's, you know, mostly filled in and then you ranked everybody
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else. You can argue voter intent in
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either of those cases. So I tell everybody to finish
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your ballot. If you just bullet vote in the
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first round and something happens and that ballots damaged
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or smudged, it's going to be hard to argue that voter intent
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was that vote. And you know, so it's, it's
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really in like the the margins of whether it's a realistic like
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likely concern or not, but it is on the outside.
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It's it's a concern. So just finish your ballot,
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either rank everybody or vote straight across for the person
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you want Your your vote will be counted either way.
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All. Right.
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So I have to ask you inevitable question if indeed something
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happens in this primary where a winner loses, much like Bruce
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Palquin did back in the day where you know, candidate X had
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like 30 or 35% of the vote and you know, they were up by like 8
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or 10 points or something like that.
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But in the end, the retabulations from round 234,
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etcetera, ultimately hand it to someone else.
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Do you think that the candidates will all sort of accept that,
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move on, point at the person who won after the end of the rank
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choice voting vote and say, well, that's our guy, we're not
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testing anything, there's no argument, etcetera?
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Or do you think we might have a food fight if that kind of thing
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happens? I hope we don't have a food
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fight because with just a few months to go before we have to
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actually take on the Democrat, if they have their nominee and
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they're running straight forward towards the the finish line and
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we're sitting back arguing with each other, it's destructive not
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just for the party or for our our candidate, but for the
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people of Maine. I mean, I don't think the people
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of Maine can afford four more years of whether it's Nirav Shah
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or Shanna Bellows or Troy Jackson, like I don't think we
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can afford that. So I hope that we all come
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together. We have a unity breakfast
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planned for June 20th and we're going to pull everybody together
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there. We're hoping, really fingers
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crossed that we'll have a a candidate, you know, by then,
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even under ranked choice voting. But I would hope that everybody
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will say for the good of the state of Maine, we're going to
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come together around the person who's the winner here and, and
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move forward and, and win. You know, that's the goal here.
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It's winning. It's I think any of our
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candidates would make great governors and the party is ready
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to support whoever it is. But we're just waiting for our
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waiting for our nominee. Waiting for the nominee, indeed.
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Final question, I think I have time for here, Jason.
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Over on the Democratic side of the aisle, one of the things
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that the not really reliable crummy polling that we've seen
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has shown us is volatility. You know, near of Shaw seems to
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be, you know, a front runner, if you want to call him that or
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whatever. But, you know, this last UNH
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poll had Troy Jackson up there tied with him.
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I've seen Hannah Pingree up top there.
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I've seen Angus King in second place.
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I've seen Shanna Bellows consistently sort of up high.
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I mean, I have no idea what to think about who's doing what in
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that primary. But I do know that there is a
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triple alliance, a triumvirate that has formed between the
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progressives seeking to deny either Angus King or near of
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Shaw the ability to win. Which is I think what the
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designers of ranked choice voting really dreamed of, right?
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Was it was having, you know, alliances form where people are
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recommending other people in that primary for second and
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third choice votes, etcetera. But all it's going to do is make
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sure that the most extreme Democrat wins, right?
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What's your what's your take on what's happening over there in
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the Democratic Party right now? Well, I, I think both sides have
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some of that going on. There's just they're featuring,
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there's a lot more. I think that the, the
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volatility, I think it was either last week or the week
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before I said on, on here with you that the Pert, the primary
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candidate on the DEMP side who spent the most time or most
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visibility with the Nazi tattoo guy was going to have an
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advantage. And I think Troy Jackson's been
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doing a lot of that lately. So I think he has the benefit
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both of being part of that three person alliance and also getting
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to stand on stage with the Nazi tattoo guy and, and the, the
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self-described socialist from Vermont.
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So, you know, I, I think that I'm not surprised by that.
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That may be the the most accurate thing in that poll.
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All right. Well, that's a good place to
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end. Sadly, I am out of time.
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Jason Savage, appreciate it, as always.
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We'll talk again next Thursday and it'll be 0 or at that point
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for real, so look forward to it. Thanks a lot, Jason.