At their first debate tonight, Democrat Emily Cain and Republican Bruce Poliquin will be joined onstage by the third candidate in Maine's 2nd Congressional District: Blaine Richardson, a retired Navy captain, ran for the seat once before, winning more than a third of the votes in Republican primary in 2012. This time around, Richardson is running in the general election as an independent.
If you live in the 2nd District, it's hard to not know that there's a tight, increasingly nasty race going on to replace Congressman Mike Michaud in Washington. Almost daily, there are mailers attacking Democrat Emily Cain or Republican Bruce Poliquin. Flip on your TV, tune in a few minutes and there they are: those 30 second ads, courtesy of the campaigns or the outside groups supporting them, telling you why electing Cain or Poliquin would be a really bad idea.
But if you don't like either candidate, there is someone else on the ballot, running more or less invisibly, alongside this backdrop of negative ads and the inflow of millions of dollars from outside Maine.
"I'm running because it's my duty." That duty, said Blaine Richardson on MPBN Radio's Maine Calling program, began when he was 22 years old. He entered, and graduated from, the U.S. Navy flight program during the Vietnam War. "Took a constitutional oath: Protect the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic," Richardson said. "It's a wonderful document."
But one that Richardson believes no longer has the kind of influence in American life that it should.
"In 1962, when I was 12 years old, with my parents' blessing, I went to Western Auto and bought my first Winchester Bolt Action .22 rifle, all on my little own. You can't do that today," he said. "There's a lot of things you can't do today. There is nothing you can do that does not have the thumb mark of the federal government on it."
If elected, Richardson, a conservative with libertarian leanings, would try to get Maine and nation out from under that thumb. He supports repeal of government programs and laws that he believes smack of overreach, such as Obamacare and the Patriot Act. He says he would work to limit the influence of big agriculture in Maine.
Richardson favors a moratorium on immigration into the United States. He says the U.S. should revise or end free trade agreements like NAFTA. He would work to eliminate the sort of bank and large corporate bailouts that occurred during the financial crisis. And he would fight to roll back burdensome government regulations.
"Everything in Maine for six months becomes a wetland," he said. "I'd like to remind you, when you have four feet of snow on the ground, you basically have four inches of water, standing in your front yard. They want to regulate all of it. They want to regulate your wood stoves. I could go on and on and on."
Richardson grew up in Denmark and says an early experience in Europe helped shape his uncompromising views on individual freedoms in America. "My father took me on a business trip into Berlin and I saw the Berlin Wall going up," he said. Richardson was in Germany serving in the Navy almost 30 years later when the wall came down.
Richardson has a campaign website and Facebook page. But he has little to no paid media or advertising. Winning in November seems all but impossible. But one political observer says that's not the reason many long shot candidates run in the first place.
"They really are motivated by strong belief in a particular issue," says analyst Mark Brewer. And don't believe that those issue are likely to be addressed in the campaign, says Brewer, a political science professor at UMaine-Orono.
Across the country, Brewer notes, "You're going to find a fair amount of these kind libertarian types, who are running for a variety of offices. And if you're a libertarian, you can see why you're not really happy with either party."
Richardson is scheduled to take part in at least one debate with Republican Bruce Poliquin and Democrat Emily Cain. Recent polls have him drawing anywhere from 3 percent to 6 percent of the vote.