Your opinion: what turned Maine so liberal??

Lack of education...particularly in history and civics...but it's a nationwide problem...

1. Inexpensive waterfront property attracted people from Massachusetts and New York to buy that property and push traditional Mainers inland.
2. Once entrenched, those folks from Mass. and NY began to run for office. About 1/3 of Maine's legislature was not raised in Maine, therefore they have different ideas about government; most of those are probably Democrats and since they're in the majority in the Legislature, people who weren't raised in Maine are largely in charge of it.
3. Their anti-business/anti-private sector job perspectives have driven away businesses and the younger generations of Mainers.

Does that work?

Barry Goldwater's 1964 loss was the catylist in that we had straight ticket voting back then. You checked could one box at the top of the ballot. Republicans stayed home and the dems got a foot hold in places like Portland.

Steven Scharf
SCSMedia@aol.com

I think the education idea is interesting. Does that mean that the public schools became very liberal in the 60s and 70s, and if so, HOW did that happen? Just because it was happening in California or New York doesn't mean it automatically had to spread to here (if, indeed, that is what happened). If our schools changed their values that fast, what was behind that?? (Feel free to name names!)
Claude, your last idea is very interesting also. Do you think that if more young people had stayed in Maine over the last 40 years that the state would be less socially liberal than it is today? Do people who move here from away influence Mainers more than vice versa?

When people think they can get something for "free," they tend to go for it, slowly lose autonomy (what made this nation great) and look for the politician who will offer them the largest teat on the federal/state hog......same thing happened in WV.

Jim: People from away aren't the only influence. Over 50 years it is hard for a native to remain isolated with exposure to the views of the outside society bombarding daily on television and now the web. For that matter, I think if you travel the world and get access to people's homes you will find very few parts of the globe where societal norms are parochial and/or traditional. If they have power to run a TV and computer, they're exposed in the most geographically isolated places to the same things as American youths. And, globalization brings social homoginizing. And family structures have changed, too. Older generations embraced single, unwed motherhood, for instance, when it was their own daughters and they discovered friends who shared the same situation, thus destigmatizing it. Some relatively traditional households became more accepting of alternative lifestyles when it was one of their own family members who came out of the closet. I think many social mores have changed from the family outward due to their personal situations rather than from outside forces trickling down to them. Then the next generation, being raised in a more liberated environment, accepts that as the norm from which to move forward and the cycle continues.

In '64 the Senate went from 29R, 5D to 29D, 5R... the House 110R, 41D to 81D 70R. The next cycle Maine recovered her senses, but the slide had begun. In '74 the House went dRat for good, and the Senate only went R once since '82. The programs implemented by those liberal bodies have only attracted more like-minded slackers with no reason, only emotion. Maine is seen as the end of the road for a great many refuse from NJ and elsewhere... a place to run away from home to, as well as a safe haven for 2nd and 3rd gen-trustafarians. The Democrats have quite simply destroyed a once strong and independent state.

On the fiscal front, I don't think the people are different. The 19th and early-20th Century mill and factory economy was one of paternalism, albeit Republican private enterprise. Most small towns in Maine have one or two family names which go back 150 years and are on schools, libraries and other public edifaces as memory to when they owned the mill, the stores downtown and probably the housing tracts where the workers lived. As the manufacturing economy changed after World War II and factories phased out, government took over the paternalistic role which led to Democrat dominance. In both instances, however, there was an element of institutional dependency in the populace which simply accepted their lot in life and expected some outside force -- whether the owners with a job or the government with the dole -- to look after them.

A friend's father from one mill town told us a few years before he passed away the demeaning story of when he was a boy being sent by his mother to the factory owner's house gate because on the days before Thanksgiving and Christmas the patrician family handed out holiday food baskets. He said his mother told him, "Don't you forget to be humble and thank them, because without them your father would have no job and we'd have nothing." He said it was that mind set that made his father accept his lot in life and not rock the boat. He said it subsequently made him a staunch libertarian conservative because the experience made him believe thart no man -- businessman or government -- should have such control over another's life.

One of the Yankee-accent comics (I wish I could credit the correct source) has a great bit where he describes the Maine mindset by having his character shuffle his feet and utter, "Things have been bad for 150 years, so who am I to rock the boat and make 'em better?"

Some of that comes from the early Massachusetts puritan mindset.

Professor L. Digby Bizzell wrote a great sociology text some years ago contrasting the eventual stagnation of New England to the more vibrant economies and growth of the New York-Philadelphia area. He said the Yankee puritans were raised to never extoll or show success. They worked hard, got some gains but were never austentatious. They were raised religiously to drop their eyes to the ground and mutter softly, "Lord, I am but a sinner, thank you for the provenance." The Quakers and the Dutch Reform in New York and Pennsylvania on the other hand, were raised to give loud thanks. They would lift their heads high to expose their gains and to proclaim, "Lord, thank you for choosing me to bear the honor of your bounty." Interestingly, Ben Franklin fled Boston for Philadelphia for those very reasons.

Then, as you go West you find that the American spirit which fled the original stoic colonies is quite entrepreneurial and openly embraces its success. California started with the Gold Rush when ne'er-do-wells from the East struck it rich and their ladies suddenly found themselves the Social 400 with no prior societal constraints to dictate. California grew exponentially after World War II when thousands of servicemen from the northeast were faced with the prospects of returning home and falling back into their pre-ordained role in life or staying there with the ability to re-invent themselves and chose to be anything they wanted to be. And the vibrancy and self-sufficiency of the southwest is not surprising when you realize that their ancestors forged new trails and started whole communities from scratch based on new generation economies they created from large acrage farming to food cattle to the discovery of oil and minerals.

Democrats became the party of organized labor not only in this state but others. Once they got a foothold with the backing of labor, they set about creating a government that the people would have to depend on. They have done that and continue to do a fine job. Republicans have been in the wilderness ever since.

Unpublished letter (as far as I know) sent to PPH April 17, 2007; Liberal because of inaction by the Maine GOP

Will the GOP Van Winkle Wake Up?

At long last the Maine Republican Party under the leadership of Chairman Joe Bruno is showing feeble signs of awakening from a 27-year hypnotic sleep regarding the impact of the tax revolution enacted by the Democrat legislative majority in 1979 when the top individual income tax rate was raised to 10% from 6% and the threshhold income was reduced from $50,000 to $25,000.

These exorbitant rates, while being reduced to 8.5% and $16,000 under John McKernan, extracted over 50% increase in state individual income tax collections in 1988-1989, are still in effect, and during the 1990's drove Maine into the longest and deepest recession since the 1930's.

These rates are still more than double competitive state rates in the northeast which average 3.4% outside high tax states. The loss of manufacturing jobs, virtual killing of private investment, and reduction to zero of personal income growth from the private sector during the last five years, have been recounted ad infinitum, but nearly ignored by previous key Republican leaders. Since 1979, individual income tax collections have increased over 1000%, more than 5 times the rate of inflation and 2.5 times personal income growth, and given Maine the highest tax burden in the U.S.

No Illinois or Indiana entrepreneur in his right mind, who might enjoy being nearer the Maine coast, is likely to move and in so doing nearly triple the tax rate on his business and personal income as well as the personal income of staff who move with him.

In spite of this disastrous record of Democratic governors and legislative majority, Republican Party leadership has been unable up to now to muster enough fortitude, and actually refused last year at the GOP Convention, to include a specific income tax rate cut proposal in the GOP platform, and has been unwilling as a party to refuse to support budget increases which were clearly in excess of personal income growth and thereby increased the tax burden.

We have been inundated with spending caps of one kind or another, all of which are surrogates made necessary because Republicans have not had the character and skill to educate voters and win a majority to deal with the central issue, which is cutting both business and individual income tax rates to a competitive level.

The faint stirrings of tax-cutting reform come from talking points on Joe Bruno's web site (MaineGOP.com) claiming that Republicans support reducing the income tax rate to 5%, "eventually", and from a new bill (LD 157) authored by Representative Mike Vaughn, to cut the individual income tax rate to 3.5% by 2012, along with campaign promises by Senator Doug Smith to "cut income tax rates in half".

Neither Joe Bruno's talking points nor Mike Vaughn's bill include cutting business income tax rates, suggesting that the Republican vision of tax reform is not entirely clear. Low tax rates on income from business investment are the engine of job and income growth and ought to be top priority on the Republican agenda.

Stirrings for income tax rate cuts in the Maine House seem to have been hampered by well intended but overly cautious or incorrect thinking by individuals such as senior fiscal-manager legislators whose fiscal policy expertise may not always deserve such deference.

All Republican leaders deserve criticism for prolonged complacency, inaction, and failure to rise to the urgency of Maine's circumstances.

"Does that mean that the public schools became very liberal in the 60s and 70s, and if so, HOW did that happen?"

I believe I could write about this for weeks...but I will spare you the boredom...and put forth only a handful of reasons that it happened...

John Dewey...known as the "Father of Modern Education"...was one of the primary activists in what he himself called "progressive education"...he was also one of the founders of the Humanistic movement...though he identified himself as a "democratic socialist," he was...in actuality...a trotskyite (having directed the Dewey Commission in Mexico which cleared Trotsky of charges leveled by Stalin)...and one of the signers of the first Humanist Manifesto.

Madalyn Murray O'Hair...founder of American Atheists...set out to remove God from the public schools...despite the fact that our founders themselves inserted God and Christ himself into the schools of their time...and even proposed laws to protect those teachings...

With the banning of God...children have experienced the banning of absolutes...the banning of the knowledge of right and wrong...and the advent of such nonsense as "the ends justify the means"...relativism...and the advent of teachings like "ethical dilemmas."

Jimmy Carter dedicated a federal department to education...and that department became responsible for the printing of history and civics textbooks for all schools in the country...Previous to Carter's assignment of the spinoff department...education was relegated to life as the office of education...which held much less sway over the education itself...

A more refined question would be. How did Maine become so liberal lead by a party built on by votes of immigrant mill workers subserveant to the chatholic church and big box ballot?

Dolley Madison has nailed it with the "lack of education" point. IMHO, this has been compounded with the growing strength and use of bully tactics by BIG LABOR within Maine politics (e.g., SEIU, NEA, MEA, AFL-CIO, etc). Follow-the-money and it all leads to their ACORN network.

"DO YOU LIKE KOOL-AID?"

Three big reasons:

1. The Portland Press Herald
2. The Lewiston Sun-Journal
3. The Bangor Daily News

Feeding Maine liberal pablum for years.

Union activists and out of state liberals. Lewiston's Peggy Rotundo is a perfect example. Heavily supported by the Lewiston paper.

Dolley is the closest, but Lyndon Johnson's grand society had a big part in it too. Maine has created a multiple generation dependency class. They vote their self interest. That system depends on recruitment to sustain itself. "Clients" for many other states and nations come to Maine for the amazing social welfare system. When a welfare recipient in Massachusetts reaches the end of his eligibility they give him a bus ticket to Maine and he travels to the welfare land of milk and honey.

I agree with almost all of the responses. It is a confluence of causes. Among them is the fact that a person has not been able to make a decent living in Maine for decades. The going rate in many small towns is $8.50 per hour with no benefits. Because of this, the people I have met are very willing to give up freedoms for promises of financial gain and security. They all want something that will be paid for by someone else. in addition, not one of these Liberal Mainers knows squat about the Health Care bill but they sure wanted it passed.

It may be simpler yet.
I think that we in Maine have always been a "glass half empty" society. If you compliment a potato farmer on his beautiful fields, he would tell you "They ought to be pretty decent. I've been pickin' rocks out of 'em for 40 years." If you compliment a lobsterman on his boat, he'll tell you "Ayuh. When she's running I can generally make it all day without her breakin' down." A dairy farmer, "If I can keep the damn coyotes from killing off my stock I'd be half way there." Blueberry field owner, "I can't get no one to do a days work anymore." And on and on.
People, in my opinion, have to feel as though they are owed something, or are working at a disadvantage in order to buy in to the whole Liberal agenda. Many Mainers, have that in their DNA.

All good comments. Here in Brunswick, we have a variety of trustafarians, artsy retirees, and assorted "change the world" retirees. I also believe we are part of a larger national trend. In the past few days, we created 100 million or so guaranteed big government robots.

And don't overlook the fact that the children of the 60's are everywhere and running an amazing number of things.

That time was history making, and created an entire generation of people whacked out in various ways. I graduated from college in 63; within 2 or 3 years my Alma mater had been transformed into a place I did not recognize.

Read Bork's "Slouching to Gomorrah" for some great insights.

Equality, in a social sense, may be divided into that of condition and that of rights. Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.
James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851)

John Ratzenberger, in “We’ve got it made in America:
“Intelligence in the service of immorality (Hitler, for example) produces unspeakable evil, while intelligence in the service of idealism (Carter, etc.) often allows evil to fester.”

That logic is implacable too. Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end. (WSJ column)

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others, the same word many mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name - liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names - liberty and tyranny. - Lincoln

Reagan: Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

And lastly, the belief that the laws of economics are as immutable as the Constitution.

I suppose the big change in the early 60s was people becoming Ds because they were infatuated with the Kennedy mystique.
Later, as Ron Bancroft points out in today's PPH, John Martin became a dictator in the Legislature and the Ds got busy with recruiting strong candidates. Meanwhile they wrote laws to make it easy for teachers to serve in the Legislature but extended the days in session to make it tough for small business owners to serve. Good GOP candidates became a rare thing, enabling the D candidates to win most races and cement their majority.

The best thing we can do to turn things around is to reduce the number of days the Legislature sits in session.
I like the way Texas does it: 90 days every two years.

Ronald Bailey from Reason Magazine covered the following study on their website, which relates to some comments on education. The study says people who identified themselves as "very liberal" had a higher IQ than those who identified as "very conservative". Bailey reasoned this bodes well for the libertarian movement. Discuss.

Bob, but that's also a perfect example of what I noted earlier about legislators who were raised and educated in Mass. or New York and simply brought a different set of fiscal and other values that weren't inherent to Maine. It is what it is and you can see the results.

As I see it, Maine's Dem dominance comes down to several key points:

1) Maine - as with the rest of northern New England - has always been a more or less libertarian place. Still is. That means that the majority of people don't really care who sleeps with what, as long as you keep it on your side of the fence. This socially liberal tolerance grants Dems a toe-hold.

2) Union power. First in the paper mills, now in state government (and teachers).

3) (the biggie): Party organization. Ds are organized. Rs are not, haven't been for a long time, and from what I've seen this isn't getting any better. What does it say when the largest city in the state could only pull about 20 residents for its caucus? Meantime, the Ds do an excellent job of recruiting candidates who are willing to put in the time and go knock on their neighbors' doors. That counts for a lot. If the Maine GOP produces good results in November - and God help us all if it doesn't - it will more likely be the result of a state and national wave of anger at D over-reach than any impressive strategic or tactical moves on the part of the Maine GOP.

the best solution cited: legislature meets 90 days every two years.

The revulsion of an increasingly secularized populace against fundamentalism has not received enough attention above, but otherwise, the analysis is spot on.

Also, Wallace got only 3000 votes for President in 1968 here, less than 1% when he was polling 14% nationally. Far reaching implications are possible thinking about that factor.

Still, it takes a leader to form a new order out of the chaos of events, and his name was John Martin.

It is interesting to read how the reasons for the change seems to always relate to things that have occured in one's lifetime when in fact they have been developing since before the ink was dry on the blueprint for our country, the Constitution. The mistake the framers made was not in providing severe personal punishment for those who strayed from the bluepint. It allowed those seeking power to twist and contort the plans to their own end without consequence. When you think about it, every significant problem we face today can be laid at the feet of those who were the most devient.

Mrs. Madison:

It is widely accepted that people become more liberal as they become more educated (I have no data to support this assumption). It is also widely accepted that there is a "brain drain" here, that young Mainers leave after graduating from college for the lure of better jobs and pay.

Both of these are in opposition to your argument.

Yours, etc.

Mr. Gerald Weinand

Great thoughts, all. I am not so interested in how the DEMS took over Maine as how liberaism itself sprouted so quickly. Example: it has always been very important to know if someone was "from away", as that would suggest a difference in outlook/lifestyle. In other words, this was a very "conservative" question to ask. So HOW did it happen in the 1960s and 70s that asking this question didn't keep a large number of people from away from winning Legislative races (as Claude points out)? Shouldn't it have stopped them (logically)?
Another post mentioned Kennedy and the religious connection in Maine. This is interesting, as most of those Maine Kennedy Dems were pretty conservative. So why didn't they serve as a moderating influence on the Democratic Party over the last 40 years, and oppose its slide into social liberalism? (My parents would fit into this category; maybe I should ask them but at their age it would probably just be a depressing conversation for them).
In 1964, the Legislature turned from solid Rep. to solid Dem. Since most politics is local, and Maine's conservatism, by definition, SHOULD have allowed most Maine Legislators to hang on to their seats despite Kennedy's death, why did that not happen? Also, When liberal people from out of state moved to Maine, how is it that their ideas gained any traction at all?
I guess I am trying to get at less of the national picture and understand what happened to a state that was once socially conservative (religion was taught in public schools well into the 1950s, for example; and there were "poor farms" in place of government welfare programs in many communities for almost as long). Were those conservative values just not vey important or tightly-held by Mainers? Were the Gannets, Warrens, etc. of the 1950s, 60s and 70s socially liberal? (I would think so).

Thrasybulus
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Joined: 03/17/2008

"The revulsion of an increasingly secularized populace against fundamentalism has not received enough attention above, but otherwise, the analysis is spot on.

Also, Wallace got only 3000 votes for President in 1968 here, less than 1% when he was polling 14% nationally. Far reaching implications are possible thinking about that factor.

Still, it takes a leader to form a new order out of the chaos of events, and his name was John Martin."

See, this is what helps to consider (good post). The state turned its back on Wallace, I'm sure at least in part due to its longstanding conservatism (he seemed pretty radical). OR is it that the arch-conservative Wallace was shunned by a state that had already started to shed its conservatism (as evidenced by the 1964 sweep in Maine)??
If John Martin is such a social liberal (I'd have to agree), how is it that he was "allowed" to take over the state in the early 70s?? A pure liberal coming out of an area with a small population taking over an entire conservative state? Doesn't seem possible. Would not have happened in some states.

How about Bryan Caplan's Idea Trap?

Thus, the least pleasant places in the world to live normally have three features in common: First, low economic growth; second, policies that discourage growth; and third, resistance to the idea that other policies would be better. I have a theory to explain this curious combination. ...

1. Good ideas cause good policies.
2. Good policies cause good growth.

The third law is much less intuitive:

3. Good growth causes good ideas.

As I've written before, Maine's tax regime has lead to low economc growth and continues to discourage economic growth. Let's consider the last forty years.

First, Maine's relatively poor economic performance, in comparison with national averages, can be traced to its implementation of a personal income tax circa 1970 which was not indexed for inflation. As result, Maine's real effective tax rates have grown steadily for the past forty years. Between 1986 and 2006, for example, the real average annual rate of growth in taxes was 3.0%. When we consider that change happens on the margin, that's a huge number.

The second driver of Maine's fiscal "idea trap" has been the incentive operating on the legislature to capture federal matching funds. For each dollar of additional tax revenue, Maine expends about $1.40. This subsidy has gradually shifted Maine's economy from private production toward government-funded services and, over time, this additional revenue from federal matching has created a powerful constituency that effectively resists fiscal reforms.

Many of the ideas others have suggested for Maine's shift toward liberalism (influence of schools, decline in levels of educational achievement, in-migration of trust fund liberals) are results of these two, related long-term causes.

IT IS SAID: " If you aren't a Democrat in your youth...you have no heart. If you aren't a Republican in your adulthood, you have no brains.

Most native Mainers are still all heart.

We need a gentle blending of the two.