Warning to Maine Republicans: Beware Walking Off the Otten Plank

Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting Takes A Baseball Bat To The Otten Piñata

Thursday, Mar 11, 2010 – 9:49 AM | No Comment

Everyone has been dancing around the whispers of “Les Otten” and “the failure of American Ski Company”, hesitant to engage, or really hammer him on the subject. Well – maybe not everyone – but the …

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Warning to Maine Republicans: Beware Walking Off the Otten Plank

By Garrett Murch on Thursday, January 21, 201011 Comments

After decades of mismanagement by establishment Democrats, 2010 represents the best opportunity Maine conservatives and Republicans have had in years to elect a competent leader to the Blaine House who will get the state back on the right fiscal and economic track.

Some Mainers already know who they want that candidate to be, while many more remain undecided. Regardless, the right in Maine should be unified in sharing the overarching goal of retaking the Blaine House.

One so called “Republican” candidate for this opportunity – and responsibility – Leslie Otten, has struck early in television ads claiming he’s the one.

He’s not.

Rather than dwell on Otten’s blatant rip off the Obama campaign logo, his disturbing plagiarism of another logo from a resort in Arizona, his campaign’s apparent collaboration with a former Baldacci operative, or the fact that he lost favor with the Red Sox, I’ll get to the point quickly:

Les Otten would severely depress Republican turnout, and be unusually vulnerable to Democratic and Independent attacks in the general election. An Otten nomination, in other words, would be a squandered opportunity.

Why do I believe this? Well, let’s take a look. Afterward, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In 2008, Leslie Otten donated $2,000 to Rep. Chellie Pingree’s re-election campaign. It seems odd Otten would support one of the most liberal Democrats in Congress, but earlier the same year Otten donated $1,000 to Rep. Mike Michaud’s re-election campaign, too.

As many regulars of Pine Tree Politics are aware, these donations were first reported by Matthew Gagnon, as was Otten’s response to this revelation. Defending himself, Otten claimed it is common to “contribute to different political campaigns to get the attention of all legislators.”

Common? Sure. Respected? Nope. Despised by many principled Republicans? Surely. Priceless? I suppose that depends whether you’re an Otten supporter or not. In all seriousness though, the point stands that Republicans are particularly fed up with “pay to play” politics and “politics as usual” this year, and Otten represents both.

Otten’s 2002 donation of $1,000 to then-Senator Joe Biden probably won’t sit well with Maine Republicans, either. This behavior would lead the GOP base to stay home on Election Day should Otten be the nominee. That is a recipe for disaster for any Republican who hopes to win in November.

A logical response to this criticism, of course, is something along the lines of, “But this is Maine, where Republicans have had a tough time winning. Otten’s veneer of bipartisanship, even if it was really ‘pay to play’, might play well with Independent voters.”

Makes sense, right? Except, there’s a catch – Otten’s appeal to Independent voters and Democrats is extremely limited.

To start, these voters are turned off by this display of cynicism and corruption. But more importantly, the winner of the 2010 Maine gubernatorial contest will almost certainly be the candidate who convinces the largest number of voters she or he will be best for the Maine economy. Therefore, like many (most? all?) candidates, Otten is running on ‘jobs’.

In his first television commercial, Otten claims that as governor he will be “job creator in chief”. Putting aside whether it is the proper role of government to ‘create’ jobs, this claim is powerful and thus would be the prime target of attack for a Democrat nominee in a hypothetical campaign against Otten. Could a Democratic attack on Otten’s claim gain any traction?

That was a rhetorical question.

Otten cites his record with Sunday River and American Skiing Company as his primary evidence he knows how to create jobs. It is true, with some startup funding from sources that are difficult to pin down, he purchased Sunday River. To Otten’s credit, Sunday River initially grew rapidly.

Otten parlayed this early success into starting American Skiing Company (ASC). Soon after, under Otten’s direction ASC took on considerable debt to acquire several expensive resorts in the Northeast and elsewhere. This was a risky (some say reckless) endeavor – one banking on a quick revenue stream to repay its loan obligations. Unfortunately, his high stakes gamble did not pan out, and as a result ASC had to sell off its resorts.

Failure is necessarily part of a free market system. While unfortunate, allowing mismanagement to go down in flames (such as in the case of American Skiing Company) benefits the rest of us who would otherwise be forced to bail out irresponsible behavior or poor judgment.

It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out what Democrats would do with Otten’s ‘jobs creator in chief’ spiel in a general election. Were I a Democratic operative (and believe me, there are several talented ones in this state), I would tear this house of cards narrative to shreds, along with any hopes of Republicans retaking the Blaine House.

Imagine it: “Executive irresponsibly” “takes on enormous debt (an amount strikingly similar to that the State of Maine now faces, incidentally)”, “drives his company into the ground, escapes with millions on a golden parachute”, “Les Otten, ‘job creator’? You must be kidding.”

Otten, himself, likely knows he’s walking on thin ice. This would explain his unusual decision to get on television so early and burn through the more than $500,000 he loaned rather than donated to his campaign. These ads are his attempt to define himself in voters’ minds before they learn more about him.

Frighteningly, this strategy might work in the primary.

Rest assured, however, Democrats would not give Les a free pass in the general. Better, in my opinion, for conservatives and Republicans to take a hard, realistic look at the Otten candidacy now, before it’s too late. There’s a rare opportunity here for us to win. Let’s ‘Seize the Day’, and not blow it by walking off the Otten plank.

[NOTE: This post was written independently by the author and was not authorized by any campaign.]

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11 Comments »

TLC said:

Pretty solid article here. I asked Otten the same fear you brought up at the beginning of the article, if he is the nominee how is he going to motivate everyone to go out and vote. He would be the highest Republican on the ballot so he would have to bring out the base to help the rest who were further down on the ballot. When I asked him that he simply said his campaign has targeted 8 races across the state that they are going to help out. Never talked about motivating the conservative base to get out and vote, all he said hes doing is focusing on 8 races out of 186 races. How nice of him to focus on 4.3% of state races. And that is assuming he backs the Republican…

- 21 January 2010 at 9:40 AM

Rufus said:

How does this 500k loan work? Who repays that? Is the campaign paying him back with interest?

My knee-jerk reaction is that it must be some kind of scheme to enrich himself from other’s money by taking debt that he may never be able to repay. It worked for him with ASC why not try it this time around too?

- 21 January 2010 at 10:05 AM

AugustaInsider said:

Campaign loans get no interest; the campaign repays the person loaning the money the amount loaned, period. No profit is involved, and it is strictly regulated by Maine campaign finance law. It should be pointed out that other candidates, including Paul LePage and Rosa Scarcelli, loaned their campaigns money as well – just not as much. It’s a fairly common campaign finance device, from the state level all the way up to the presidential level.

- 21 January 2010 at 10:11 AM

John J Bouchard said:

How can Otten be trusted? I believe before Otten got into the
race he was not sure whether to run as a Republican or
a Democrat! What does this tell you? Bruce Poliquin is the
complete package!!!

- 21 January 2010 at 12:12 PM

MikeT said:

John, that is factually incorrect. Political commentators discussed the possibility (as they did with Mills), but Otten never did, and he has always been registered Republican. He never discussed or even hinted at running as anything other than a Republican. You can speculate about what he may have been thinking, as you can with any candidate, but (so far at least) there is no evidence that he was considering running as anything other than a Republican.

- 21 January 2010 at 12:40 PM

Stephanie said:

“Campaign loans get no interest; the campaign repays the person loaning the money the amount loaned, period. No profit is involved, and it is strictly regulated by Maine campaign finance law.”

If the candidate wins it would seem they could then use political favors to get the loans paid off by lobby groups and such. I’m guessing this is part of the incentive for going with loans rather than actually funding the campaign? How strictly is this situation regulated?

Matt, we all know how Otten got his money (and lost other people’s.) It would be interesting to learn how the other self-financed candidates got theirs.

- 21 January 2010 at 6:11 PM

John J Bouchard said:

If Otten was really serious about his campaign he would not
loan his campaign money but donate the money to his campaign!

- 21 January 2010 at 7:11 PM

rklindell said:

Solid and on the mark. Les Otten should get out of the Republican Party and run as an independent. He is the worst kind of RINO – the sort whose party affiliation is one of convenience rather than of principle.

- 24 January 2010 at 9:09 AM

OldMainer said:

Bruce Poliquin??? We’re getting rid of one NRCM robot in the Blaine House. Why would we want to replace him with another one. Bruce would happily complete the depopulating of Northern Maine.

- 24 January 2010 at 11:57 AM

TLC said:

Oldmainer I am not sure what you are talking about with Bruce hurting Northern Maine. Bruce has made more trips up north than any of the other candidates this election cycle. I have gone up to Presque Isle with him and he loves it up there, and the people love seeing him. Many of those 27000 miles he has traveled over the past year have been to Aroostock County, I highly doubt he is going to get rid of them. As for him being a “robot” for NRCM, check out his track record with them and see if he follows them to a t… He is as much a robot for NRCM as John Boehner is a robot for obama.

- 24 January 2010 at 3:44 PM

JimCyr said:

The “Obama style” logo that he unveiled (created when Obama’s popularity was still high) was much more significant to me than anythng else. I pretty much wrote him off, right then and there.
It was absurd, and then he was dishonest about it. It spoke VOLUMES.
Craven politics at its worst.

- 24 January 2010 at 5:16 PM