There is good reason why many Democrats view the centrists in their party with consternation bordering on outright anger and contempt. A current illustration exists in the provocation provided by Maine’s two-term Democratic Governor Janet Mills, who has chosen business interests over progressivism on several key economic issues facing the state.
Centrist Democrats (or corporate Democrats, if you prefer) like Mills are portrayed in the media as political “moderates,” sensible middle-of-the-roaders who reject unhealthy extremism. In reality, they are typically liberal or progressive on social issues, but committed conservatives when it comes to anything related to the economy. Centrists are not necessarily corrupt or “in the pocket” of corporate interests, but they do fundamentally believe in the system as presently constituted and see no reason to change or disrupt it. Obviously, they and their associates have done well under the current dispensation.
This appears to be the case with Maine’s Democratic governor.
Item 1. In January of last year, she vetoed AFL-CIO-endorsed legislation that would have allowed unorganized farmworkers to unionize farms employing more than five laborers (including those owned by large blueberry and potato growers) on grounds the proposed law was too complicated, too burdensome on family farms, and generally unnecessary.
Item 2. In July of this year, the governor vetoed another Democratic bill, also supported by the AFL-CIO, placing farmworkers under the state’s minimum wage law ($13.80/hr.) and permitting them to receive overtime pay. The veto rationale was that the legislation was too broad in scope, too “confusing” to agricultural employers, and posed unintended consequences.
So much for labor priorities in Maine, which are indefinitely on hold, displaced for now by other economic concerns. The issue that’s front and center at the moment is the face-off between the state’s progressive community and the entrenched forces of private electric power, a struggle that, after several years of political give-and-take, is reaching its tipping point in this election year.
The first skirmish in the modern era of Maine energy politics took place in 2019, when corporate backers of the deceptively named New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC), including Maine’s Central Maine Power Co. (CMP), received Gov. Mills’ endorsement and the necessary permits from her administration to proceed with their plan to construct a $1 billion electrical transmission line (partially operated by shareholder CMP) through western Maine to deliver power generated by Canada’s Hydro-Quebec to Massachusetts.
The quid pro quo was a company promise (bribe?) to provide state residents with a miserly $240 million in energy benefits over 40 years. The project’s positive rationale was providing “clean” hydropower to southern New England (good for the environment); the downside was clear-cutting 53 miles of Maine forest (bad for the environment).
A subsequent public referendum in 2021 rejected the unpopular NECEC project 59% to 41%, but the corporate sector bypassed that democratic verdict by going as usual to the conservative courts, where a Maine Supreme Court ruling allowed a CMP lawsuit aimed at negating the referendum to be heard by jurors in a lower state court. That court decided in April of this year for the NECEC on the dubious grounds that the referendum was unconstitutionally retroactive since the developers had already started construction. Round one to the corporations after a campaign investment of $42 million.
The bell rang for round two in mid-2021, when Maine public-power supporters introduced enabling legislation for Pine Tree Power Co., an elective, consumer-owned nonprofit entity to replace the state’s existing foreign-owned private utilities. Proponents were responding to a history of chronic electrical outages, severe overcharges and poor maintenance service by Versant (a subsidiary of Canada’s Enmax), which monopolizes eastern Maine, and CMP (a subsidiary of Spain’s Iberdrola), which monopolizes western Maine and boasts Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs among its far-flung global shareholders. The public-power initiative passed in July 2021, but was dutifully vetoed by Maine’s centrist governor. Subsequent attempts to override the veto failed. Round two to the corporations.
Now, we’re into round three, which began with a successful two-year effort to place the issue before voters as a referendum measure. Decision day will be Nov. 7, and corporate forces are taking no chances. Never in Maine history has so much money been devoted to the outcome of a ballot initiative, almost all of it by one side. According to the PBS/NPR news service Maine Public, campaign-finance reports for the first six months of 2023 alone indicate power-company contributions to the groups opposing the referendum proposal exceeded the money raised by supporters, represented by the citizens’ group Our Power, approximately 65 to one — $15 million to $236,000.
All told, since the issue was joined, Avangrid, the Iberdrola subsidiary that manages CMP, has provided $18 million to Maine Affordable Energy, the dark-money operation that has run its anti-referendum effort from the start. Versant, meanwhile, has delivered $8 million on behalf of Enmax to a similar shadowy anti-referendum front group, Maine Energy Progress. By contrast, those advocating for public power have taken in less than $1 million, mostly from small, individual contributors.
But it’s not just the money; it’s how the money, generated by a for-profit monopoly, has been used. The companies, sparing no expense and observing few scruples, have saturated the airwaves and the mails with misleading claims and duplicitous half-truths, using slickly packaged infomercials and glossy fliers. The propaganda barrage has reached epic proportions, spreading spurious scare stories suggesting public power would lead directly to higher taxes, cuts in government spending, billions in state debt, a deteriorating power grid unable to deal with weather emergencies, and (contrary to readily available data showing lower utility rates for nonprofits nationwide) higher electricity prices.
And what of Maine’s governor? Well, she’s eagerly joined in the fear mongering, echoing corporate talking points and calling any move to public power “a hostile takeover,” and “a gamble.” Her comments, in turn, appear prominently in company referendum literature. Worst of all, she accepts at face value the biased and inflated company estimate of the transition’s buy-out cost — a projected $13.5 billion that independent estimates place no higher than $5-10 billion and proponents calculate will be routinely paid off through future rate collections.
Is it any wonder, then, that progressive Democrats have become increasingly distrustful of the governing centrists in their midst? After all, no one, whether in Maine or anywhere else, needs two Republican parties.
Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prize-winning books.
From The Progressive Populist, November 15, 2023
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us
>