| 📷 Former House Speaker Hannah Pingree meets with Bangor housing authority officials on Friday, July 11, 2025. (BDN photo by Linda Coan O’Kresik) |
| What I’m hearing 🌱 There are haves and have-nots in this endorsement primary. ◉ Former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree won the endorsement of Maine Conservation Voters’ political arm on Monday, a move the environmental group highlighted as the only time it has ever weighed in on a gubernatorial primary. ◉ The group is a big Democratic election spender, putting nearly $1 million in outside money into 2022 state races. But that was focused on general elections. Any financial backing by the group could have a magnified impact on the primary race with four other well-heeled candidates in the race. ◉ Pingree is generally the person that people I talk to in political circles think will play the long game well enough to emerge from this primary. She has the tacit backing of Gov. Janet Mills and has stacked up endorsements from current and former state lawmakers given her deep roots in the party. (Credit to Anthony Emerson for tracking many endorsements on Substack.) ◉ She only has one real rival in this “endorsement primary.” That is former Maine Senate President Troy Jackson, a labor Democrat backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and has locked down unions and also has a raft of current and former elected officials backing him. ◉ I generally fade the impact of endorsements, which political insiders care far more about than normal people. But party insiders are often leading indicators of support among the electorate. Despite the rise of President Donald Trump, who had few endorsements by the time he took pole position in the 2016 Republican primaries, parties do generally decide these things. ◉ That is why many in political circles see Pingree as the favorite to emerge from this primary. That’s a vote of confidence in her ability to play the long game in her return to elected politics for the first time since 2008. ◉ But voters may know more about other candidates now, like Jackson and Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. Thelatter has the backing of the Maine People’s Alliance but little else. In fact, there’s an endorsement page on her website full of empty slots that read “First Last, Title of important person.” ◉ Former clean energy executive Angus King III hashis senator father’s backing and some private-sector folks behind him, and former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention head Nirav Shah is not registering on this front yet. ◉ This isn’t worth putting a ton of stock in now, but Pingree’s fundraising lead on the field plus this shows a high level of organization in her campaign. Other candidates will need to find wells of support to sustain their campaigns through June. |
