As the Legislature labored on into the night Thursday, more than a few lawmakers must have wondered whether this was really “veto day,” usually a quick tidying up of loose ends, or another end-of-session marathon where debate continues as the sun comes up.

It didn’t last quite that long, but lawmakers had never been asked to consider 48 vetoes in a single day — among 182 issued by Gov. Paul LePage, who not only broke Jim Longley’s record of 118 but smashed it.

One thing is sure — once LePage gets his veto pen out, there’s no stopping him. He vetoes bills that contradict his own views. Fair enough. But he also seems to veto bills that could have been easily fixed to meet his objections had he bothered to express them earlier.

He vetoes bills apparently based on who sponsored them — Senate President Justin Alfond and Majority Leader Troy Jackson are particular targets — and he lambasted House Majority Leader Jeff McCabe by name in rejecting a lake protection bill over thoroughly minor disagreements.

Sometimes he vetoed bills after misreading their contents. He rejected a bill that increased the “look back” period for considering OUI offenses because, he said, the bill increased it only from 10 years to 15, when it should have been “forever.” In fact, the bill as enacted does permit look backs “forever” for felony conviction, though not for misdemeanors. Lawmakers had no problem overriding that one.

LePage vetoed a bill expanding the right to know with a diatribe about “special interest groups” seeking “my personal grocery bills and other fishing expeditions.” Really.

There were enough references to “job killing Democrats” and the like to make one wonder whether LePage can distinguish between a campaign broadside and a formal communication to the Legislature.

Seen merely as a scorecard, LePage might seem to have done OK. Lawmakers overrode 14 vetoes, leaving more than 30 standing. But that’s not how the process is supposed to work.

Most governors understand that vetoes should be reserved for relatively rare occasions — when lawmakers haven’t considered the consequences of their votes, they intrude on the constitution, or have produced a law that’s unenforceable.

Most governors don’t veto bills just because they object to a small detail, or don’t like the name of the lawmaker on the title page.

The overrides were often on the most consequential bills. The supplemental budget bill became law, emphatically. All 35 senators voted for enactment, and all 35 voted to override — possibly a message from his own party: If you want to pass judgment, participate in the process.

Lawmakers also overrode vetoes on bills to revamp the state Board of Corrections overseeing county jails, which had been struggling. They approved a major study of business tax breaks by OPEGA, the Legislature’s watchdog agency. And they overrode a veto of a small business bond issue.

Last year, Republicans sustained a veto of a research and development bond. This time, all the bonds approved by the Legislature will appear on the ballot.

The 15 overrides on a single day exceeded the total lawmakers have mustered in all the rest of the two-year session.

The biggest sustained vetoes were also the most expected. LePage vetoed his fifth bill to expand Medicaid, more than any other governor. He rejected bills in 2013 that followed the standard form in the Affordable Care Act.

This year he rejected a compromise authored by Republican Sen. Roger Katz, and one amended by House Speaker Mark Eves to including private insurance, a feature that broke a partisan deadlock in New Hampshire.

LePage never proposed anything, never discussed a compromise, never engaged with legislators. The answer was always no, and 70,000 Mainers will be without health insurance this year, including 28,000 who lost theirs in January at LePage’s behest.

Sustaining these vetoes may prove to be Republicans’ biggest mistake. Both their national and state campaigns are built around unrelenting opposition to “Obamacare.”

Yet the ground is shifting. GOP leaders proclaimed that the insurance exchanges would never sign up the targeted 7 million Americans, especially after the botched rollout of the website. By mid-April, however, 8 million had applied, a seemingly miraculous result indicating just how much Americans do want health insurance, when it’s available and they can afford it.

An additional 4.5 million have received Medicaid coverage, and that number would be a lot higher if Republicans had been willing to budge.

Simply opposing what the other side wants is not really much of a campaign plan. And issuing dozens of vetoes is not really a governing strategy, either.

Douglas Rooks is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 29 years. He can be reached at drooks@tds.net.

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