Posted on 01/08/2004 8:20:43 AM PST by JohnnyZ
PERRY, Maine — Kevin Raye, the Republican nominee in the 2002 race for Congress in the Second District, said Tuesday he does not intend to seek the seat this year, leaving the party without an announced candidate in the race.
With five months remaining before the primary and 10 months until the general election, a Republican challenger to freshman U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud has yet to surface.
Brian Hamel of Presque Isle, president of the Loring Development Authority, and retired banker Bob Stone of Lewiston are considering the race, said Dwayne Bickford, executive director of the Maine Republican Party.
"They´re weighing their options right now," said Bickford, suggesting that candidates were waiting for Raye to announce his plans. "The filing deadline is March 15. I don´t think time becomes an issue until you get into the first week of February or so."
Raye said he is considering a run for the Maine Senate in District 29, which encompasses all of Washington County and eastern portions of Penobscot and Hancock counties. The seat is now held by Kevin Shorey, a Calais Republican, who is not seeking re-election.
Raye, a former chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe who now works as a consultant, defeated three opponents in the 2002 GOP congressional primary but lost the general election to Democrat Michaud, a former state legislator.
Raye garnered 48 percent of the vote in the race for the open seat vacated by Democrat John Baldacci, who went on to be elected governor. The congressional contest drew national attention because both parties viewed the seat as winnable and poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaign.
"It was the first time in Maine history that there were more ads by the national parties than by both of the candidates," said Christian Potholm, professor of political science at Bowdoin College.
Bickford said this year´s race will be competitive, but Potholm and Douglas Hodgkin, retired government professor at Bates College, agreed that Michaud will be difficult to unseat.
"It´s very difficult to run against an incumbent _ even an incumbent who is in his first term and won by a narrow margin," Hodgkin said.
Potholm said Republican officials in Washington who suggest that Michaud is vulnerable and that the race would be a tossup appear to be out of touch.
"He has positioned himself perfectly on the ideological spectrum and it´s going to be very difficult for the Republicans to defeat him," he said.
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Now if Tim Wilson, another (former?) more conservative Snowe staffer, were to run, I might not mind.
Ah, the Two Maines.
The 2nd district (northern Maine -- the Real Maine) is real people, and likes real beliefs. They liked Baldacci, who was a populist, who's family runs the well-known Mamma Baldacci's restaurant. And so, in this poor, blue collar district, we ran a white collar pro-abort moderate against a union guy who's worked for the paper company for 30 years, just as his daddy and granddad did before him.
The 1st district is Massachusetts-ized, politically correct, and thinks the world is made up of normal people and conservatives; they won't believe Tom Allen, he of the 4 ACU rating, is a lib, they voted out Jim Longley (younger) in '96 because he was an extremist (i.e. he was partly -- only partly -- pro-life), and they vote for Snowe and Collins because they're the right kind of RINO.
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