King’s mandate

Gov. Angus King not only won re-election by a huge margin, he won it big all over Maine. This change from his slim victory in ’94 should mean an end to speculation about whether an independent can influence the Legislature and start talk about how fast legislators can get in line with the popular governor’s agenda.

Back in ’94, not only didn’t Maine’s six northernmost counties vote to elect Gov. King, they placed him third, after Susan Collins and Joe Brennan. This time, however, those same counties had him easily the winner, with all but Washington County giving him an outright majority of votes, according to preliminary numbers.

Some will argue the turnaround has more to do with the weakness of his opposition rather than the governor’s own merits, but the fact that neither major party could find a strong candidate to compete against Gov. King says a lot. Party leaders feared the governor and the parties themselves were unable to generate much enthusiasm for the candidates that did run.

So the governor has a mandate from the public. The question now is what he will do with it. His choices are to merely try to keep Maine attached to national economic growth trends or attempt something truly grand. Through luck, and it is difficult to say whether the luck is good or bad, the governor has been handed the opportunity to address in an unprecedented way the disparities between the Two Maines.

The division within the state has been exposed before, but never has the level of resentment reached such a point that nearly every statewide conflict is calculated in terms of the split between the haves and have-nots. And if economic growth of the sort Maine has had for the past three years can cause the resentment to build, imagine what the next recession will bring.

To avoid this longtime problem is to leave it for a future administration and to condemn his own to obscurity.

To try valiantly yet fail would have the governor remembered and respected.

To try and succeed would leave a legacy against which Maine governors for generations will measure themselves.

This is not to say the disparities causing Northern Maine towns to lose population, the north-south income gap to widen or the best jobs to resist crossing the Kennebec can be overcome in the next four years. To be clear, they cannot. But Maine can commit itself as it has never before to a course that would return prosperity to this half of the state, thereby helping all of Maine.

Gov. King has the mandate he sought. Now his must run with it.