BANGOR, Maine — Shenna Bellows, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, completed the first leg of her 350 mile walk across Maine this morning. Bellows is hoping her Walk With Maine for Jobs and the Economy will lead to a long-shot win in November — just as this grassroots approach did for the first Maine politician to use it in a high-profile race.
In 1972, Republican William Cohen walked 600 miles across the 2nd Congressional District on his way to an upset over a heavily favored opponent. But Bellows faces a much tougher task than Cohen did 42 years ago.
As Bellows makes her way down State Street in Bangor she greets supporters and gives an update on her progress.
"We've gone 140 miles, 210 left to go," she says. "Walking into Old Town and Orono and now into Bangor, we're walking into the more populated areas now."
She continues down the hill, where she meets a man on the bridge over the Kenduskeag Stream.
"I'm Shenna Bellows," she says. "I'm the Democratic candidate, running for Senate against Susan Collins. I'm a carpenter's daughter from right outside Ellsworth and I think we need more working-class representation in Washington."
"I believe you're right," says Richard Bell, the man on the bridge. "Good luck to you."
As Bellows walks away, Bell, who owns a commercial window cleaning company, says he's tired of seeing big Wall Street firms get preferential treatment from politicians in Washington. Bell says he was born a Republican and has voted for members of both parties over the years.
"I think there's a lot of things that are really wrong in this country," he says. "I am undecided at this point. I have to look up, size up everything."
Bell says it helps to have actually met one of the Senate candidates, if only for a few seconds, and he credits Bellows for getting out and walking. Bellows says frustration with Washington and worry about jobs and the economy have been the top issues of concern for virtually every person she has met along the way in towns such as Smyrna Mills, Dyer Brook, Medway and Island Falls, where the major employer, National Starch and Chemical, left in 2009.
"You know, we were walking out of Island Falls and there were two people out in the yard, with a bunch of kids, and stopped to stay hello," Bellows says. "And the man told us he lost his job. He was working at National Starch and Chemical and he hasn't found full time, long-term work since."
These are the kinds of one-on-one, grassroots connections that Republican Bill Cohen sought to make when he set out on a 650-mile walk of the 2nd Congressional District in 1972. Bellows is quick to mention Cohen's successful use of this form of grassroots campaigning and there are some basic similarities between the two. Bellows, like Cohen at the time, has very little name recognition in the state compared to her opponent and trails U.S. Sen. Susan Collins badly in recent polls.
"They were probably behind, you know, 70-12, so why not roll the dice?" says Chris Potholm, who ran William Cohen's 1972 Congressional campaign. Potholm is now a professor of government at Bowdoin College.
"In Bill's case, the point was to change the perception of the Republican Party," Potholm says. "When you think the Democratic Party, your first association, rightly or wrongly, is with working men and women and blue-collar people and so forth. And so I'm not quite clear, from an image perspective, how this helps her."
In 1972, Cohen was running against a well-known Democratic state senator for an open Congressional seat. Bellows, by contrast, is trying to unseat a broadly popular incumbent.
"When people have an image of a particular candidate or elected official, it's very difficult to change that," says Amy Fried, professor of political science at the University of Maine in Orono. "Sen. Collins has a very strong image of being independent minded."
Collins has a reputation as a moderate Republican and has been endorsed by groups that normally back Democrats, such as the League of Conservation Voters and the four unions that represent workers at Bath Iron Works. But, as Fried notes, she tends to vote with her party on most key issues. It's a line of attack that Bellows is quick to use against her opponent. She faults Collins for not raising the minimum wage. And she criticizes her for supporting the Patriot Act, which Bellows says has eroded civil liberties and for backing trade deals that have caused American jobs to be shipped overseas. Bellows insists she's in the race to win.
"And I tell people along this walk that the walk is my way to show that politics should be about real people, not big money," she says. "Our elections should be rooted in grassroots conversations in backyards and living rooms."
Bellows' walk continues tomorrow in Newburgh and wraps up August 12 in Kittery.