“Why not?” answers Democratic Representative Janet Mills of Farmington. “It helps small business. It’s an incentive.”
Whom do Maine Democrats value?
At their May 30-June 1 state convention, Democrats will shout their support for presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But the legislators there, who tend to be the cheerleaders, will be trumpeting a contradiction. The economic proposals of Senators Obama and Clinton — increasing taxes on the rich and reducing tax breaks for the corporations — make these candidates look like radicals compared to Augusta’s Democrats. As profoundly as Democrats in Washington bow to lobbyists representing corporate and personal wealth, state legislatures are famously more subservient, the Democratic majority in the Maine Legislature is no exception, and Baldacci has seldom found a big-business idea he doesn’t like.
“All over the country, businesses are really in control,” says Strimling. They are constantly demanding that legislators “sweeten the pot for them.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitchell says that when Democrats voted to reduce the estate tax they knew the Appropriations Committee would kill the bill. The vote was in part, she says, a strategy to deny Republicans an election-campaign attack point against Democrats.
But her comments reveal that she believes the correct stance for Democrats, the self-proclaimed party of the people, is to look like Republicans, whom Democrats say are the party of the rich and the corporations.
What values do Maine’s Democrats hold, at least at the State House? Republican values.
Lance Tapley can be reached at ltapley@roadrunner.com.
