LEWISTON – Maine’s gubernatorial primary election on Tuesday night was not the nail-biter many political analysts were anticipating, given the vast field of candidates.

And while Paul LePage’s victory in the Republican primary was not entirely unexpected, the domination of his six rivals was the biggest surprise of the night, experts agreed.

“It’s impressive what (LePage) has done; I was actually a bit surprised by the margin,” said Patrick Murphy, a pollster with Pan Atlantic SMS Group in Portland. Murphy’s company released a poll on June 1 that placed LePage in a distant second place behind Les Otten, who spent about $2.5 million of his own money on his campaign.

Otten topped the poll of 300 likely Republican voters with 17 percent. LePage had support from about 10 percent of respondents. Nearly half of those polled had said they were undecided.

“LePage was the dark horse,” Murphy said. “I felt that Otten had probably peaked and that if he hadn’t got the undecideds after spending more than $2 million, those people were not going to go to him. LePage ran a tremendous campaign. He rallied the troops, but I think he tapped into this high level of frustration, on the economy in particular.”

LePage won Tuesday’s election with about 38 percent of the Republican vote; Otten placed second with about 17 percent, according to unofficial results.

On the Democratic side, the roughly 60 percent of 300 likely voters who had said in the poll they were undecided broke fairly evenly among the four candidates, Murphy said.

“(Libby) Mitchell was probably always the front-runner because of name recognition and she didn’t make any major mistakes,” he said.

Mitchell topped the Democratic field with about 35 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results. Steve Rowe finished second with about 23 percent; political newcomer Rosa Scarcelli finished third with about 22 percent, and Patrick McGowan got about 20 percent.

“On the Democratic side, the thing that surprised me the most was that Pat McGowan did not do nearly as well as I thought he would, particularly in the northern and western counties,” said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine in Orono.

But LePage’s big victory surprised him most, Brewer said.

“When I heard he won Portland, my jaw hit the floor,” Brewer said. “He did very well in places I didn’t think he would do well. I wonder if he brought in a fair number of voters who have been alienated from the process, that just haven’t participated in a number of years and this time they found a candidate that sparked their interest.”

Jim Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, said LePage likely was helped by the tax-reform repeal question that motivated a lot of conservatives to vote in the primary.

“It brought a lot of people out who wanted to make a statement about Maine taxes and once they did, they found a candidate who was speaking out of their playbook,” Melcher said. “I wasn’t stunned he won; I was surprised by how much he won by.”

And what about the presumed front-runner Otten?

“You can have all the money in the world and buy as many ads as you want, but you have to have the product there as well, and I think that’s what we learned with Otten,” Brewer of Orono said.

“He never was able to really make the case for voters why they should vote for him, why they should support him,” Brewer said. “His money bought him name recognition, but it didn’t buy him any more than that.”

rmetzler@sunjournal.com

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