Governor hopefuls face off in Portland Four candidates avoid extensive confrontations on family, seniors issues

PORTLAND – The state’s four gubernatorial candidates explored issues affecting Mainers from cradle to grave Friday night during a live 90-minute debate sponsored by WGME 13 television.

Broken into two 45-minute segments focusing first on youth and family issues and, later, concerns voiced by Maine’s senior citizens, the debate was aired statewide from Channel 13 throughout southern Maine and broadcast on WABI-TV5 in Bangor and WAGM Channel 8 in Presque Isle.

John Baldacci, a Bangor Democrat who is serving his last term as Maine’s 2nd District congressman; Peter Cianchette, a South Portland Republican and former state legislator; Jonathan Carter, the Green Independent Party candidate and former teacher from Lexington Township and John Michael, an Auburn independent and state representative, remained focused on the specific issues for most of the debate. The candidates mixed it up on a few issues but, for the most part, refrained from extensive confrontation.

The exception was Michael who exceeded his typical levels of candor and bluntness by punctuating the debate with repeated challenges to Baldacci, broad negative characterizations of the Maine Democratic Party and appeals for contributions from the public to his comparatively meager campaign fund.

“There’s not enough money to go around in the state of Maine because the Democrats have squandered all your tax money on all their special interests,” said Michael, a former Democrat himself, during closing remarks. “If you’re not gay, on welfare or a man-hating feminist, there’s no room for you in the Democratic Party … Don’t let the Democrats take you for a sucker again.”

If viewers only tuned in to the first 13 minutes of the debate, they would have been able to construct a fairly accurate picture of each candidate’s core campaign principles and priority objectives. Gregg Lagerquist, the WGME 13 anchor who moderated the “Beyond the Ballot” debate, observed Maine has been highly ranked nationally as the best place to raise a child, a distinction attributed in part to state-funded programs.

Referring to the budget gap facing the next Legislature that some economists have pegged as high as $900 million, Lagerquist asked each candidate to explain how children’s health and parental peace of mind would be preserved during the budget balancing process.

Jonathan Carter quickly responded that he was the only the candidate who offered a plan for a single-payer, total choice health plan to save the state “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Businesses and their employees would also realize significant health care savings under the plan, Carter said, freeing up health care dollars families could reinvest in the local economy or use for personal investment. The single-payer plan, he said, would be paid by channeling Maine’s $1.7 billion federal health care funds to a single fund to compete for an affordable, broad-based health insurance plan.

Carter’s collectivist message is echoed on a variety of issues including the distribution of taxes by expanding the sales tax to currently exempted goods and services while simultaneously lowering the property tax burden.

The need to restructure state government to create a state Department of Children and Families that can adequately assess the needs of Maine children without perpetuating existing duplication of services in state government was Cianchette’s solution to child care concerns. By streamlining state government, through a 10 percent reduction in the work force over 10 years, Cianchette said costs to the state budget would be decreased and his new family department would be able to effectively target state resources where they are needed the most.

Cianchette, like Baldacci, frequently uses restructuring concepts as a vehicle for achieving greater efficiency in any number of areas incurring critical costs for taxpayers. Unlike Baldacci, Cianchette’s persistently hammers on the need to rein in state spending while cutting the tax burden by 20 percent over five years. Cianchette insists that current state needs can be met without tax increases or cuts to existing services through better management in the governor’s office.

Despite his acknowledgment that Republicans are his “friends,” Michael again portrayed himself as the anti-establishment candidate and rejected the premise of Lagerquist’s question. Rather than state-funded programs, he said the reason for Maine’s reputation as a good place to raise a family more deservedly belonged to the state’s “functional family units.”

The independent said he would promote policies that would nurture the family environment for a child. In the process, state costs would be diminished, said Michael, who also used the debate question to assail federal government programs which he said encouraged families to “split up” to gain access to Medicaid health care benefits that they would not be able to afford as a single family unit. He also blamed majority Democrats in the Legislature for squandering what state resources were available by parceling out money to special interest groups.

Michael quickly drew a stark contrast between his candidacy and those of his opponents. Viewers had no problem identifying Michael as the only independent in the group, determined to eliminate a wide array of expensive state programs he perceives as frivolous or superfluous. Michael also sent out a clear message that he held Democrats responsible for most of the ills in the state’s economy and committed to a social agenda geared more toward minority interests rather than the needs of average Mainers.

At times, Baldacci appeared fatigued Friday night from Thursday’s marathon House session on the Iraq resolution and the debate on President’s Bush’s desire to use military force to oust Saddam Hussein. But his responses revealed no apparent hesitation as he rapidly answered Lagerquist’s question.

Baldacci said he had voted in Congress to establish the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which he said dropped the level of uninsured children in the country by more than 85 percent to a little less than 5 percent.

He also favored increasing state participation in a Medicaid program that would provide a two-for-one match to expand health insurance for Maine’s poorest children. Baldacci would additionally explore community development block grants to bring additional medical and dental services into the schools.

Baldacci rarely missed an opportunity to emphasize his eight years of experience as a U.S. congressman and frequently offered up federal solutions, in whole or in part, to Maine problems. No candidate, according to Baldacci, can surpass him in seeking out those solutions. He also sought to capitalize on the public’s familiarity with his family that many long-time residents link with the various incarnations of the Baldacci Italian restaurant business stretching back more than 50 years in eastern Maine. Baldacci made several references to his father during the debate as well his own family to cement the concept that the needs of all Maine families are important to him.

Repeatedly assailed by his opponents for failing to explain how Maine’s expanded participation in Medicaid programs can be sustained without additional taxes, Baldacci argued that restructuring the Department of Human Services would produce efficiencies and cost savings on a large enough scale to pay for new programs.

As the perceived front-runner in the race – although recent polls indicate Cianchette and Carter are making significant strides to close the gap – Baldacci was a perpetual target for his opponents. He preferred not to mix it up with his adversaries and passed on responding to a series of barbed accusations from Michael, explaining to Lagerquist that his father had always told him that if he didn’t have anything good to say, “it was better to say nothing.”