On March 6, Public Policy Polling released a poll showing these results for the November 2012 Maine U.S. Senate race: Independent Angus King 36%, Democrat Chellie Pingree 31%, Republican Charlie Summers 28%, undecided or other 5%.
On the evening of March 5, King said that he will be an independent candidate for U.S. Senate this year. The poll was taken prior to that announcement. The poll’s assumption of who the Republican and Democratic nominees will be is just a guess, because the primary won’t be until June.
Angus King was elected Governor of Maine as an independent in 1994, and re-elected easily as an independent in 1998.
Gee – even more MINORITY RULE robot party hacks in the Congress ??? — as if the 55 percent gerrymander MONSTERS are NOT evil bad enough.
ABOLISH the EVIL minority rule Senate.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
He was a Republican at one point in his career, no? Which party would he caucus with if he wins?
Microzen – in 2004 Angus King endorsed John Kerry for President and in 2008 he backed Barack Obama, so he might well caucus with the Democrats.
As an Independent he has some choice, and he might get a better deal from the Republicans in a closely divided Senate.
Angus King, unfortunately, endorsed Bush in 2000. Not everyone is perfect, but his candidacy is something to get excited about. He is beholden to no party ideology.
Why does he have to caucus with either party? If the people elect him as an independent, he should serve as an independent.
Angus King was Governor of Maine, elected in 1994, and reelected in 1998.
#6, you’re right. I fixed the post.
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Why, exactly, is his candidacy something to get “excited about?” Angus King has stated it is “too early” for him to declare which party’s caucus he would join if he were to be elected. Is that because, as 3 above says, he is looking for the “best deal?” Best deal on what? And if one “deals” with either side, isn’t that playing the game in the same way Dems and Reps do? We should get excited about that?
Angus King says he feels we need to get our financial house in order. Great. He thinks we need to do so by reducing entitlements, increasing the age of qualification for social security benefits, and also raising “some” taxes. Trot that “some tax increases” “deal” over the Republican side of the aisle and see just how far you get with a party currently being run by Tea Party whack jobs who were willing to let the US default on its debts rather than increase taxes a penny. Try to swing that “deal” with the Norquist “pledgers.” They’ll thank you for killing SS, Medicare and Medicaid, all in their entirety if you’re willing to do so, but they won’t make any tax increase “deal” in exchange. They don’t care about the future of this country. They only care about their own wallets. They didn’t give a good goddamn whether we lost GM and Chrysler, several hundred thousand jobs and about another 8% of our GDP, such is their revulsion for any federal expenditure of “THEIR” taxes. Deal with THEM? What a laugh. Anyone who feels they can do so hasn’t been reading the newspapers lately, and that would apparently include Angus King.
Heck…even Olympia Snowe quit in part because she couldn’t “deal” with members of her OWN party, and yet King is supposed to be more effective in doing so just because he’s an “independent?” Why? How? What magic spells do independents bring to Washington to make them more effective than moderate Dems or Reps in dealing with intransigence in either political party? How does that work?
And, like the most self-righteous “anti-duopolists” among the Nader supporters, King says he doesn’t have to worry about the consequences if he loses the election and a Tea party darling wins. Not his doing, not his problem. But out of the other side of his mouth, King also tells us that he’s running because he has the best interests of Mainers and Americans at heart. After all, he only enters elections he thinks he can “win.” Thinks, yes. Can he be 100% positive he can win? Only if he’s a fool. All elections have consequences, and sometimes third party candidates can indeed flip elections for one or the other of the “duopolist” candidates. One needs travel no further than…well, gosh…the state of Maine…to find an instance where an Eliot Cutler, an independent who was “sure” of winning, and running with the supposedly altruistic intentions, handed the reins of government over to a knuckle-dragging Tea Party Republican who has spent the first year and a half of his term doing his best to sell Maine to the highest bidders while turning his back on the neediest of his purported constituency. Of course he won’t take the fall for that. After all…he’s “independent.” Not his doing.
Not at all.
King’s position too is that if he wins, Maine has made the best choice possible, but if he loses and a Republican wins…well shit…that’s not HIS fault.
Would that we could all chalk off the consequences of our personal choices in life so cavalierly. And would that the bad choices made on the national political stage also had the limited effect of our own personal choices. But they don’t.
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If you don’t caucus with one or the other party, you form a de facto caucus of one, which has precisely no power in the US Senate. Don’t like those rules? Well then perhaps Angus King can make a motion on the floor to change them. I’m sure the tourists in the Senate gallery will wildly applaud him. But there won’t be any Senators on the floor to vote on it, other than his caucus of one, of course. And that’s how the Senate works.
Amen to Pinetreestate!
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