Though the legislative session isn’t quite over, it’s not too soon to identify the dominant player. To no one’s surprise, it’s Gov. Janet Mills.
At least since the installation of legislative term limits in 1996, governors have generally had their way when it comes to which bills pass and which don’t.
Legislative leaders, usually heading their chamber for the first time — especially in the House — are usually outgunned and outmaneuvered by governors, whose powers are impressive and have increased notably during the administrations of both Mills, a Democrat, and her GOP predecessor, Paul LePage.
The real question is whether Mills’ “wins” benefit her party, or the state as a whole.
The two major clashes came over Mills’ abortion rights bill, L.D. 1619 — her one real priority — and the attempts to allow Maine’s Indian tribes to benefit from numerous federal laws to which they have been denied access, L.D. 2004.
Notably, the tribal bill was sponsored by both House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross and her Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, and earned a supermajority, bipartisan roll call vote of 100-47 before falling victim to Mills’ veto.
In both cases, it’s harder to find a larger purpose to the governor’s strategy, other than extending and expanding positions that “work” politically for her.
On abortion, Democrats have become increasingly militant, largely in response to the almost crazed movement in Republican states to create ever-tighter restrictions following last year’s U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision, which overruled the stability created by the 1973 Roe v. Wade landmark and invited a free-for-all.
Mills was asked for her position during her 2022 reelection campaign, and consistently answered she was satisfied with Maine’s law codifying Roe, seeing no need for amendment.
After being inaugurated in January, things changed. Citing the case of Dana Peirce, the woman who had to travel to Colorado for a late-term abortion, Mills decided a greatly liberalized law was needed.
And she made it clear her party must support her, and enact a new law in exactly the form she prescribed — which says that any time a physician finds an abortion medically necessary, it’s legal.
As mostly Republican opponents quickly pointed out, this potentially allows abortions up to the moment of birth, far beyond the original Roe standard of viability.
In response, the governor’s supporters kept repeating that such abortions were “rare,” which of course they were because many were illegal.
It took a Portland representative who grew up in Fort Kent, Ben Collings, to focus on what the bill was supposed to do: allow late-term abortions in cases where the fetus could not survive.
He said later he couldn’t understand why no one had previously offered such an amendment. When he introduced it at the beginning of floor debate, it was too late for compromise, mostly because Mills wasn’t accepting any changes.
And so, after an agonizing six-hour delay to round up enough Democrats, the speaker gaveled it through.
The consequences have yet to be determined, but after a 19-hour hearing dominated by opponents, and Maine’s Catholic bishop denouncing the bill as “radical,” we may be seeing what after Dobbs seemed unthinkable: Revival of a Maine right-to-life movement that had been marginalized for decades.
The tribal bill, preceded by the usual tortuous negotiations with the Governor’s Office, produced a measure that met all of Mills’ publicly stated objections.
Yes, it was introduced late in the session and, given the enormously complicated federal laws involved, had some questionable language.
Yet that can be attributed, again, to the governor’s continuing hostility to substantive changes in the 1980 Land Claims Settlement, putting the tribes uniquely under state law, rather than federal law. It’s a bad deal that keeps getting worse every time Congress passes new legislation whose benefits are denied Maine’s tribes.
After five years of this, it seems nothing the tribes and their legislative allies come up with will satisfy Mills’ objections, despite her vows to “collaborate.”
So it must be asked: Why doesn’t the governor introduce her own legislation, which would put her cards on the table, and provide a basis for genuine compromise?
That’s what Mainers should rightly expect from their governor.
Instead, we have a new law Mills said only a few months ago was unnecessary, and a veto of a bill that, whatever its flaws, represented the views of most Mainers as expressed by their representatives.
In all, it’s not a promising start for the second Mills administration and its ability to adapt and change in a post-pandemic era where firm, but not rigid, leadership is needed more than ever.
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