Good morning from Augusta. A new group called the Maine Outdoor Alliance has booked lots of time on Maine TV stations to air what is officially an issue ad … that name-checks Democratic 2nd Congressional District candidate Lucas St. Clair without expressly advocating for him.
Supporters of Medicaid expansion are expected to file a long-awaited lawsuit against Maine on Monday for not implementing the voter-approved law that has been held up by Gov. Paul LePage, who wants the Legislature to first fund it on his terms.
In a reversal, Maine’s secretary of state said Republican U.S. Senate candidate Max Linn should be disqualified from the June primary ballot after a Tuesday hearing in which his campaign acknowledged “hanky-panky” related to his signature-gathering effort.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Max Linn renewed an unsubstantiated allegation that his primary opponent sabotaged his nominating signatures after his lawyer admitted at a Tuesday hearing that there was “hanky-panky” and possible fraud around them.
Republicans in the Maine House of Representatives voted to force a gridlocked Legislature to adjourn by Wednesday’s end in a dispute with Democrats over a spending package, but the session stretched into Thursday for procedural reasons.
Ranked-choice voting will be used in Maine’s June primary elections, the state’s high court ruled on Tuesday in a massive win for supporters of the first-in-the-nation system that has faced constitutional scrutiny and run a political gauntlet in the Legislature.
Republican U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin of Maine’s 2nd District steeply outraised the rest of Maine’s congressional candidates by March’s end, but one of his Democratic opponents used ties to a rising congressional star to widen a money lead over the rest of the primary field.
An attorney for the Maine Senate urged the state’s high court on Thursday to avert an “electoral crisis” by ruling on legal issues around a ranked-choice voting system that was supposed to be used in the June primaries.
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Max Linn can stay on Maine’s June primary ballot despite having 230 signatures invalidated, Secretary of State Matt Dunlap ruled on Thursday.
The four 2018 Republican gubernatorial candidates sparred for the first time Tuesday night in a television studio in a dense hour-long debate hosted by WGME and the Bangor Daily News.
