"POLITICS AND OTHER MISTAKES"
Slide into extinction
By Al Diamon
The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is proposing the designation of a new endangered species: Second Congressional District voters who support Tom Allen for the U.S. Senate.State biologists say there have been no confirmed sightings of this elusive creature since 2006, when a motorist reported picking up a hitchhiking hippie near Orono. "He was in favor of stem cell research, increased welfare spending and same sex marriage," the motorist said. "And he tried to get me to play a Dixie Chicks CD."
Scientists were able to match those characteristics through a DNA data base and definitely label the scruffy long-hair as an Allen backer.
It's still not known if the hippie was native to the Second District or had been transported across the border, like variable leaf milfoil or the Green Party. It's also not clear if the sighting indicates a breeding colony of liberals has survived in the northern part of the state, since Allenites are notorious for practicing safe sex and birth control.
These questions will likely be answered in 2008, when Allen, the current Democratic U.S. representative in Maine's First District, challenges Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. To win that race, Allen will need to find somebody north of Augusta willing to vote for him.
Before I go any further, let me confess the error of my ways. Until recently, I was sure Allen would pass on a Senate bid in favor of remaining in the House, where he'd be in line, in the near future, for a leadership post. But political insiders say Allen has never been comfortable in the lower chamber, with its heavy workload, light influence and constant campaigns for re-election. The chance to become deputy assistant whip for bondage films and ox-pulling contests was insufficient to lure him into another First District run. Allen has confided to his inner circle that even the possibility he might lose to Collins (fairly high), effectively ending his political career, isn't enough to convince him to try for a position of prominence in the House.
Like fellow Democrats Tom Andrews and Joe Brennan - both First District congressmen turned unsuccessful Senate candidates - he'd prefer extinction to distinction.
Which brings us back to Allen's problem finding supporters outside his home turf. For Second District voters, his lack of appeal begins with his image, which could be described as "Portland elitist," "policy wonk" or "club-soda sipper in a beer-and-a-shot bar."
"Not only does Allen have the looks and the bearing of the successful candidate," wrote the unabashedly elitist Maine Times back in 1999, "but he has an impeccable political lineage. His father and his grandfather before him served on the Portland City Council."
Zowie.
Allen doesn't do a good job of concealing his opinion that he's smarter than everybody else. The fact that he really is smarter makes that attitude even more annoying. As does his tendency to say things like, "By taking stock of our social capital, we can appreciate how and why our country has changed."
In the Second District, folks take stock of the supply of canned goods, the state of the wood pile and whether the roof will last another winter.
More trouble: In 2000, Allen committed a huge political blunder, when he was widely perceived as having thwarted the efforts of Lewiston-Auburn, the largest population center in the Second District and a must-win area for Democrats, to lure the U.S. Postal Service's distribution center and its 850 jobs away from the Portland area. Allen's role in reversing the decision to build the facility in L-A and convincing the post office to choose a Scarborough site instead was probably overstated, but he never tried to deflect the credit.
"I know my responsibilities when I get these calls from my constituents," he told the Lewiston Sun Journal.
"It's going to be a decision that Lewiston-Auburn will not forget for a long time," said John Cleveland - former state senator, ex-Auburn mayor and prominent Democrat - in a newspaper story the day after the deal went down. You'll be able to test how well Cleveland's memory is working by checking to see if there's an "Allen for U.S. Senate" sign on his lawn in '08.
In rural parts of the Second District, Allen's voting record in favor of gun control won't be an easy sell. As George Smith, executive director of the pro-gun Sportsman's Alliance of Maine, put it in a newspaper column, "The only gun bills Allen opposes are those that get tough on criminals."
That isn't exactly fair. But politics, like evolution, is unfair. Just ask the spotted owl, who's been screwed by both.
As for Allen's Second District supporters, please avoid damaging their nesting areas (yurts, homeless shelters, solar-heated cottages with ocean views), their migratory patterns (many fly south for the winter, others hibernate in housing eligible for federal heating subsidies) and their food supply (the public trough).
If you spot a rare northern liberal, e-mail me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.
