Town by Town: Damariscotta

Damariscotta is the sort of town where Republicans need to improve, if not win.

Legislators: Rep. Lydia Crafts (D-Newcastle), first elected in 2020; Sen. Cameron Reny (D-Round Pond), first elected in 2022.

Damariscotta, Maine (pop. 2,297), the next subject of this series, is perhaps most well-known for its annual Pumpkinfest - excuse me, Pumpkinfest & Regatta - where businesses compete with artistically-designed giant pumpkins downtown, there’s an annual competition for the largest, and people race pumpkin boats.

Yes, that’s correct: pumpkin boats. It’s a thing. It’s definitely well worth the visit, too, if you’re in the area that time of year.

An artistically-designed pumpkin in downtown Damariscotta during the 2013 Pumpkinfest. Photo by the author.

Now, Damariscotta isn’t a particularly competitive town politically - Democrats have carried it overwhelmingly in recent statewide elections, as you can see below. It’s representative of a certain type of town, though, which is why it’s worth further examination: a town that has been more competitive in the past, in starts and fits, but has been trending even more Democratic as of late.

The most recent example when Damariscotta was more politically competitive was in 2014, when Paul LePage was running for re-election against Mike Michaud. While Michaud carried Damariscotta by eight points, he barely crested 50% of the vote there - a middling result that replicated the lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy statewide as well. Now, without the presence of Eliot Cutler, who actually carried the town in 2010, Michaud certainly would have done better - but even if he’d gotten every single one of Cutler’s votes he wouldn’t have done as well as Obama did against Mitt Romney in 2012, let alone as Obama did there in 2008.

The 2014 results in Damariscotta are a reflection of a political axiom that is ignored surprisingly often by supposedly brilliant strategists: candidate quality matters. Another Democrat who generated more enthusiasm amongst the party’s base in towns like Damariscotta may well have performed better in 2014. The problem of candidate quality and enthusiasm isn’t just one for Mike Michaud, however: four years later, Republican nominee Shawn Moody also failed to generate significant enthusiasm, giving Janet Mills an easy victory. When Paul LePage returned to run for governor again last year, he didn’t just fail to recreate his own numbers from 2014, he couldn’t even match Shawn Moody’s 2018 numbers - either statewide or in Damariscotta.

Now, at this point you may be wondering whether Damariscotta has become a hopeless case for Republicans, even if it has been won by them in local races in years past. The answer is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s certainly not going to be easy for any Republican - even the ideal candidate running in the ideal environment in a local election - to win the town itself any time soon. Damariscotta, by voter registration data, is about ten percentage points more Democratic than the state as a whole, as you can see below.

In order to carry the town itself, a Republican would have to not only get all of the unenrolled voters to support them, but also get some support amongst registered Democrats. They’d not only have to be a great candidate running a great campaign, they’d probably also have to luck in to facing an extremely flawed or lackluster opponent. Even being competitive in the surrounding Maine House District 46, which also includes Bristol, Monhegan, Newcastle, and Nobleboro, would probably be a stretch: the Republican candidate last year didn’t carry any other town, either. Still, even though the House District might not be a key race, the larger surrounding Maine Senate District is going to be for Republicans as they try to regain their majority.

Neither the statewide Republican Party nor the Lincoln County Republican Committee can entirely ignore Damariscotta or other towns like it, however. They need to maintain a presence, as chipping away at the Democrats’ margin of victory in places like Damariscotta is one of the quiet keys to success in any statewide races. This was the case not only in the 2014 gubernatorial race, when Michaud barely got more than 50%, but also in 2020, when Susan Collins ended up trouncing Sara Gideon in what was expected to be a much closer contest. Even Susan Collins didn’t carry Damariscotta, but she got more than 40% of the vote, holding Sara Gideon to less than 54%.

Turning a 65% plus town of the other party into a 54% town - and doing it over and over again, all over the state - is exactly how you win a statewide election in a competitive state. It might seem like both parties can safely ignore towns that one party or the other carries by twenty points, but that ultimately becomes a self-fulfilling strategy for failure in major races, and can be the key to upsets in local races. Regardless of whether one party or the other can actually win a particular town, they can’t afford to completely ignore any of them - not in a state as competitive, and as geographically large and diverse, as Maine.

You may follow Jim on Twitter or Facebook. He is also a weekly political columnist for the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest daily newspaper.