PORTLAND, Maine — Five of the seven Republicans fighting for the chance to replace outgoing Gov. Janet Mills debated for the second time this week on Thursday, forging alliances and fielding attacks over their business or government backgrounds.
While the candidates agreed on several issues including lowering taxes and cutting the state budget, the contest featured plenty of fireworks. With attorney Bobby Charles absent for the second debate this week, entrepreneur Jonathan Bush and former Maine Senate Majority Leader Garrett Mason attacked Charles while sparring over their backgrounds.
Mason and Bush have the most outside money behind them. Charles — a frontrunner in the few public polls so far — has built a firebrand grassroots campaign driven in large part by social media. Charles said he skipped the debate because longshot Robert Wessels didn’t qualify.
Here are a few takeaways from tonight’s debate.
Nobody committed to voting for Charles as the nominee.
Not one candidate raised their hand when asked if they would vote for Charles if he were the nominee. Asked to explain, the candidates said they were focused on the primary and ensuring they were the nominee.
Bush said he feels “good about a lot of the candidates on this stage,” but he slammed Charles multiple times, including during most of his closing statement.
“Bobby is a lobbyist,” he said. “CEOs deliver, and lobbyists lobby.”
Mason also argued that while he is working as a lobbyist, he’s acknowledging it while Charles does not talk much about it in public. Bush and Mason also hammered Charles over his virtually impossible proposal to cut the state budget by $4 billion.
“It crashes the Maine economy,” Mason said. “We can’t have somebody with the temperament of Bobby Charles anywhere near the Blaine House.”
Charles, who held a Facebook discussion with Wessels earlier Thursday, criticized his opponents in a post, calling the debate an “alternate universe” with politicians using ranked-choice voting to manipulate the election.
The debate began with a new deal.
Two days ago, real estate executive David Jones used an opening statement to knock Charles for not turning up. On Thursday, he used the moment to announce a new alliance.
Jones asked Mainers to pick him as the top vote in state’s ranked-choice system, but to vote for former fitness executive Ben Midgley second. He said he had gotten to know Midgley and believed they’d both make good governors. Jones said he also thought Bush is a good guy and that entrepreneur Owen McCarthy is a future GOP star.
He then tossed over to Midgley, who said he’d “gotten to know Dave on the trail, he’s a solid guy and accomplished businessman.”
After the debate as the candidates shook hands, Bush joked with Jones that “you broke my heart” by not allying with him.
The agreement came after businessman Robert Wessels, who did not qualify for Thursday’s debate, announced he would become the “grassroots chair” for Bush’s campaign in the 2nd Congressional District and said he would rank the health tech entrepreneur second.
But Bush did not commit to a second-choice pick when the candidates were asked Thursday night. Nor did Mason, Midgley and McCarthy.
Mason and Bush had a secondary dispute.
The question was what makes the candidates stand out as leaders who could overhaul Augusta. Mason began his answer by noting he was the only one on stage who had negotiated with Democrats and passed a budget that cut Mainers’ taxes.
Then Mason shifted gears. Responding to not-so-subtle attacks by Bush — who says he respects Mason but doesn’t think a lobbyist is right for the job — Mason said he’s the only candidate being fully honest about his political connections.
“You can’t honestly say you’re a political outsider when your last name is Bush,” Mason said.
Bush countered that we can’t control our birth. Other than some campaigning for his uncle, the late President George H.W. Bush, he’s also “thrilled to live a life completely out of politics.”
Midgley, who accused Mason this week of spreading false information about his fitness business, said he respected the former senator’s work in government. But like Bush, he said a CEO is what the state needs, not a lobbyist.
Bush and Mason later squared off on health care. Bush argued Mason’s proposal to tap the National Guard to help bolster rural health facilities’ staffing went beyond Democrats’ attempts to expand state power over health care.
He said the plan showed “a lack of faith” in the private sector. Mason chuckled and encouraged Bush to talk to Republican governors who had been successful filling gaps in rural health care.
Bush was irritated by a question on past domestic violence.
The entrepreneur was irked by a question on an episode that was publicized in 2018, around the time an activist investor forced him out of athenahealth, the health tech company he founded in the 1990s.
Court records from his divorce say he pushed his then-wife into a wall in 2005 and and repeatedly struck her sternum with a closed fist while she held your baby. He admitted to this in a deposition but was never charged with a crime. His ex-wife has endorsed his campaign and reports a strong co-parenting relationship with him.
Though he said Mainers “need to know about this,” Bush faulted the Bangor Daily News of “[continuing] to bring it up,” saying the continued focus amounted to “cancel culture” and looked “petty.” He pivoted to a strong culture at his companies since then.
“What I know is, I’m a CEO who loves Maine, who’s built thousands of jobs in Maine, who’s built a largely feminine culture, and nobody ever felt unsafe or uncomfortable or threatened by me,” he said.
Afterward, he asked a moderator how many more questions he would get on his divorce.
