AUGUSTA, Maine — A nascent political party led by a former Democratic presidential candidate is beginning to organize in Maine in the latest uphill effort to harness frustration with the major parties in an independent-minded state.
The Forward Party emerged as a centrist third party after merging last month with two minor political movements. It began with Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur who ran iconoclastic failed campaigns for the White House in 2020 and New York City mayor last year and now co-chairs the party with a former Republican governor of New Jersey.
Yang’s party has a scant platform in its early stages, but it plans to focus on electing candidates to state and local office while working to win ballot status in nearly all states by the end of 2024. Maine has a party-bucking history that has helped make it into an early target, though it has also shown how gaining traction will be difficult.
The party is aimed at putting forward moderate candidates, although it is more focused on process than policy. The most specific parts of its platform support ranked-choice voting, nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end gerrymandering and nonpartisan primaries with the goals of “free people” and a “vibrant democracy.”
“We are much closer than we think on a lot of these issues,” said former state Rep. Owen Casas, I-Rockport, who holds no official role with the Forward Party but expects to be a Maine liaison to national leaders.
Maine has generally been friendly to independent candidates and third parties. The state has elected two independent governors in the modern era. In 1994, billionaire independent presidential candidate Ross Perot narrowly outpolled the late President George H.W. Bush here, even though the incumbent was a Kennebunkport summer resident.
The state adopted its first-in-the-nation system of ranked-choice voting in 2016 after a campaign that sprang from the political apparatus of former two-time independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler, whose narrow 2010 loss to former Gov. Paul LePage spurred calls for reform.
Related efforts to recruit an organized slate of unenrolled candidates have mostly fizzled. LePage is back in 2022 to run against Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, and Cutler was arrested on child pornography charges in March. There are now three independents in the Legislature compared with seven before the 2018 election, in which Casas lost his seat to a Democrat.
But Casas still said he was optimistic about the new effort, citing energy behind it on recent Forward Party calls with political figures in Maine and nationally. A recent Pew Research Center survey found 27 percent of Americans have negative attitudes about both parties.
The requirements to get recognition in Maine are in flux. Under current law, the Forward Party could apply for it this December and would have a full year to enroll 5,000 members ahead of the 2024 elections.
However, part of that law was effectively voided in late 2020 by a federal judge who ordered the secretary of state’s to re-enroll Libertarians. While current ballot access laws are technically alive, lawmakers will have to rework them to comply with the ruling. The party likely would not be up and running here until 2024 at the earliest.
On a recent Forward Party call was former state Rep. Scott Strom, R-Pittsfield, who cited frustration with his party’s embrace of former President Donald Trump as a main reason he is interested. But he cautioned that he has not committed.
“I’m not absolutely opposed to them, but there’s no platform yet, so I had no idea which way they’re going to go,” he said.