Ben Chin has a chance to put Lewiston under firm Democratic control in Tuesday’s mayoral race. Shane Bouchard can continue a recent and partial Republican trend there.
Good morning from Augusta, where things continue to be slow this week with the Maine Legislature mostly out of town on a February break. But after the Appropriations Committee began four days of hearings on the wide-ranging Maine Department of Health and Human Services portion of Gov. Paul LePage’s two-year budget proposal on Tuesday, Democrats began to fire back […]
A bill that would make it easier to export American sea urchins was introduced by Maine’s members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday. The problem, according to U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Bruce Poliquin, is that federal officials recently began requiring inspections of urchins entering and leaving the country. So, urchins are inspected when they’re brought from Canada to […]
Gov. Paul LePage said Wednesday that he’s “appalled at the lack of parenting” a transgender boy from Virginia has received in the run-up to a lawsuit against a school district’s bathroom-use policy. It was the first time that the Republican governor has spoken about the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit on behalf of Gavin Grimm, a high school student who […]
Election junkies get a December encore tonight, when the Lewiston mayoral race will be decided in a runoff between two-term Mayor Robert Macdonald and Ben Chin. The candidates couldn’t be more different if you cast them: Macdonald, 68, is a conservative Vietnam War veteran and retired police detective while Chin, 30, is a progressive activist with the […]
Good morning folks, and happy Dec. 1. Reminder: There are only 390 shopping days left until Christmas 2016. Action at the State House will likely be slow for the holiday season, but as my colleague Mike Shepherd explained in yesterday’s Daily Brief, there will be a steady drip of events this week. Today, a commission that […]
U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin went on “The Howie Carr Show” on Monday to talk about the Syrian refugee situation and criticize President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. The Republican from Maine’s 2nd District has voted against continuing President Barack Obama’s plan of resettling 10,000 refugees from Syria, which is in the midst of a civil war complicated […]
A Republican has launched an uphill 2016 challenge against U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat from Maine’s 1st District. Mark Holbrook, a clinical professional counselor from Brunswick, filed paperwork to run with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday. He’s the first Republican to announce a run against Pingree, who cruised to an easy win against two […]
This ad for Lewiston Mayor Robert Macdonald’s re-election bid was spotted in a local weekly paper yesterday, and I’m still struggling to understand it. Macdonald, a two-term incumbent known for being conservative, finds himself locked in a battle with Democratic activist Ben Chin. Three other candidates — Stephen Morgan, Luke Jensen and Charles Soule — […]
Good morning from Augusta. Today’s Daily Brief is brought to you by two letters from Gov. Paul LePage’s administration that caught our eye last week. LePage isn’t big on Roger Katz these days LePage has escalated an intra-party fight with Sen. Roger Katz, forwarding two letters to the Maine Republican Party’s state committee urging the senator to recuse […]
