By Heather Garlich
Congressional Quarterly

Electoral votes: 4

Delegates: 14

Chairman: Ross J. Connelly

Hotel: Four Points Sheraton (856) 428-2300

1996 Election:
Clinton – 52%
Dole – 31%
Perot – 14%

Maine is one of the many far-flung outposts of the family that produced 2000 Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush. The Texas governor visited the family's familiar coastal Kennebunkport compound in June to celebrate the birthdays of his father, former President George Bush, and mother, former first lady Barbara Bush.

Yet Maine, once a stronghold of Yankee Republican conservatism, today exhibits mainly centrist voting habits that make it far from a certain four electoral votes for the 2000 GOP nominee.

The elder Bush did carry Maine with 55 percent in his 1988 presidential victory. But when Bush ran for re-election in 1992, he finished third in Maine behind Democrat Bill Clinton and independent Ross Perot (more than a third of Maine's voters are independents, as is Angus King, the state's governor since 1995). In 1996, Clinton carried Maine by 52 percent to 31 percent over Republican nominee Bob Dole.

Maine, in fact, has one of the few state Republican parties in which moderates clearly predominate over conservatives. The state's leading Republican figures are more likely to be drawn to the "compassionate" side of George W. Bush than to his "conservative" side.

Perhaps the best symbol of Maine Republicans' flexibility surely will not be welcome at the Republican convention. When the GOP last met in San Diego in 1996, Maine's William S. Cohen was just ending a three-term tenure as a Republican senator; today, he is Clinton's Defense secretary.

However, the moderate Republican loyalists who will be in Philadelphia are solidly behind Bush. They include Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (a former Cohen congressional aide) and Susan Collins; former Gov. John R. McKernan, Snowe's husband, boasts of his friendship with the presidential candidate.

Maine Republicans think their hopes of returning Maine to the GOP column this November have been bolstered by Bush's appeal to moderate voters since clinching the nomination in March.

Delegation Chairman Ross J. Connelly, who unsuccessfully challenged 1st District Democratic Rep. Tom Allen in 1998, said, "Gov. Bush is doing an outstanding job appealing to the center." Connelly is Bush's Maine campaign coordinator.

Republican National Committeeman Ken Cole described Maine as moderate without any definitive factions and said Bush is "the first person since Ronald Reagan to institute 'the big tent' " in which conservatives, liberals and moderates are grouped together.

While the state has just 14 delegates, Cole sees diversity. "It's a pretty mixed delegation," he said. "There was no attempt to freeze out conservatives."

Party moderates seem to be going out of their way to avoid emphasizing party divisions. In 1996, Snowe was among a group of moderate Republicans who advocated tempering the anti-abortion language in the party platform, a move that had at least tacit support from some of her fellow Mainers. Cole said he expects no such effort this year. "We have to focus on what we have in common rather than what divides us," he said.

Among the other noteworthy figures in the Maine contingent is alternate delegate Jane Amero, this year's challenger to 1st District Democrat Allen.

MAINE NOTABLES: U.S. Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins; John R. McKernan Jr., a former U.S. House member and governor who is Snowe's husband; former one-term 1st District Rep. James B. Longley Jr., who was unseated in 1996 by Democrat Tom Allen; delegation Chairman Ross J. Connelly, who lost to Allen as the 1998 Republican nominee; state Sen. Jane Amero, an alternate delegate who is Allen's challenger this year; state House Assistant Minority Leader Richard Campbell, the GOP challenger to 2nd District Democratic Rep. John Baldacci.