Welcome to our live coverage of Election 2006.
With the balloting not set to begin for more than seven months, our analysts are now prepared to call the race in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. According to exit polls we didn’t bother to conduct because this whole thing is such a joke, we project incumbent Democrat Michael Michaud will be re-elected to a third term in the US House of Representatives with way more votes than he needs, defeating Republican challenger ... er, um ... well, I’m sure we’ve got his name around here somewhere.
Found it. It was stuck to this Burger King wrapper.
Michaud defeated L. Scott Grease Spot.
Sorry, that wasn’t intended to be a comment on how poor Mr. Grease Spot got steamrolled. It was just stuff leaking from my Whopper.
After a little wiping off, we can see the candidate’s actual name is L. Scott D’Amboise. He’s 42 years old, married with two children, and works as a medical technician. His political experience prior to running for Congress consisted of serving one term as a selectman in Lisbon Falls. D’Amboise didn’t announce he was a candidate until March 7 (although nobody seemed to notice), so it’s not even certain he got his name on the ballot. But if he didn’t collect enough signatures on his nominating petitions by the March 15 deadline, he plans to wage a write-in campaign.
D’Amboise only decided to run after it became obvious nobody in the GOP with any name recognition, qualifications, or experience had the intestinal fortitude to take on Michaud. Which is strange, because Michaud may be an incumbent, but he’s hardly the sort of entrenched pol who’s capable of intimidating potential opponents.
For one thing, he’s not much of a fundraiser. As of the end of 2005, he’d collected less than $300,000 for this year’s campaign. That’s $200,000 below what he’d taken in at this point in the race two years ago. US Representative Tom Allen of Maine’s 1st Congressional District has an even safer seat than Michaud this year, but has raised substantially more money.
Then there’s the Michaud persona, the blue-collar guy thrust into the Washington hustle with nothing but the salt-of-the-earth mill worker’s common sense to protect him from the Abramoffs and DeLays. That carefully nurtured image is mostly bunk. While Michaud was, until his election to Congress in 2002, technically an employee of Great Northern Paper in East Millinocket, his real occupation was professional politician. He served in the Legislature for 22 years, rising to the office of Senate president. With each new term, he spent less time on the mill floor and more in the back rooms of the State House. In 2002, according to his congressional financial disclosure form, he earned most of his income from lawmaking and less than $600 from papermaking.
Finally, consider Michaud’s communication skills. Over the past four years, his public speaking has improved — from inept to bland. He may have made a public appearance somewhere in which he didn’t proclaim, “I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade,” although no witness could be located. He relies on catch-phrases like “Education is an investment in our future” and “Manufacturing is dying, and we need to turn that around,” because when he ad-libs, he makes George W. Bush-style mistakes. During a TV debate, he once bragged, “We increased a huge increase in domestic violence.”
