The Race for the Blaine House--An Inside View of Five Campaigns: Eliot Cutler

Imagine applying for a job for which you have to convince tens of thousands of people to hire you, and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just to be able to stay in the running. That's kind of what it's like to run for governor of Maine, and it can be even more daunting if you don't have the organization of a major political party behind you. In part 3 of our weeklong series on the 2010 race for the Blaine House, Patty Wight takes a look inside the campaign of Independent Eliot Cutler.


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On the night of Nov. 2nd, 2010, Eliot Cutler is sitting in a hotel suite in Portland, watching his early lead slip away. 

Man: "What are the numbers looking like?"

Justin Schair: "We're leading by less than 3,000 votes."

Cutler: "I don't think this bodes well."

The story of how Cutler got to this moment begins almost two years ago, after he gave a speech about education at the Muskie School in Portland. People in the audience liked it so much, many suggested that he run for governor. 

One of those people would later become Cutler's campaign manager. "And a few months later he contacted me and said were you serious?" says Ted O'Meara. 

O'Meara says that Cutler, a lifelong Democrat who at one time worked for Sen. Ed Muskie, and also in the Carter administration, switched over to the Republican party in 2006. But O'Meara says Cutler didn't feel at home in either party, and decided to run as an Independent. 

While running without a national party infrastructure had its drawbacks, O'Meara says it also brought a sense of freedom from party protocol. "The more we got into it, the more we felt totally liberated from all that and that he didn't have to worry about which local politician or party leader here was offended because he didn't come to this meeting or that."

And this past June, with Paul LePage and Libby Mitchell chosen as the party nominees, O'Meara says the Cutler camp got exactly what it had hoped for: a wide center in the electorate, ready for the taking. But the parties were still a force to be reckoned with.

"As an Independent, you're not just running against two party nominees, you're running against their national party groups, their state party groups, the interest groups that support them," O'Meara says. "So it's like running against two four-headed monsters instead of just one individual."

To combat this four-headed monster, the Cutler campaign set up a tightly-organized army of staff that focused on specific missions. Will Perry, in correspondence, writes letters to every single person Cutler meets, from fundraisers to meetings. 

"And it's really a hard job, and it's really--almost half of it is up to the people who are staffing Eliot. And they do a really good job most of the time of letting me know, these are the people, this is what they talked about," says Perry. 

The campaign also blankets the Internet with ads. The strategy is to make a Cutler ad appear whenever someone googles a relevant search topic, such as energy or education. Ads also appear on seemingly random sites, such as YouTube. 

John Lombardo, the director of new media, says if the user is from Maine, a Cutler ad will pop up. "At the end of our campaign, we will have done something more like approaching 90 million ads for 1.3 million people--that's people, not just voters. So you're talking about something like 80 ads per person almost. I don't know what the results are going to be. I know that we're generating a lot of clicks right now." 

The campaign's early research indicates that Cutler will appeal across the spectrum of voters. There was no sweet spot of support to target. And with all of their effort, it seemed virtually impossible for Cutler's popularity not to rise. But by mid-September, he was stuck at around 11 percent in the polls.

"I mean we're all kinda mystified, and some of us have been at this for a long time," O'Meara says. "It just seems like the response he is getting out there, that he really does have a lot of great support out there." 

O'Meara believes the polls themselves, which he says are of questionable accuracy, are partially to blame. They are being used to paint Cutler as a spoiler.

"There's been a well-orchestrated effort to get people to contact him, and write letters to the editor saying that he's the spoiler in this and has to get out of the way for the good of the state. I mean, that's just garbage." 

Weeks go by, and Cutler's numbers don't budge. O'Meara says he felt like the campaign was hanging on by its fingernails. But in mid-October, Cutler starts to climb onto the ledge. A Rasmussen poll shows him nearing striking distance to Mitchell. A few days later, he gets an endorsement from the Bangor Daily News. The campaign presses to build on this momentum.

"Hi. I'm out campaigning for Eliot Cutler today." The campaign goes door to door. Holds rallies. Endorsements come in from almost all the major newspapers in the state, as well as from former Independent Gov. Angus King. It all culminates in a four-day bus tour and then, it's Election Day.

"Hi Good morning. I'm Eliot Cutler. I'd love to have your vote if you haven't voted." At 5:30 in the morning, Cutler is at Bath Iron Works, ready to shake hands in the cold darkness. "I think a lot of people aren't making up their minds until they go to the voting booth. And even if it's only 3 percent of the voting population, that's a lot of people." 

Cutler: "Hi. I'm Eliot Cutler. I'd love to have your vote if you haven't voted."

Man: "You have my vote!"

Cutler: "Thank you - Thank you very much!" 

Man: "Good luck!"

Cutler: "Thanks a lot!"

That night, Cutler joins his staff at the Eastland Hotel in Portland, for the election night party. Within hours of the polls closing, Cutler is showing an early lead. "For the first time, I sort of let myself believe that we were actually were gonna do this, and this was gonna be a storybook ending to campaign that a lot of people said couldn't win," O'Meara says.

After giving interviews and mingling with supporters, Cutler, some staff, family and friends go up to a private suite to watch as the numbers come in. They laugh and make jokes. But then, the lead starts to shrink. The tv blips out, and the room is eerily quiet. 

Man: "What are the numbers looking like?"

Justin Schair: "We're leading by less than 3,000 votes."

Cutler: "I don't think this bodes well."

The tension is palpable. Campaign staffer Justin Schair is glued to the computer screen, letting out sighs to blow off steam while Cutler starts clicking his pen. 

Before long, Paul LePage moves into the lead. It won't be until the next day that it's clear he has enough of a margin of victory for Cutler to concede. The margin is about 8,000 votes. "It's hard. It's really hard," O'Meara says. "This is an all or nothing business. Ya know, second place really doesn't count."

Looking back, the Cutler camp blames early voting through absentee ballots for sealing their fate. People cast their votes before Cutler was seen as viable. "And the real irony is that, you know, for a campaign so many people were saying a month, six weeks before wasn't viable--to come within a percentage and a half--that answers the viability question right there." 

O'Meara says running a campaign is like running a million dollar business. It's grueling physically, mentally and emotionally. "But the one thing that I think separates it from most other endeavors is it has a definite ending point, and you get in there and you run, and you run faster and faster and faster, and then, boom, one day, either move on, or it's over. And the silence is deafening."