What an absurd thing to ask seven months into a new administration. Yet, after a rough beginning, and a more recently successful (read: quiet) period, it seems to be the question I get asked the most about Maine politics.  (My response, each and every time, has been “I’m actually a lot more interested to see [...]

Since the end of the 2010 elections, I (and this site) have been quiet. As was announced then, the reason was simple: I had taken a position on the Hill as Director of New Media Communications with Senator Susan Collins.  Obviously it’s simply not possible to be a pundit and a spokesperson/representative of a public official [...]

After months of threats of new restrictive rulings from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that paralyzed Maine’s woody biomass industry, alternative energy producers can finally breathe a very measured sigh of relief. Apparently the pressure of an end-of-the-month decision-making deadline was too much for EPA bureaucrats, so they instead made a ruling not to make [...]

At PTP, we have covered the EPA’s arbitrarily changing approach toward regulating the biomass industry as it has evolved (see here and here). Now, with the release of a new study outlining the very real impact these policies will have on private-sector investment in energy, green job growth, and ability to meet renewable energy benchmarks [...]

As Matt Gagnon wrote a few months ago, the EPA recently issued a series of “tailoring rules” that put one of Maine’s most promising and rapidly expanding industries at risk, for no ostensible reason.  Woody biomass, or energy created by burning waste wood, is widely recognized as a viable and carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels.  [...]

One of the very first articles I ever wrote for Pine Tree Politics was in November of 2008, just recently after the drubbing given to Maine Republicans state wide.  It was called, A GOP Resurgence Starts By Looking At Trends, and essentially it laid out a strategy of seats that Maine Republicans should target if [...]

John Nutting: Nutting Ad

One of the criticisms of my previous article on swing towns in Maine was that demographic changes which coincided with increasingly more liberal voting for Governor were responsible for many of the town’s appearance on my list. By that logic – which, incidentally I both recognize and agree with – some towns were given the [...]

The new Senate Republican Caucus came together earlier today, and made some historic choices.  Today they selected who would become the first Republican to serve as Maine Senate President in roughly a decade. And, unsurprisingly, they chose the man who lead them to their victory this cycle:  Senator Kevin Raye. The new Senate Majority Leader [...]

Gerald at Dirigo Blue made an amusing observation about how the “right wing echo chamber” operates on October 20th.  His observations were somewhat true – there is no denying that once a story gets “out there”, people on the right take those stories, shop them around to the big opinion leaders online and in print, [...]