Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson and his running mate, Bill Weld, will make an appearance in Portland on Friday before heading to Lewiston for a rally.
The Portland event will be a brunch from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Portland Regency Hotel & Spa on Milk Street in the Old Port. The event is free but limited to the first 100 people who sign up at www.eventrbrite.com.
Johnson is a former New Mexico governor who held office in the 1990s while Weld is a former governor of Massachusetts. The two will hold a rally at Lewiston’s Franco American Heritage Center at 6 p.m. Friday.
Johnson favors marijuana legalization, which is on the ballot in Maine in November.
Maine is known for having an independent streak in presidential elections. It was one of only two states in 1992 where independent presidential candidate H. Ross Perot came in second. In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton won Maine with 38.8 percent of the vote, followed by Perot at 30.44 percent, who finished ahead of Republican President George H.W. Bush, with 30.39 percent.
Clinton unseated Bush and went on to win a second term in 1996.
In 1980, independent John Anderson captured 10 percent of the vote in Maine, finishing a distant third to Ronald Reagan and President Jimmy Carter. Reagan, a Republican, defeated Carter for the first of his two terms.
And in 1912, former President Theodore Roosevelt, running as a third-party candidate on the Progressive ticket, nearly won Maine, finishing a close second to Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who won the presidency that year.
The Johnson/Weld ticket has been polling in the upper single digits, at 8.7 percent in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in which the third-party option is included in the questioning.
The appearance at the Franco American Heritage Center, in Lewiston’s Little Canada neighborhood, will be part of a New England sweep for Johnson and Weld.
The Libertarian ticket has gained attention in recent weeks as prominent Republicans, including Maine’s U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, have said they won’t vote for Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Hillary Clinton.
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