The liberal political preferences of a Portland Press Herald writer later credited with Angus King’s political fortunes have finally been acknowledged.
But Democrat Dennis Bailey, according to veteran Maine political analyst Al Diamon, has now been relegated to writing a Portuguese travel guide.
Bailey is just the latest legacy reporter to be exposed – a liberal masquerading as a so-called journalist-turned political consultant.
Twice now in less than a week, two enlistees of Maine’s largest paper have come out of the closet, openly acknowledging what we’ve suspected all along – they were card-carrying Democrat liberals pretending to be fair-minded reporters.
In a new “book,” Bailey says he’s decided to throw in the towel as a politico because conservatives have “poisoned” the American electorate beyond his ability to bear.
Bailey’s admission comes just days after the Maine Trust for Local News, which bought the Press Herald in 2023, promoted a so-called political reporter, Steve Collins, who announced his elevation to partisan columnist with a published confession: “I’ve been a Democrat since day one.”
Knock me over with a feather, right?
[RELATED: Avowed Democrat White Guy Promoted To Political Columnist By Maine’s Favorite Partisan News Organ]
In his latest column for something called The Bollard, which is Maine’s latest effort at alternative journalism, Diamon excoriates Bailey for wilting like a wildflower and quitting the political game in the face of political pressure from the hands of a movement headed by a guy named Donald Trump.
Bailey wrote for Maine’s largest paper in the 1980s, hiding his liberal political leanings long enough to switch hats from allegedly practicing journalism to becoming a shill for a Democrat who realized the only way to hoodwink Maine’s working class was to become an “independent.”
That turncoat would be Angus King, the rich Virginia lawyer who moved to the Pine Tree State after law school, worked as a lawyer for the poor, then got a “job” hosting a political soapbox at the state’s taxpayer-funded, public-TV network.
Eventually King launched a campaign to become a Maine governor by pretending he wasn’t a Democrat, running instead as an “independent.”
He knew that if he ran as a Democrat he couldn’t win a primary against the popular ex-governor, Democrat Joe Brennan who was coming back for a third term after a required constitutional break from his first two consecutive terms.
In his first campaign King hired, yes, an ex-reporter/stealth Democrat named Dennis Bailey as a consultant to help him beat the real live, genuine Democrat: working-class hero and Maine-born Brennan.
The skulduggery worked—King beat Brennan, served two terms, left Maine with a $1 billion deficit, and then later leapfrogged Maine’s Senator-in-Waiting favorite liberal congresswoman, Chellie Pingree, this time by temporarily getting rid of his “independent” charade by persuading Democrats he was once again one of them.
King got himself a new tie and moved back to his hometown Virginia burbs so he could make Chellie cry on the playground in the lower chamber while he was sipping seltzer in the cloakroom of the U.S. Senate – now again as an “independent.”
But all good things must come to an end.
After King, Bailey went on a series of less successful political gambits, including Svengali-roles for then-Independent Shawn Moody’s and Democrat Rosa Scarcelli’s runs for governor in 2010. In the course of that latter engagement, he got slapped with a fine from the Maine Ethics Commission for helping Scarcelli’s husband set up a website to peddle dirt on Eliot Cutler — except he missed the mark on that one by more than a mile as we all learned a decade later…
King’s one-time brain, Bailey, having failed to reveal Cutler’s truly dark predilections and realizing he couldn’t take on a guy as popular as Trump, has since picked up his dolly and dishes and moved his political leanings to—drum roll—Portugal.
“He’s just released a book about that experience,” Diamon writes. “It’s called Olá Portugal: Why I Moved to the Land of Sunshine and Sardines (and how you can too).”
While former Bowdoin College government professor Chris Potholm – who like Bailey is also a former King campaign flack – calls it in an Amazon review a “marvelous book,” one need realize that Potholm just released his own that, among other things, accuses Republicans of leading a campaign of “voter suppression.”
Diamon, never one to heap ridicule on a fading dream, is per usual the more balanced literary critic.
He suggests in his column that Bailey caved after finally facing real foes – Trumpsters.
“Some of Bailey’s friends accuse him of quitting the fight,” Diamon says. “His response to that charge comes off as defensive.”
In the book – which Diamon skewers as nothing more than an aggrandized travel guide to Portugal – Bailey tries to deny defeat came at the hands of the overwhelming odds against him trying to take on the MAGA tsunami.
Bailey claims the only real option was “moving to another country for a better, happier, more fulfilling life.”
Maybe Angus could do the same. (Chellie, whose then-husband by the way once owned the Press Herald, sure hopes so.)
“ The Bollard “ is my favorite wood stove fire starter . The ink doesn’t stain my hands too awfully much crumbling it , I just wish it didn’t have staples in it . I always try to garb a whopping pile of copies from the rack whenever I get the chance .
should we be looking at other members of kings group?
Maybe king should consider moving to Portugal to.
Hey pretty sure no one from Maine is gonna miss you!
By By Agnes’s.
I have been saying for years and posting whenever the chance came along….ew
Anus King is about as Independent as my two balls!! The article is correct and I knew
back then that his “Independent ” candidacy
Was a fake! He knew Maine voters had become fat, dumb & happy and would fall for the Independent lie and he wasn’t wrong!
Republicans voted for King against Collins because of their hate of Brennen. Kay Rand wrote his first book “Making a difference“, which made sense. But, I think King should take credit for “Governor’s Travels: How I Left Politics, Learned to Back Up a Bus, and Found America” a real page turner! Too bad he didn’t really didn’t leave politics.
I think Bailey worked for the Bluer Than Blue Lewiston Sun Journal for a short time.
Douglas Rooks, who writes a column for the KJ, is another liberal Democrat masquerading as a ‘freelance journalist”. He worked on the current Portland mayor’s campaign.
Maine’s Marxo-fascist democrats are vermin.
It’s sad to sit up here in central Maine and watch the state I love go woke. While making the rest of us up here in the normal Maine suffer the cost of the consequences.
He’s off to help destroy another country.