Because she’s just basically popular in Maine:
Fascinating numbers for Olympia Snowe. Her approval rating with Democrats is 25 points higher than with Republicans- in fact her approval numbers with Democrats are better than they are for many of the Democratic Senators we’ve polled on across the country this year.
Like Ben Nelson on the Democratic side, she’s a GOP Senator in a state dominated by the other party. If the Republicans try to get rid of her via the primary, they’ll lose the seat, probably permanently.
(Hat-tip to Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire)
27 comments
October 19, 2009 at 6:28 pm
politicalfootball
Seems like a great time for a real Republican to mount a primary challenge.
October 19, 2009 at 8:45 pm
silbey
Seems like a great time for a real Republican to mount a primary challenge
I’m not aware that there are any of those left.
October 19, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Vance
pf may have been thinking that a challenge from the right might act on her as it has on Arlen Specter.
October 19, 2009 at 11:22 pm
DaKooch
I have long felt that both Olympia and Susan Collins were the most likely candidates to jump ship long before Arlen Specter.
October 20, 2009 at 5:11 am
silbey
pf may have been thinking that a challenge from the right might act on her as it has on Arlen Specter
Ah. Yes, that’s kind of what I was implying with “lose the seat” (either she jumps to the Ds or the Republican the defeats her in the primary gets nuked in the general).
October 20, 2009 at 6:51 am
Doug M.
…you want to be careful here. Maine’s politics are distinctive and strange.
It’s true that it’s a blue state. But it’s not /very/ blue — the last state Senate was Democratic by just a single vote, and the current one by only three — and the Democratic Party is highly fissiparous. The current Governor is a moderate-to-conservative Democrat who won re-election with just 38% of the vote in a four-way race that included double-digit showings by Green and Independent candidates.
Maine’s Republican party is socially moderate-to-liberal, technocratic, and very business-oriented. It’s very much an old-fashioned Establishment party with a modern veneer. They would fit in very well with, say, the modern Cameron-era Tory party in Britain. In the modern GOP, not so well… but nobody in Maine much cares about that.
Maine’s primaries are open, so Snowe would win a primary challenge handily. And in a general… well, she’s /always/ been popular. Mainers perceive her as competent, hard-working (which she certainly is), likable (she was the state’s First Lady for eight years, and much admired) and honest.
Perhaps more to the point, she has an enormous war chest and, in 30+ years in politics, has never lost an election.
So “If the Republicans try to get rid of her via the primary, they’ll lose the seat,” is probably not correct. Unlike Arlen Specter, Snowe has no need to switch parties, because she’ll win easily whatever letter is after her name. (Her last win was a brutal, utterly one-sided beatdown; she crushed the Democrat by something like 50 points.) And being one of the Senate’s very few swing votes is bringing here a great deal of attention and influence, not to mention some real power.
So a primary attack on her will not cost the GOP the seat.
What it would do, though, is piss her off. And while Snowe does not have the legendary grudge-holding capacity of her colleague Susan Collins, she’s a senior Senator with some pretty heavy committee assignments.
Testable predictions:
(1) I wouldn’t be a bit surprised by a primary challenge to her in 2012; but
(2) I would be /very/ surprised if it got even tacit support from the GOP authorities — even if the commenters at Red State are falling all over themselves to send tattered checks and PayPal remittances, and
(3) the primary challenger would likely be an outsider to Maine’s Republican establishment, and quite possibly on the cranky/freakiy site; and
(4) she should win both primary and general in a walk, while
(5) remaining firmly Republican.
We should see in just 30 months or so.
Doug M.
Doug M.
October 20, 2009 at 9:21 am
silbey
you want to be careful here
I’m not sure why you think what you wrote disagrees with what I wrote.
That there will be some Republican running against her in the primary, I have no doubt. That–as I said–the Republicans will try to get rid of her by actively backing someone in the primary with money and resources, I can’t imagine.
October 20, 2009 at 9:52 am
Vance
Maine’s Republican party is socially moderate-to-liberal, technocratic, and very business-oriented.
Sounds like it’s ripe for assimilation into the modern national Democratic party. I don’t doubt that it would be hard for Snowe to reimagine herself as a Democrat in terms of the in-state alignments….but it’s hard for an out-of-state observer to see what aligns her with the national GOP.
October 20, 2009 at 10:11 am
dana
Where Doug disagrees I presume is with the claim “if they try to get rid of her, they’ll lose the seat”; they won’t lose the seat even if they try, because the primary challenger won’t win and Snowe has no need to shift allegiances to the Democratic party.
It seems that open primaries and the level of support is the difference here between Snowe’s position and Specter’s (and, arguably, Lieberman’s.)
October 20, 2009 at 10:19 am
silbey
I think if you take “lose the seat” entirely literally, then perhaps not. I can edit the post to add “or piss her off so thoroughly that, though technically Republican, she essentially works with the Democrats” which is more the meaning for which I was aiming.
October 20, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Doug M.
‘I’m not sure why you think what you wrote disagrees with what I wrote.’
Um… because it does? You say “they’ll lose the seat” and I say “no, they’re never going to lose the seat”. That’s disagreeing.
You later say that you may edit the post to give “more the meaning for which I was aiming”. Which is fine. But we’re not mind-readers, here.
Also, while “piss her off so much she works with the Democrats” is technically possible, it’s IMO unlikely. Snowe tends to buck the GOP on lots of little votes, but stick with the party line on the big ones. That’s IMO very unlikely to change. She’d take her revenge largely behind the scenes, in closed-committee hearings and intra-party maneuverings. For an extreme example of how this would work, see Ted Stevens, who managed to make life incredibly miserable for anyone who crossed him without ever much deviating from the standard GOP voting line.
Doug M.
October 20, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Doug M.
“Sounds like it’s ripe for assimilation into the modern national Democratic party.”
Alas, no. The missing piece is that while the Maine GOP hasn’t won a lot of statewide elections lately, it’s still quite powerful at the local level, and — more importantly — still wields a surprising amount of social and economic clout.
Maine is a small state, and the GOP has long been the private club of the local elites. That’s one reason the state Democratic party, though currently dominant, is so fissiparous and quarrelsome — historically, it was the party of outsiders, upstarts, and disaffected rebels from the Establishment.
The Maine GOP is a minority party, but it’s very different from, say, the Connecticut GOP. Down in CT, the Republicans have almost disappeared; they have something like 20% of the seats in the legislature, and their statewide candidates tend to be bad jokes. The Maine party, OTOH, is well-entrenched and well-funded; it may stay a minority/opposition party for years to come, but it will still be a threat in statewide elections (hey, two Senators — not so bad) and will not begin to dry up and blow away.
(Also, the well-funded bit? Means they can pretty much ignore the national party. Which they mostly do.)
Doug M.
October 22, 2009 at 5:23 pm
silbey
Um… because it does? You say “they’ll lose the seat” and I say “no, they’re never going to lose the seat”. That’s disagreeing.
That’s not what you said, actually. What you said was that Snowe would never lose the seat, which is an entirely different thing. Which is fine. But we’re not mind-readers here, after all.
The GOP is holding onto the two Maine senatorial seats because Snowe and Collins are personally popular. Maine’s voted Democratic in the last four Presidential elections and both of the Representatives are Democratic. The Governor is currently Democratic, the Maine House has 95 Democrats and 56 Republicans, and the Maine Senate has 20 Democrats and 15 Republicans.
Are Maine’s politics local and strange? Of course they are. So are those of all 50 states.
That puts Snowe–as I said in the post–in essentially an impregnable position. If the Republicans primary her out and succeed, they’ll lose the general. If they fail, I suspect she’ll be so pissed off that she act like Lieberman does. The GOP can do that calculus as well as I can, which is why there haven’t been substantial rumblings about punishing her for her recent vote.
October 22, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Ahistoricality
If the Republicans primary her out and succeed, they’ll lose the general.
c.f. Lieberman-Lamont….
October 22, 2009 at 6:22 pm
dana
Down in CT, the Republicans have almost disappeared; they have something like 20% of the seats in the legislature, and their statewide candidates tend to be bad jokes.
Moreover, CT has a relatively high proportion of independents, which combined with the complete lack of Republicans, meant that it was very easy for Lieberman to be confident that he had the support to take the general election.
October 22, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Doug M.
“Snowe would never lose the seat, which is an entirely different thing.”
I said Snowe will never lose, Snowe will not switch parties, and a primary would not cost the GOP the seat. This adds up to saying /the GOP will not lose that seat/. If connecting those dots is problematic somehow, I’m happy to spell it out in so many words.
Every state is different: sure, but we’re not talking about every state. We’re talking about Maine. And you’re making generalizations based, as far as I can see, on skimming Wikipedia, without actually knowing much about how things actually work up there.
The GOP is not holding on to those seats only because Snowe and Collins are personally popular. The GOP is holding them because Maine has a functioning, competent state-level party. I mentioned Connecticut for a reason: if Collins and Snowe were magically transported there, keeping their likable personalities and war chests intact but losing their state GOP, then they’d be in serious trouble. (Collins would be toast. Snowe might survive, but it wouldn’t be easy.)
For a recent regional example of how this would work, see the unfortunate Lincoln Chafee. He was popular, too — Rhode Islanders liked and respected him, and his unfavorables at their worst barely reached double digits. But when a bad primary forced him to the right, and then his very blue state decided to send a message about President Bush, he had no state party to fall back on. (RI barely has a GOP, and insofar as it does, they’re nuts.) Keep in mind that this was the same election cycle in which Snowe, just a few miles further up I-95, romped to a 50-point win. The difference was not that Snowe was slightly more popular.
The takeaway is that being personally popular and well-liked is just not enough. A Senatorial campaign needs some institutional underpinning as well.
Maine’s GOP is a minority party, sure. But it’s a very well run minority party, and one that isn’t going to disappear. It’s very powerful at the local level. That tends to fly well under the radar of national level political analysis and Wikipedia, but it’s a lot more meaningful in Maine than in most places, because an unusually high proportion of the actual business of government takes place at the local level. Maine is, formally and officially, a very decentralized state. It has a formal tradition of “home rule” — it’s a term of art, there — going back to the 19th century. And the proportion of government revenue from local (mostly property) taxes, as opposed to statewide taxes like income tax and sales taxes, is the highest in the country.
So if you don’t know much about Maine, it’s easy to say “oh, the GOP controls the Aroostook County Board — that’s completely irrelevant”. But if you’ve lived in Maine, you know that it’s /hugely/ relevant, because up in Aroostook the Governor is a face on TV and the Legislature is a distant rumor, but the Board runs everything and will determine your fate.
The grass-roots metaphor gets overused, but it’s particularly apposite here. Losing a few cycles of statewide elections won’t hurt the Maine GOP, any more than a few runs with the mower are going to hurt the grass on your front lawn. It’s a haircut, nothing worse — the party takes no lasting damage.
There’s also the whole “country club party” thing. This is less true than it used to be, but it’s still important enough to be worth mentioning. The Maine GOP is woven into the social and economic life of the state’s elites in a way that has few equivalents elsewhere. This limits its appeal, to be sure, but also makes it much more behind-the-scenes powerful than you might guess from looking at the balance of seats in the Legislature.
I could go on, but this is long enough. But let me spell it out so there’s no misunderstanding: the GOP will keep that seat for as long as Snowe is alive and cares to run again.
Also, Snowe will continue to infuriate the national base by voting left on social issues and by flirting with the Democrats, but when crunch time comes on big votes she’ll become quite noticeably more orthodox. It would be exaggerating to call her a loyal soldier, but on the important votes she’s much less disloyal than she might seem. That’s been her consistent pattern for a long time now, and it’s unlikely to change now.
Doug M.
October 22, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Doug M.
Okay, one more comment. The strange nature of Maine’s GOP — highly organized at the local level, but historically a “country club” of technocratic, socially moderate business and social elites — goes a long way to explain why Maine doesn’t see primary challenges against sitting Republicans.
Challengers typically win by tapping into the grassroots of the party. But in Maine, the grassroots are already firmly locked up. Maine has just as many Fox News watchers as anywhere else, but in Maine, they’re not in charge. The state GOP has managed to integrate them into its system without surrendering even a little bit of control.
This — not personal popularity — is why a primary challenge will never succeed. The party leadership firmly supports Snowe. So a challenger will gain no traction. They can’t stop J. Random Wingnut from filing. But they can methodically starve him of funds and support, and make sure that local GOP officials understand that appearing in public with him will have dire consequences. He’ll get no money, no endorsements, and no organizational support. (In fact, he’ll face a great deal of passive-aggressive foot-dragging: he’ll arrive for his meeting at the old Grange Hall to find it locked and dark, etc. etc.) J. Random will be left to his own resources, supplemented by whatever arrives in the mail from RedState.
Again, Rhode Island 2006 is a useful comparandum. Everyone liked Chafee… but the small, insane state GOP hated him. So they openly supported his crazyass right-wing challenger, forcing Chafee to burn huge amounts of money and energy while dancing dangerously far to the right.
That simply cannot happen in Maine. So, barring something very strange, a primary challenge against Snowe or Collins is unlikely to get past 25% — and that’s with Democratic crossovers.
Doug M.
October 22, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Black Mage
Fantastic post, Doug M., although I do find it slightly distressing how you turn up on ALL my favourite blogs to dispense wit and wisdom. You should spend more of your time watching Spectacular Spider-Man; after all, there’s not much of it left.
October 23, 2009 at 3:21 am
silbey
This adds up to saying /the GOP will not lose that seat/.
No, it doesn’t, unless you’re arguing that Snowe is immortal and will rule as Senator forever. If Snowe disappears from the scene, the GOP is enormously likely to lose the seat The GOP’s control of the seat is based on Snowe’s control of the seat, and that makes her essentially invulnerable.
Every state is different: sure, but we’re not talking about every state. We’re talking about Maine. And you’re making generalizations based, as far as I can see, on skimming Wikipedia, without actually knowing much about how things actually work up there.
Every state is different, and the point is that one shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the uniqueness to the degree that you miss the basics. And 1) I haven’t looked at Wikipedia to discuss this, 2) I’ve both lived and worked in Maine, your latter comment continues your tradition of being insulting in the comment threads. Well done.
The GOP is holding them because Maine has a functioning, competent state-level party.
That competent state-level party has not:
1) delivered Maine for the GOP in a Presidential election since 1988,
2) managed to hold either of the House seats,
3) managed to hold the State House,
4) managed to hold the State Senate.
Given that record, I’m really not impressed with their intimidatory power.
October 23, 2009 at 4:28 am
Doug M.
I’ve lived and worked in Maine as well. And if you knew the exact balance of seats in the Maine House of Representatives off the top of your head, without looking it up, then kudos to you. I couldn’t do it, myself.
As I’ve said, at some length, there’s not much of a connection between the Maine GOP’s performance in statewide elections and its viability otherwise — “viability” here including its ability to keep Snowe in that seat.
If you want to have a substantive discussion of why that’s so (or not), I’m game. Otherwise, shrug.
Doug M.
October 23, 2009 at 5:30 am
silbey
I’ve lived and worked in Maine as well.
Excellent. Perhaps then you shouldn’t assume that others don’t have similar experiences and have only gleaned things from Wikipedia
And if you knew the exact balance of seats in the Maine House of Representatives off the top of your head, without looking it up, then kudos to you. I couldn’t do it, myself.
Neither did I claim to know it off the top of my head. The sources I used were a bit higher level than Wikipedia, however: maine.gov is very useful.
And again, slightingly referring to Wikipedia was not a real statement about memory versus sources, it was a way of being insulting.
As I’ve said, at some length, there’s not much of a connection between the Maine GOP’s performance in statewide elections and its viability otherwise — “viability” here including its ability to keep Snowe in that seat.
If you want to have a substantive discussion of why that’s so (or not), I’m game.
So your argument is that the Maine GOP has failed miserably at holding *every other* national level seat in Maine, but that when it comes to the two Senate seats, they are magically transformed into a powerhouse, irrespective of Snowe or Collins?
If that’s the case, I think the substantive discussion ended a while back.
October 23, 2009 at 10:35 am
Doug M.
Tch. Straw man argument, and not a very good one.
There are ten states north of Virginia and east of Ohio. Looking over the region, from Maryland and Delaware north, we find a grand total of three GOP Senators — Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and Collins and Snowe. You’d have to drive all the way to Kentucky to find the next state with two Republicans.
My hypothesis is that this is, in part, because the Maine state GOP, though a minority party, retains considerable organizational and financial resources. Among other things, it’s able to keep the two Senators’ right flanks firmly guarded against effective primary challenges.
I have never claimed that this is the only reason for their success. I do claim that it is /an important/ reason for it, and that if the Maine GOP were as small and incompetent as most other New England Republican parties (CT, RI, VT), then both Maine Senators would have a much more difficult time of it.
Your position — insofar as I understand it; perhaps I don’t — is that Snowe and Collins owe little or nothing to the Maine state GOP. Their success, rather, comes from some quality or qualities innate to them. Do I have that right?
It seems to me that this is an extraordinary claim, and one that requires some backing more solid than “well, the Maine GOP doesn’t win any /other/ statewide races”.
As for the weakness or strength of the Maine GOP generally, I see a distinction between a party that is in opposition but still vital, and a party that is completely ineffective. The Maine GOP is, I submit, the former. The Connecticut GOP would be an example of the latter.
It’s certainly true — as you’ve repeated three times now — that the Democrats control three of the five statewide offices, both houses in Congress, and both houses of the Legislature. But this is not the same as saying the GOP is helpless. The State Senate, in particular, is much more closely balanced than the 20-15 figure would suggest. The GOP lost control of it last cycle by just three close races, with the combined winning margins being around 1,000 votes. A shift of 0.2% across the board would flip the chamber. It’s the only legislative chamber in the region that is so closely balanced.
I note in passing that Maine includes the only county in New England to have voted for McCain-Palin, despite the Obama campaign outspending them there by about three to one.
Anyway. I’ve compared Snowe and Collins to their neighbor Lincoln Chafee — a comparison, I note, that you’ve studiously ignored. But let that bide. Another useful regional comparison is to Governor Jodi Rell of Connecticut. It is possible for a moderate female Republican to win statewide office in a blue New England state; Rell is the living proof. And she has indeed done it through (mostly) innate qualities — a combination of hard work, charisma, competence, and being the Lieutenant Governor of a convicted felon. And she managed this in spite of being shackled to a state GOP that is small, fractious, hopelessly incompetent, and doomed to tiny minority status for many cycles to come.
But look a bit more closely, and you’ll see that Rell has been forced to swing far, far to the left of Snowe and Collins. She has proposed and signed tax increases (including a revival of CT’s estate tax), has supported civil unions, opposed NCLB… she’s even spoken in defense of prisoners’ rights. Anywhere outside of New England, she’d be a Democrat.
Without the Maine state GOP, Snowe and Collins would look either like Rell (forced to swing much further to the left) or like Chafee (unemployed). If you disagree, I’ll be interested to hear your counterexamples.
Doug M.
October 23, 2009 at 11:00 am
Josh
If you want to have a substantive discussion of why that’s so (or not), I’m game.
Hey Doug? I’ve been reading you since the shwi days, and you’re a really smart guy who has a lot to add. So please take this with that in mind:
Would you mind dialing it back a bit? silbey’s already closed one thread because you antagonized him, so I don’t know why you think that continuing to deal with him in the same way is a good idea. It’s just painful to watch.
October 24, 2009 at 6:52 am
silbey
Tch. Straw man argument, and not a very good one.
Doug, if you’d like to continue this discussion, tone it down.
Your position — insofar as I understand it; perhaps I don’t — is that Snowe and Collins owe little or nothing to the Maine state GOP. Their success, rather, comes from some quality or qualities innate to them. Do I have that right?
You don’t. My position is that, currently, Snowe and Collins’ position are stronger than that of the state GOP, and because of that the state GOP needs them more than they need it. That power imbalance puts them in essentially an impregnable position, a situation that will likely last into the foreseeable future.
Without the Maine state GOP, Snowe and Collins would look either like Rell (forced to swing much further to the left) or like Chafee (unemployed). If you disagree, I’ll be interested to hear your counterexamples.
I believe that my counterexamples are the rest of the statewide offices in Maine, as I noted above. You attribute a sophisticated electoral strategy to the Maine GOP, but ignore that it *hasn’t worked* with any other major state body in Maine:
Not the two House seats,
Not the Governor’s seat,
Not the Lt. Governor’s seat,
Not the State Treasurer’s seat,
Not the Secretary of State’s seat,
Not the Attorney General’s seat
Not the Maine House seats,
Not the Maine Senate seats (“they came really close to doing better” is your argument?),
Not the last four Presidential elections
The only difference with the Senate seats has been the presence of Snowe and Collins, who have held onto their seats, the local evidence strongly suggests, because of their personal abilities, and not because of their local party. That local party has failed at every statewide level, except the Senate seats, where you would have us believe that the Maine GOP’s strategy suddenly starts working.
October 24, 2009 at 9:04 am
Doug M.
…silbey, Maine doesn’t /have/ a Lieutenant Governor. And the Treasurer and Attorney General are chosen by the Legislature, not elected.
Josh, you have a point. This is not a productive thread; and more generally, silbey and I don’t seem to be bringing out the best in each other.
One of us needs to walk away from this, and it might as well be me.
Doug M.
October 24, 2009 at 10:37 am
Vance
Since we need a change of subject here…I believe it was established earlier that the Wild Things are named “Aaron, Bernard, Emil, Moishe and Tzippy”. So what the hell were Jonze and Eggers thinking, renaming them “Katherine and Ira and Douglas, and the main wild thing who first befriends Max [...] Carol”?
(If not for Ira, it’d practically be a mass conversion ceremony.)
October 24, 2009 at 11:07 am
silbey
…silbey, Maine doesn’t /have/ a Lieutenant Governor
True enough; I misread an article at which I was looking. Beth Edmonds, the Senate President, steps in if necessary.
In any case, that doesn’t obviate the point: the State GOP has failed miserably at holding any of the statewide seats, except the two Senatorial ones. Your argument that they have managed things adeptly is not borne out by the evidence.
silbey and I don’t seem to be bringing out the best in each other.
Doug, I haven’t been insulting or dismissive to you, so let’s not go with that implied equivalency here, please.