As Maine Goes, So Goes...

A handful of local caucuses suddenly seem prophetic

"We ought to increase the tolls on all roads leading into the state from Massachusetts," quips Maine Secretary of State Rodney Quinn. "We could solve all of Maine's revenue problems." As a loyal supporter of President Jimmy Carter, Quinn is exaggerating the number of buses that are hauling volunteer workers for Senator Edward Kennedy into the state--but not by much. Both Carter and Kennedy are pouring money and manpower into a campaign that unexpectedly is shaping up as an important test of the Senator's ability to recover from his shattering defeat in Iowa.

That a poor and thinly populated state should suddenly seem a major battleground is one of the odder quirks of this year's political calendar. The number of votes at stake is insignificant: a mere 10,000 to 15,000 Democrats are expected to turn out for town caucuses next Sunday. They will choose delegates to a state convention in May that will determine how to apportion the 22 votes that Maine will eventually cast (out of a total of 3,331) at the Democratic nominating convention in New York in August.

In past campaigns, the caucuses in Maine have been a little-noticed chip in the nominating process. That is still true for the Republicans; their caucuses, in which George Bush seems to hold a lead, are being strung out over a period of two months, ending March 15--by which time national attention will long since have swung elsewhere. But Maine's Democrats for the first time are holding all their caucuses on the same day, Feb. 10, thus providing a media event between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary.

Kennedy will be testing the appeal of the forthrightly liberal line he developed in his do-or-die speech on Jan. 28, and his ability to win with a staff of unpaid workers (their paychecks were stopped after the Iowa debacle dried up his campaign contributions). Kennedy visited Maine for three days over the weekend, and will be back several times in the closing days. So will many members of his family. The campaign has acquired a touch of hysteria: some Maine Democrats tell of receiving as many as eight telephone calls from different Kennedy volunteers apparently working from overlapping voter lists without coordination.

Carter-Mondale headquarters in Washington has doubled its Maine campaign budget and now plans to spend almost the whole $290,000 allowed by federal law, for the most part to send paid workers ringing doorbells throughout the state. Unpaid visitors talking up Carter include Miss Lillian, Rosalynn, Son Chip, Vice President Walter Mondale and former Governor Kenneth Curtis, who is now the U.S. Ambassador to Canada. Organization is always important in a caucus state, and Carter clearly has the edge: eleven of Maine's 16 Democratic county chairmen are working in his behalf.

Though both sides are doing the usual poor-mouthing in advance of the vote, the gloom talk from the Kennedy camp sounds more genuine. Campaign workers insist that the Senator is in an uphill battle in Maine, and indeed unpublished polls indicate that Carter has jumped from a ten-point deficit in December to a ten-point lead now (no statewide poll has yet been printed). Wonders Kennedy's Maine coordinator, Peter Meade: "If Mexico had attacked the U.S. when Millard Fillmore was President, would his face be on Mount Rushmore?"

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