The latest version of a Maine political dynasty may be about to take down another electorally powerful family in the next election cycle.
The last time the Angus King family humiliated the Pingree clan was 15 years ago.
Now, the latest polls have Angus King III trouncing Hannah Pingree by 13 points, evidence the King family could bag yet another Pingree based on name alone.
Harken 2012, with ex-Gov. Angus King Jr. as an “independent” leapfrogging U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-ME1, allegedly in cahoots with Democrats.
King at the time said “hogwash” to allegations by some Republicans that he had cut a deal with Dems to keep the elder Pingree out of the U.S. Senate race to succeed retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME.
Slick Angus pulled off another one.
Now a young Angus – an apparent clone of the original version – is leading the Democrat wannabes based on nothing other than he has the same first and last names as his popular father.
After all, now-U.S. Sen. Angus King Jr. is Maine’s most-liked politician, judging from the same poll.
The measure is a validation of the elder King who left the state with a $1 billion deficit in the wake of his two terms as Maine’s governor, twice endorsed a later-convicted pedo for governor, censored his political critics and, more recently, on the same day as an anti-semitic firebombing blasted Israel’s bid to be free of mass murder.
No wonder he’s so popular.
If the son is anything like his father, ex-Maine Democrat House Speaker Hannah Pingree, by all accounts a likely candidate for governor who hasn’t announced yet, could be in for the same abrupt awakening that victimized her mother.
After all, King III already has a huge leg up on her, setting the stage for another humiliating Pingree defeat.
Dynasty is clearly a powerful aphrodisiac for the average entranced voter – even more intoxicating if it’s an entrenched dynasty vs. another, albeit weaker one.
There’s dynasty and then there’s dynasty.
Minnesota-born Chellie Pingree, the congresswoman representing Maine’s liberal southern district, is no Angus Stanley King even though both came “from away” to sprinkle their fairy dust across the benighted Pine Tree State.
The smooth-talking, moustachioed, Virginia-born King packed his car and moved to Maine in the 1970s, worked as a lawyer for the poor, then somehow got a show on taxpayer-financed public TV that gave him a name he parlayed into two terms as governor.
Though his son has inherited the name, all is not lost for the younger Pingree, perhaps, even if she doesn’t have the benefit of sharing her’s mother’s first name.
After all, the polling shows that the unannounced hopeful to succeed Janet Mills is within shouting distance of Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state who thought she had a lock on the corner office til the new version of Angus Jr. announced that he wants to continue Daddy’s popular legacy.
Dynasty got Jim Longley Jr. elected to the U.S. House. Maine voters had put his charming, dimple-faced father in the Blaine House 20 years earlier as the state’s first independent governor.
In the months leading up to the 1994 GOP U.S. House primary a voter actually told a hopeful Sam Patten, who was campaigning for a candidate challenging Longley in the GOP primary, “I thought he was dead but I guess I’ll vote for him anyway.”
When a dead man is winning an election the power of political dynasty can’t be overstated.
One of the most famous examples of a candidate playing the dynasty card occurred in Massachusetts (which Maine was once part of) when Edward Moore Kennedy was running to succeed his older brother JFK in the U.S. Senate and his opponent told him during a debate, “If your name were Edward Moore your candidacy would be a joke.”
Teddy won. Of course. Based on his name.
Nowadays in Maine it’s the Longley/King affect. And it’s not just because those families first ran as independents that they succeeded. Elliot Cutler twice tried to run in recent years as an independent for governor – with Angus King’s help – and all Cutler got out of it was a(n) (arguably too short) prison sentence.
If Democrats have nothing but a name to fawn over In the next election, Maine Republicans may have to actually settle for principle.
Censured state Rep. Laurel Libby R-Auburn, who hasn’t even said she wants to be governor, is leading the GOP polls over other longtime party regulars based not on her name but on grit.
Libby has been in an ongoing, highly public legal fight with Maine House Democrats over her insistence that boys not be allowed to play on female sports teams.
Arguing in favor of birth-assigned gender to make up school sports teams may prove to be as much of a voter intoxicant as family dynasty next time around.
But don’t bet your life on it.
Angus King has held sway over Maine politics for 30 years. His son may now well be in line to inherit that mantle of electoral inevitability.
Not based on qualifications but on his name.
