Political Pulse

Tuesday is primary election day in Maine (again) as voters head to the polls to select party nominees for Congress, the Legislature and local offices.

While lawmakers will return to the State House next week to take up the governor’s vetoes, the 131st Legislature has already left its imprint on some of the issues and challenges confronting the state.

Republicans have described the proposal as a late-session ambush designed to catch gun rights groups and the public off guard.

Maine lawmakers are plodding toward a mid-April adjournment with a slew of contentious issues to resolve, including gun safety and a new spending plan. Meanwhile, a divided Congress continues its obsession with the November election in its quest for historically unproductive governance.

By presidential primary standards, this year’s Super Tuesday contests are relatively anti-climactic because the Republican and Democratic tickets are pretty much set at this point. But electors are still at stake in Maine.

The failure to advance the bill after four months of negotiations ensures that immigration will remain a key campaign issue in the 2024 presidential and congressional election with possible implications for down ballot contests in state legislatures.

Gov. Janet Mills reset the political debate over guns in Maine on Tuesday by unveiling a suite of policy proposals that she says were shaped or inspired by conversations since October’s mass shooting in Lewiston.

A Superior Court judge handed a partial victory to Donald Trump’s campaign this week when she opted not to choose a side in the pitched battle over whether Trump should be disqualified from office because of his role in inciting the riots in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ decision on Thursday to remove Donald Trump from the primary ballot has landed Maine in the center of the national legal fight — and media frenzy — over the former president’s eligibility for office.

Newly released documents from the Maine Ethics Commission show that energy giant NextEra secretly financed two groups working to defeat a transmission project through western Maine between 2018 and 2019