The mark of a real politician is their ability to eat your lunch while still smiling as if you’re best pals. Despite his lack of any experience getting elected himself, Angus King III demonstrated these chops as he lorded over Hannah Pingree at a joint appearance during an anti-Trump rally in Rockland on June 14.
While the offspring of their famous Maine namesakes currently serving in Congress, to wit, U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-CD1), were wearing color-coordinated outfits of blue and green, it was elder, less politically-experienced Angus King III, 54, who garnered more ink than the younger, more politically-experienced Hannah Pingree, 48, on whose turf the protest was being held.
“My campaign, starting today, and for the rest of the summer, as I’m traveling around the state, we’re going to volunteer in our communities. We’re going to take time and make sure that we engage and visit food pantries and libraries, and visit clothing drives,” the Pen-Bay Pilot quoted King as saying in a gushing article. The same outlet merely paraphrased the hometown girl who stood beside him.
Pingree, who recently stepped down as the director of the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future (GOPIF), lives 12 miles offshore on the island of North Haven, which is reached by a ferry service headquartered in Rockland about a mile from the protest site. Yet she appeared less at ease than King, and read from a prepared statement as she had at her campaign announcement a week earlier.
Alternative energy entrepreneur King appeared more accustomed to smooth talking and spoke without notes, joking even at the irony of his surname given the “No Kings” theme of the event. All smiles and smirks, you see.
The fact that a recent poll gives him a 13-point lead over Pingree may feed the younger King’s sense of bonhomie. But beneath the hearty-har-har of it all lurks a darker subtext. King’s father, the junior senator, essentially sharp-elbowed his way into the seat in 2012, even though Hannah’s mother had been eying it since losing a senate race to Susan Collins a decade earlier.
“My Dad ate your Mom’s lunch, and guess what?” the smirk seems to say.
Unlike King, the younger Pingree has — albeit with a little air support — put in the time to climb the rungs of Maine’s political ladder. She was elected to and served on the North Haven school board before getting elected to and serving in Maine’s House of Representative, where she was elected Speaker.
More recently, Hannah has spearheaded Governor Janet Mills’ (D) policy shop and based on the current chief executive’s remarks at her rather sudden departure last month, been central to what little good has come from her administration.
Augusta insiders suggest she had wanted to, as Mr. Rogers used to say, take her time and do it right when it came to launching her widely-anticipated gubernatorial campaign, but the younger King’s toothy entrance to the fray forced her to move faster than she’d planned. Despite her more pleasant demeanor, the younger Pingree is also trailing the ruthless, dual-hatting Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D-Hallowell) by three points.
While Angus III was wowing the crowd of largely affluent Midcoast Mainers with his pledge to volunteer-as-he-goes (a tried and tested campaign gimmick) in the months ahead, Hannah had less of a whistling-past-the-graveyard demeanor and seemed genuinely worried about the parlous state of America under Trump.
In fact in almost every photograph and appearance of late, the young woman appears on the verge of tears which, intended or not, engenders a certain animosity towards anyone who might be bullying her.
Locals reported receiving texts before the rally from the King campaign asking for money. The gall of that is rather extraordinary, really: a King fundraising on a “No Kings” occasion. It makes it seem almost like the perennial Texas losing candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who told Vanity Fair he was “born to be in it”—the smarmy political fray, that is.
The good news for Hannah is that real Mainers, as opposed the Cape Elizabeth to Camden axis type, tend to value authenticity. Perhaps this is what is behind her reserve and apparent nervousness in the limelight. If so, they’ll be patient and wait to let her put down the prepared text and speak from her heart. Arguably, she has more of substance to say.
