PORTLAND (NEWS CENTER Maine) — The candidates for Maine governor spent Monday making final phone calls and grabbing the last few handshakes before Tuesday’s primary election. Republicans and Democrats will go to the polls to choose their candidates for governor.
Democrats will also choose their 2nd Congressional District candidate. The election will feature the first use of statewide ranked-choice voting anywhere in the country, making the outcome of those races unusually hard to predict.
On the Democratic side, it's believed Janet Mills is in a close race against Adam Cote for the nomination.
"We think it's neck and neck with Janet and I," Cote said. "We haven’t done a poll but that’s the sense we’ve gotten talking to people."
Mills said she believes she has lots of support.
"It feels good when you walk into a store and walk down the street in any city and people come up and say you’re Janet Mills, I’m voting for you," Mills said.
Among Republicans, Shawn Moody and Mary Mayhew are presumed to be the front-runners, with dark horse candidate Garrett Mason also generating a lot of interest.
"We’re getting a lot of good feedback from people, the grassroots people, the people that do the work in Maine," Moody said Monday
"[We] have focused on a grassroots campaign," Mayhew said, "meeting with Republican primary voters, listening to them, talking to them about the future."
Mason is also believed to be making the GOP primary a close race, saying he and his supporters "have knocked on 70, 000 doors," during the campaign.
As for ranked-choice voting, the Democrats said they don't know how it will affect their race. The Republican candidates talked about how bad they think ranked-choice is, but they will all be affected by it in Tuesday’s vote. With Mason predicting that, regardless of the outcome, ranked-choice is likely to generate more lawsuits.
Also on the ballot is a referendum on the continuation of ranked-choice voting. That referendum is open to all registered voters, while the primaries are only for those enrolled in the parties.