Libby Mitchell walked into this year's Maine governor's race with three important weapons: name recognition, public funding, and the support of the Maine Democratic Party machine. But the Mitchell campaign also faced a significant problem: how to overcome the stigma of being a well-established political insider, at a time when voters wanted change, and when the four other candidates all provided that option. Patty Wight has part four in our weeklong series taking an inside look at the race for the Blaine House.
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At Mitchell campaign headquarters in Portland, ethernet wires dangle from the ceiling, against a backdrop of bare walls and an old stained carpet. As a publicly-funded campaign, the game plan is to distill down to the essentials.
One key essential, they say, is the media strategy--everything from press conferences to television ads. So on a Friday in August, her staff gathers for their daily 9:00 a.m. conference call to plan a commercial shoot for the next day. They need people to fill a town hall setting.
Staff member 1: "Um - how are we doing for any of the other folks that we need?"
Staff member 2: "Gabby got us two more working moms last night, um, so we're about halfway there on that front?."
Mitchell is a clean elections candidate, and the matching public funding she receives is finite. Planning ahead is the key to make sure it will last. So the campaign has to make strategic decisions now about commercials that won't run for another two months.
Staff member 1: "Okay, and we'll try to get that nailed asap."
Staff member 2: "All right. Sounds good. Thanks guys."
"We're a clean elections campaign. We have a very small budget," says Mitchell's director of communications, David Loughran (pictured above). "I mean, there's only five of us. So our plan is really around pushing out Libby's positive message for Maine."
Patty Wight: "And how do you drive that message out?"
David Loughran: "The strongest way to drive it out is candidate appearances. To know her is to love her. So getting her around to talk to undecided voters and supporters is absolutely key to our strategy."
The campaign is actively courting women, moderate independents in the first congressional district--and, of course, Democrats.
On a Sunday afternoon in August, Mitchell attends the Lincoln County Democrats lobster bake in Damariscotta. Bumper stickers on parked cars still promote some of Mitchell's Democratic rivals from the June primary--which is exactly why she's come to an event like this.
"It's important to get back together," Mitchell says. "And also we have to energize our base. The tea party people are very energized."
The tea party has rallied behind frontrunner Paul LePage. At this point in the campaign, Mitchell is running second, and Independent Eliot Cutler is trailing a distant third.
Mitchell's campaign sees LePage as its sole rival. Their mantra was "it's a two-way race." But some members of the Democratic Party here at the lobster bake, including Tom Eichler, worry about the impact Cutler could have.
Eichler: "What distresses me about this race is with the vote splitting that's gonna happen between you and Eliot Cutler. And... "
Mitchell: "It's a race between Paul LePage and Libby Mitchell. And the contrast is stark."
Eicheler: "The difference between you and Eliot Cutler is not so great, though, too."
Mitchell: "That's really not true either."
Eichler: "I hope you can really make that point strongly because..."
Mitchell: "I'm trying to do that."
Eichler: "Or uh, it's going to be important for this election."
"The day I joined, we had a conversation about how hard it was going to be," Loughran says. "Running someone who had a long distinguished record of public service with a very frustrated electorate who was looking for anything but the people who had been in power, ya know, it was going to be tough."
To have a shot at winning, Mitchell first has to close the gap on LePage. The best way to do that, the campaign decides, is through comparison ads.
Mitchell ad: "Paul LePage wants to eliminate our environmental protections that keep our waters clean and our air pure."
These ads are viewed by some as negative, but there is some evidence that they work. And after the ads have run for a couple of weeks, polls indicate that Mitchell has pulled to within just a few points of LePage. To surge ahead, the campaign needed a shot in the arm. And it comes in the form of a visit from former President Bill Clinton.
Loughran: "How ya doin'?"
Man: "Good. This is a home run. Home run. Good momentum."
About 1,500 people have turned out to see Clinton at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland. Mitchell campaign staffer David Loughran stands just outside the gym doors to greet the incoming crowd.
"We're getting remarkable press coverage for a Sunday evening," he says. "You would never get this sort of thing. We had pre-stories, we'll have post-stories. So it's a very positive thing in terms of generating attention for Libby's campaign."
Perhaps most importantly, Clinton appears to rally Mitchell's base.
Clinton: "I want you to promise yourselves before you walk out of here, if it was enough trouble for you to come here, then you oughta take the trouble every day between now and election day to talk to somebody about what we talked about tonight. This is about jobs, education..."
By the end of the night, the crowd is electric with enthusiasm.
"I'm very taken with him," says Kyle Slayback. Slayback says she was on the fence about whether to support Mitchell. Now, she says, the former president has convinced her to jump on board and spread the word. "I'm over anything he ever did wrong. We all do things wrong!" she says.
The Mitchell camp understands that when planning a campaign strategy, timing is everything. You try to peak not too early, and not too late. The Clinton event, it turns out, marked Mitchell's peak in the campaign. The next day, she took the lead by one point. But it didn't last.
The RGA--the Republican Governor's Association--had released its own negative ads targeting Mitchell's record on tax policy.
RGA ad: "And boy does Augusta have big problems. Libby Mitchell has been there for years, trying to raise the sales tax twice by over $200 million."
The campaign doesn't have the funds to produce ads to respond, and is forced to fire back in debates and press releases, but to little effect.
Mitchell takes another hit when the Maine Democratic Party puts out negative mailers attacking Cutler, who was gaining momentum. Even though they didn't come from Mitchell's campaign, there is a public outcry against the ads, which even upset some Democrats.
In the final days, the campaign gives a final push with a "sprint to victory" campaign across the state with retail political stops, press conferences, and even another visit from former President Clinton.
"There were a lot of things still happening at the end, that you know--you talk yourself into thinking, you know, one or two things go your way and it can change, you know, everything," Loughren says.
Mitchell's fate is sealed early on election night. She concedes just two hours after the polls close and garners only 19 percent of the vote. Loughran says if he had to do it over again, he would have paid more attention to other candidates--namely, Eliot Cutler.
"He was low double digits for much of the campaign, so he wasn't really involved in the back and forth between Libby and LePage. So he was able to build up a lot of good will," Loughren says.
But Loughran says what really did them in was those tax ads from the Republican Governors Association. He wishes they had somehow pushed back more.
Ultimately, he says, the national Republican wave was too much to overcome. And he believes that they ran the campaign that would have put them in the best position to win had things broken their way. "And at the end of the day it's more important to prioritize what's important, and do that well, rather than try to do everything," Loughren says.
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