Republican state senator Chandler Woodcock (no avian flu jokes, please) of Farmington has made a remarkable promise.
Or a desperate one.
In a column published in the March 27 Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel, Woodcock, one of three GOP gubernatorial candidates and the most conservative of the lot, vowed that if he wins the Blaine House in November, he’ll oppose many of the positions he supported in the Legislature.
He didn’t use those exact words. But, intentionally or not, that’s what it amounted to.
In his op-ed piece, Woodcock claimed those legislators seeking to repeal or extend term limits for state representatives and senators are guilty of “arrogance and paternalism,” because they’re trying to thwart the will of the people. He argued that because the limits law was approved by a citizen-initiated referendum in 1993, attempts to tamper with it in the Legislature amount to “second-guess[ing] the judgment of Maine people.” Any changes, he said, should be the result of another petition drive and public vote. As governor, wrote Woodcock, he’d veto any legislative effort to change term limits.
Then, he went even further. He announced, “I will never seek to overturn the will of the people expressed in public referendum on any issue.”
Which means, as governor, Woodcock, that staunch defender of the right, will have committed himself to supporting:
-Pornography (a measure banning its sale was rejected by voters in 1986).
-Medical marijuana (legalized at the ballot box in 1999).
-Partial-birth abortion (an attempt to outlaw the procedure was defeated at the polls in ’99; Woodcock must not have noticed, because he supported a similar bill in 2001).
-Slot machines (Woodcock finds gambling morally repugnant if it’s done in casinos, but one-armed bandits are OK at racetracks, because the public voted for that in 2003).
-Unconstitutional laws (voters got carried away in 1994, when they extended term limits to members of Congress, and in 1996, when they required a notice on the ballot if a candidate didn’t support term limits; both measures were thrown out by the courts).
If he wins election and sticks to his word, Woodcock would also find himself in the odd position of opposing the already-completed widening of the Maine Turnpike (blocked by a 1991 citizen-initiated referendum, which was overturned in 1997 after the Legislature decreed a second vote be held).
Then there’s the 1923 referendum that proposed limiting the number of hours women and children could be forced to work in a week to 48. It lost at the polls, which seems to commit the candidate to rolling back over eight decades of labor law.
Since Maine voters have generally proved to be moderates on both social and fiscal matters, Woodcock’s pledge could force this right-wing defender of the popular will into some uncomfortable stances. If a majority of the state’s citizens demand it, will he abandon his call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, his support for a Palesky-style property-tax cap (oops, that one has already been trounced at the ballot box), or his insistence that local taxpayers pick up the cost of the laptops-in-schools program?
