As Goes Maine, So Go Health Care and Gay Marriage?

There are many perks to going to college in Maine. The lobster. The breathtaking scenery. L.L. Bean. An appreciation for summer weather. Did I already mention the lobster?

But the rumblings of social, political, and economic debate are boiling up among Mainers, and upcoming legislative battles in the state have the potential to burst from our quiet corner of the country like an icy Nor'easter. It's enough to make a college student from New York cast off the detached respect of an outsider and embrace the issues with the engagement of a native (albeit without the accent).

First, take health care. In Obama and Max Baucus' Sisyphean push for bipartisanship in health care reform, Maine's Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe has emerged as one of the most powerful politicians in Washington. A centrist and one of the "Group of Six" in the Senate Finance Committee, Snowe has been wooed by Democrats, lobbyists, and Organizing for America phone banks to repeat her aisle-crossing vote to pass the economic stimulus plan and get on board with health care. Her support could mean 60 votes for the Democrats and a parry of the pesky filibuster. As one with the power to stall the legislative process, she has great sway over the direction of reform.

But as politicians and interest groups buzz around Snowe, as a senator she will always be drawn to her constituents in Maine. Although she is as popular as ever and her re-election is assured whether or not she crosses the aisle, Snowe told the Los Angeles Times that what matters is what Maine voters think. As much as politicians push for Snowe's support, at the citizen's level, the power is with the people of Maine. As the LAT article notes, Maine citizens have some of the nation's highest per capita medical costs in the nation and comprise one of the country's largest uninsured populations. Constituents inundate Snowe's office daily with letters and phone calls on the direction of health care reform, and she seems to be listening closely.

Then there's gay marriage. In May of this year, Gov. John Baldacci signed a bill that legalized same-sex marriage in Maine – the fifth state to do so. But like an out-of-state vacationer, legalized gay marriage has only stuck around in Maine for the summer months. It now faces a hotly contested "People's Veto" in a ballot initiative on Nov. 3. According to a Democracy Corps poll of registered Maine voters, support for maintaining gay marriage's legal status – a "no" vote on the veto – leads the opposition by nine points.

The immediate impact of the initiative – called "Question One" on the ballot – is of course on the thousands of same-sex couples in Maine, but many see broad national implications in the passage or rejection of the veto. No state has ever legalized same-sex marriage with a popular vote (the judiciary has always gotten involved), and while there is a general sense of momentum in the national gay rights movement, the Proposition 8 debacle in California has shown the difficulty of getting marriage equality bills passed. With that in mind, the group spearheading the veto effort, Stand For Marriage Maine, has hired Frank Schubert, who ran the pro-Prop 8 (anti-gay marriage) campaign in California. After winning an award for his efforts to repeal gay marriage on the West Coast, Schubert has stuck to what works in his transcontinental jump from palm trees to pines. "Yes on 8" has become "Yes on 1." On the side of marriage equality is No on 1, a grassroots organization with the support of the ACLU and Human Rights Campaign.

Issues like these, in which the battleground is Maine but the war encompasses the nation at large, suggest another perk of collegiate life in Maine: student activism. Sure, undergraduates are organizing and canvassing in every state, and there is no indication that they are any more active in Maine's colleges, but politics here in the Pine Tree State are uniquely welcoming to student engagement. As Nicole Witherbee of the Maine Center of Economic Development said in a recent talk at Bowdoin, the Maine government is a citizen's legislature with an openness and accessibility that allows anyone to see literally every politician in Augusta. Maine publishes its politicians' home phone numbers and welcomes all residents (yes, that includes college students) to visit the capital and engage directly with their representatives.

Perhaps Maine is so receptive to students because it wants them to stick around after their four years are up. Maine has a very elderly population and, as the Los Angeles Times notes, its economy, the poorest on the East Coast, is based primarily on tourism and never really recovered from the last recession. Maine is the sow that nurtures her farrow of private out-of-state college students for four years before seeing the majority of them off in springtime commencement ceremonies to careers in Boston, New York, or anywhere but Maine. The state (i.e., the university haven of Freeport) does benefit economically from having these young men and women, and the public university system in Maine is also vibrant, but the state needs an influx of motivated youngsters that will stay. Getting them legitimately involved in state politics is one way to make college-age outsiders feel like a part of the state.

As Jenna Vendil of the Maine branch of the League of Young Voters, a progressive national political organization, told me in an e-mail, Maine is built around small, tight-knit communities that lend themselves to local organization. Campus activists couldn't ask for a better setting. Bowdoin College Democrats have been extremely visible on both No on 1 and the health care overhaul, which has had a disappointingly anemic youth movement behind it. Teamed up with the Bowdoin Queer Straight Alliance, the Dems, as they are known, have mobilized for local (door-to-door) canvassing, informational campaigns to raise awareness, phone banking, and voter registration drives.

Students have been impressed by how tolerant Mainers are on issues like Question One and encouraged by local communities' acceptance of their activism. Maine private college organizations also benefit from their campus bodies' ideological homogeneity in favor of Democratic issues. Bowdoin observes an unspoken "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it comes to being Republican, and even the group with the courage to speak up about its conservatism -- the Bowdoin College Republicans -- is timidly "not taking a position on Question 1."

What remains to be seen is whether all this activism will actually work. On health care, Olympia Snowe remains as quiet and enigmatic as ever. With almost a month to go before Mainers fill out their ballots, it is still difficult to predict the number of yes's and no's on Question One. Maine is boxed in its northeastern nook by four states that have legalized gay marriage – in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont, it is currently legal, and in New Hampshire, it will be in 2010 – and that bastion of all things liberal, Canada. However, Maine's rural population and reputation as the "Deep South of the Northeast" suggest a conservatism that may be less responsive to same-sex marriage.

"As goes Maine, so goes the nation," is a phrase not often quoted these days (people also once thought "what's good for General Motors is good for the country"). But as large political issues such as health care and marriage equality come to the fore in Maine, volunteers, media attention, and political strategists will likely pour into the state to take the temperature of the local movements and inject their own influence. It's a level of attention this state of 1.3 million is not used to, and it won't last, but it's enough to get even the most uninterested outsiders thinking about what's brewing in Maine.