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AUGUSTA, Maine — We have reached the planning phase of the Democratic gubernatorial primary.
On Monday, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows invoked legendary Maine resident Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet, with a “New Deal for Maine” plan. The same day, Maine public health chief Nirav Shah put out his plan to lower costs following his ideas on health care and resisting the policies of President Donald Trump.
Not to be outdone, a spokesperson for former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson noted these policy releases and pointed reporters to the blueprint their campaign released in December. Former House Speaker Hannah Pingree has health care and housing blueprints, and former clean energy executive Angus King III has a plan on his main subject.
They show some budding rivalries in the field. Jackson and Bellows are staking out a populist lane with the most aggressive plans to assert government power, while Pingree, Shah and King are showing themselves to be more technocratic in taking things subject by subject.
Democrats are leaning into these kinds of finer policy releases more than those in the even more crowded Republican gubernatorial field vying for the chance to replace Gov. Janet Mills. But they are still very much a framework that candidates will be building on down the home stretch of this campaign and beyond.
“It just seems like it is a moment for kind of bold ideas and a willingness to take on the powers that be to make something happen,” Sharon Treat, a former Democratic legislator from Hallowell who is informally advising Jackson’s campaign on labor issues, said.
For example, they both want higher taxes for out-of-state homeowners and lower profits for utilities. Jackson is generally more aggressive, opening up the idea of the state taking over struggling hospitals. But Bellows is calling for a millionaire tax, while Jackson is calling for expansions of existing earned income and child tax credits.
While Jackson and Bellows are quick to use confrontational language that invokes Wall Street or out-of-state rich people, Pingree and Shah talk more about governing philosophies. Alongside King, they have been leaning into their areas of focus, including housing, which Pingree worked on as the head of Mills’ policy office.
Pingree tends to health care and housing in the broader affordability context. But she has come out in favor of a public health insurance option meant to compete with private plans, noting in her document that policymakers would have to work out the details of such a plan. Shah’s framework relies more on using existing state rules to cap copays and deductibles.
Only three states have implemented public options, with Washington and Colorado running into problems that run the gamut from lack of participation by health care providers to missing rate reduction benchmarks. Capping copays and deductibles also runs the risk of pushing costs into premiums, noted Trish Riley, a former Maine health finance chief who has donated to Pingree.
In the end, she said Pingree’s plans could be cheaper and more effective than Shah’s given a state regulatory environment that is generally designed to maintain the solvency of a small group of insurers rather than directly decrease prices for consumers.
“The bottom line is, what drives premiums? Hospitals and drugs,” Riley said. “Unless and until we take that on, we’re not ever going to really bring these things down.”
