When you visit the State House in these early days of the session, there’s a new atmosphere. People actually seem glad to see each other, and the tension that quickly built up in recent sessions has yet to surface.
A lot of that is due to the end of pandemic conditions, and leadership decisions to keep committee work online even during the 2022 session, long after most legislatures had returned fully in-person.
If you’ve ever tried to strike a complex bargain on Zoom, or made a life-changing decision, you’ll understand how difficult it is to create meaningful compromises when the negotiators are tiny boxes on a screen.
House Minority Leader Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, R-Winter Harbor, looks up at the vote tally board in the House chamber Jan. 4. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal
I sense something more than the usual friendly relations with neighbors and those across the aisle that are especially vital in a citizen legislature, where most members really don’t match the description “politician.”
It’s most evident in the House, where all five leaders are new to their posts. There’s a pragmatic streak running through the group that could help the chamber avoid the traps that so often lead to straight party-line votes.
When Republicans, licking electoral wounds suffered on Nov. 8, caucused to choose leaders, the smart money was on either Josh Morris or Laurel Libby, who most fit the existing GOP mold.
Instead, after multiple ballots, Billy Bob Faulkingham, a lobsterman from Winter Harbor, emerged with a majority. A maverick who’s collaborated with Democrats on key bills in the past, he immediately signaled he wouldn’t be bound by previous understandings of the role.
Faulkingham made a joint appearance with Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross and tribal leaders, something once almost unthinkable. He said he thought the tribes — who’ve had a hard go with Janet Mills, like all previous governors since the 1980 Land Claims Settlement Act — made some legitimate points.
It seems possible — just — that this Legislature could find some common ground, and claw back some territory from Mills, who like most governors has used all the considerable powers of her office.
Again, the pandemic and the emergency authority wielded by governors nationwide had a tendency to disadvantage lawmakers, but there’s really nothing new about the executive-legislative imbalance in Maine.
It started when Ed Muskie, Maine’s most important 20th century statesman, got a four-year term for governor onto the ballot in 1957, breaking from the other northern New England states. To this day, Vermont and New Hampshire have a two-year term, and New Hampshire has an Executive Council that significantly checks gubernatorial authority.
Maine abolished its legislatively chosen Executive Council in 1976, and the further diminution of the Legislature occurred in 1993 with the installation of term limits. Leaders have the same job description as before, but without much experience they often have little choice but to defer to the governor.
Senate President Troy Jackson will be the first leader under term limits to serve the full six years permitted under the rules. No one else has held a top leadership post more than four years, and most serve only two.
One might venture the heretical thought that Maine governors have too much power, vis a vis the Legislature. The only effective way to challenge a governor is to unite across party lines, which has happened rarely since partisan polarization set in.
An indication that Maine’s two-term governors wear out their welcome is suggested by the results of U.S. Senate races. In New Hampshire, senators are often former governors, including both incumbents, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
Muskie was the last Maine governor to successfully run for the Senate, something Joe Brennan failed to achieve as the Democratic nominee in 1996.
Angus King, an independent, is the one exception, but his initial Senate candidacy was almost a fluke. He freely admits he had no further political ambitions when he left the Blaine House after the 2002 election.
After Olympia Snowe surprised many by announcing her retirement in 2012, King was the only prominent figure to jump in. None of the other governors since Muskie — John Reed, Jim Longley, John McKernan, John Baldacci and Paul LePage — even tried, nor does Mills seems likely to.
In most small states, senator is the position to which governors aspire, but Maine governors end up tarnished in voters’ eyes.
It can’t be simply a matter of personality, but of position — and power. Yet without significant structural changes, and as long as legislative terms limits remain in force, it seems unlikely much will change.
A little institutional solidarity might at least overcome some obstacles. We’ll know by June whether this group of lawmakers wants to make the push.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books, and is now researching the life and career of a U.S. Chief Justice. He welcomes comment at: drooks@tds.net
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