Abortion, gay rights might not turn vote Jobs, taxes more likely to decide governor’s race

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To voters, they can be among the most emotional and polarizing issues in a political campaign.

Abortion, gay rights, religion in schools and same-sex marriage – all among the “hot-button” social issues – fast became part of the Maine governor’s race when, after the primary, Democrats hammered the social stands of the GOP’s conservative nominee, Chandler Woodcock.

It’s true, campaign watchers agree, that voters in Maine – the 13th most liberal state on abortion and gay rights issues, according to one recent study – have seldom elected a staunch social conservative to any major office.

But how much importance do Maine voters place on social issues when choosing a candidate?

When surveyed, few list them among their top concerns. Instead they almost invariably choose jobs, health care and taxes as the most pressing issues facing the state.

Julie Tornquist, a mother of five from Fort Fairfield, puts improving Maine’s business climate atop her list.

But the 44-year-old home-school teacher and faithful Republican voter also considers herself a socially conservative Christian. She, like Woodcock, opposes abortion, gay rights and same-sex marriage. She, again like Woodcock, supports teaching creationism alongside evolution in public classrooms if that’s the will of the local school board.

“It’s very important,” Tornquist said of the necessity that her chosen candidate share her position on social issues. “It’s not necessarily a deal breaker. But everything boils down to your world view and how you see things.”

While Tornquist likes Woodcock’s social stands, she remains undecided on her choice for governor in November. She said she’s unsure if the Farmington state senator is skilled enough in the “art of compromise.”

Convincing voters like Tornquist that he is not a far-right ideologue becomes the challenge for Woodcock, a lay Baptist preacher and retired high school English teacher.

“It’s never been an agenda for me,” Woodcock said while in Bangor this week. “Frankly, I think it’s more the Democrats’ agenda to make it my agenda.”

When challenged by Democrats, Woodcock has been backed by some of the more liberal members of his party, including state Sen. Karl Turner of Cumberland, the prime sponsor of the gay rights legislation that Woodcock opposed last year.

“I disagree with him on social issues, but we have a lot of common ground elsewhere,” Turner said Friday. “I know he doesn’t wear those [social] positions on his sleeve.”

But for voters like Ginny Sand, a student and author from Bangor, promises of political ambivalence carry little weight.

“How can a person’s beliefs not influence the decisions he or she is going to have to make?” asked Sand, 49, who favors abortion rights and equal rights – including marriage – for gays and lesbians.

“For me, as a woman, these are very big issues,” she said. “It’s a very big issue for me if we start to go backward from the progress we’ve made toward equality.”

A fine line

While Woodcock hasn’t backed away from his positions on the social issues, he hasn’t trumpeted them in the weeks after the primary. And his tone has softened a bit since the party’s convention in May, when he rallied conservatives with lines like, “I’m opposed to special rights, and marriage is between a man and a woman. Case closed!”

The party’s conservative base is largely credited with delivering the primary to Woodcock, who bested two more moderate challengers. More precisely, some pundits point to a late get-out-the-vote effort from a little-known group called the Maine Jeremiah Project as a factor in that race.

The group, headed by Plymouth pastor Bob Emrich, rejects the traditional separation of church and state – or at least how it is applied today. Instead, he said, the group subscribes to a more historical view of the connection between government and religion and is working to encourage conservative Christians to bring their religious values to Augusta.

“We want to have an influence,” said Emrich, who plans another get-out-the-vote effort before the general election in November.

While he has worked closely with Emrich, Woodcock says he is not very familiar with the tenets of the Maine Jeremiah Project. And while Emrich stresses that his group did not endorse a particular candidate, he surmises that his efforts probably helped Woodcock in the primary. Emrich, who works in the Senate Republican office, acknowledges that he, personally, does support Woodcock’s campaign.

After that win, Woodcock also picked up the support of Michael Heath, the widely known but often controversial leader of the Christian Civic League of Maine.

The league itself will not endorse a candidate. Heath’s support – based in part on Woodcock’s opposition to abortion and gay rights – drew a measured response from the GOP candidate.

“I’m not interested in seeking any endorsements,” Woodcock said this week. “If [Heath] wants to vote for [Gov.] John Baldacci, then he can go ahead and do that. If they want to be supportive of me, that’s fine. I don’t have any control over them.”

It’s a fine line Woodcock must walk in the months leading up to the general election, said Amy Fried, a political scientist at the University of Maine. If he’s seen as too conservative, moderate voters might look elsewhere, she said. If he moves too far to the center, conservatives might take offense.

“It’s a difficult game to play,” Fried said. “In some ways the Christian right is going to be a significant part of Woodcock’s base, but he has to decide how closely he wants to be linked with them.”

The issues

If it’s up to Democrats – eager to paint Woodcock as out of the mainstream – the ties to Maine’s strict social conservatives will be tight.

“It’s important the people of Maine know what the candidates stand for,” said Jesse Connolly, who is managing Baldacci’s re-election bid. “It’s about the values these candidates bring to the table. We know John Baldacci, but we don’t know where Chandler Woodcock stands.”

None of the five other candidates running for governor has focused on the social questions yet, leaving Baldacci and Woodcock to delve into the sometimes sticky topics.

Abortion – perhaps the hottest of the hot-button issues – reveals the first major difference between the two major party candidates.

Baldacci supports a woman’s legal right to an abortion – a stance shared by roughly two-thirds of Mainers, polls suggest. A woman’s decision, he said, should be made in consultation with her family, her physician and without government interference.

Woodcock is against abortion except in cases of rape, incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. In a recent debate, he said if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal law guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion, he would “move Maine in that direction.”

Baldacci is opposed to teaching creationism – a religious alternative to evolution – in public schools. Woodcock favors the idea but would leave the decision to local school boards. A nationwide poll taken last year suggests Woodcock might not be as far out of the mainstream as his opponents might think, with roughly two-thirds of respondents saying both should be taught.

On the gay rights issue, Baldacci was the prime mover behind Sen. Turner’s 2005 law outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. Woodcock, who opposed the law, said he would not seek its repeal as governor unless the issue was put back before voters.

Both candidates say they oppose gay marriage, but Woodcock favors a constitutional amendment banning it. Baldacci does not favor the amendment and his statements suggest he is less strident in his opposition, calling such unions “too much, too fast.”

“We need dialogue rather than division,” reads a statement from the Baldacci campaign. “This is not a battle Maine needs now.”

The current battle is the one for the Blaine House, and while pundits say social issues might play a larger role in this campaign than in the past, they are unlikely to settle it.

“They’re not going to take over the whole thing,” said Jim Melcher, a political scientist at the University of Maine at Farmington. “Your typical election in Maine will still be decided by the economy and jobs.”