Gov. Paul LePage's nomination of conservative businesswoman Susan Dench to the University of Maine System board of trustees has been rejected by the Legislature's Education and Cultural Affairs Comittee. The vote followed a contentious public hearing in Augusta. Dench - and the governor's office - say the vote was pre-ordained and politically motivated.
The hearing began amicably enough. In her opening statement, Dench told the committee about her extensive background in marketing, including stints at General Electric and Hewlitt Packard, and how it could be an asset to the UMaine System.
"Marketing experience to promote the university system, within and outside Maine, would be a critical part of our future success," she said. "My extensive marketing background will help with recruitment and enrollment efforts because it speaks to the way the value of our programs could be sold to perspective students."
A few minutes went by, Dench concluded her remarks and lawmakers had their first chance to ask questions. At first, the questioning was fairly low-key. But Republican state Sen. Brian Langley hinted, inadvertently, at what was to come.
"If you could, just for a moment, picture yourself in the shark tank," Langley said to Dench.
"I am. I don't have to picture it," she responded, to laughter.
Democrats, who ended up opposing Dench, seemed content to let the public take the lead in speaking out against the nominee, whose husband is the treasurer for the reelection campaign of Gov. Paul LePage. And the university professors and women's rights groups there were signed up to speak took that ball and ran with it.
Jan Kuenz is chair of the English Department at the University of Southern Maine. "I'm here this morning to tell you that, in 2013, Susan Dench plagarized from an online article, in a post she wrote, for her Intersection of Life, Culure and Politics Blog at the Bangor Daily News," Kuenz said.
Dench left her role as a BDN blogger earlier this year. Kuenz showed the committee documents alleging that Dench plagiarized a post from Free Republic, a conservative website.
Others took issue with Dench's views on gender roles. Danna Hayes, who heads public policy for the Maine Women's Lobby, noted one of Dench's BDN blog posts, entitled "School Boys Should Be Taught To Grow Into Real Men, Not Women."
"Arguing that when we ask males to deny their testosterone-driven attributes, we are denying nature," Hayes said. "She also makes references to the 'feminine values' of 'socialization and cooperation' claiming that expecting boys to act as the weaker sex is untrue to their nature."
That kind of thinking, Hayes told the committee, encourages the kind of uneven power dynamics between men and women that are often at the root of crimes like sexual assault.
Democrats on the committee then followed with some of their own questions about Dench's public blog and social media posts. One lawmaker asked if she stood by a tweet, in which she said a Texas principal should be promoted, not fired, for forbidding students to speak Spanish in the classroom. State Sen. Chris Johnson, a Somerville Democrat, followed with this question: I'm wondering if you have any regrets about sharing your personal views online - on Twitter or a blog."
"I don't have any regrets on sharing my personal views," she said. "And I've been public about that and I'm not going to be bullied into not sharing my personal views."
The Democratic-led committee ended up voting 8 to 6, along party lines, to reject Dench's nomination.
"From what we understand, it was pre-ordained," Dench said. "The thing that's really upsetting, I guess, the most about this, is that universities value diversity of opinion."
As Dench spoke, Adrienne Bennett, Governor Paul LePage's press secretary, listened a few feet away.
"It's a sad day when liberal lawmakers take a well-qualified candidate, who happens to be a woman, and rejects her based on her political views," Bennett said.
The full Senate will take up Dench's nomination on Tuesday. In order to overturn the committees decision and be confirmed, Dench would need to win a two-thirds vote.
The Education Committee unanimously approved two other gubernatorial nominees to the UMaine board, current chairman Samuel Collins of Caribou and James O. Donnelly of Brewer.
