“As goes Maine, so goes the Union,” is a venerable political saw, cherished and valueless. Nevertheless after Maine’s Congressional and gubernatorial election this week, Democrats everywhere had cause to whoop gaily. Normally Maine is Republican by 25,000 votes or more. Since the Civil War only two Democratic governors have been elected, in 1880 and in 1914. This week, with a close, heavy vote, the Democrats sent in a governor and two out of three Congressmen.
Both parties stumped the State as they never had in recent years. The Republicans imported Secretary of the Treasury Ogden Livingston Mills. The Democrats called in James Joseph (“Gene”) Tunney and Massachusetts’ Governor Joseph Buell Ely and Senator David Ignatius Walsh. Interested but helpless observers were 350 “paupers” of Lewiston, Me., disfranchised under an old law which denies the right to vote to those who accept State or municipal charity. These gave Senator Walsh a chance to say that the Republicans, “having brought misfortune to many people … are now penalizing them for this misfortune.” The 350 Lewiston “paupers” saw their onetime mayor, Lawyer Louis J. Brann, elected governor over Burleigh Martin, president of the State Senate, by some 2,000 votes. Maine’s former Governor Ralph Owen Brewster received his third big political setback. Running for Congress, he was beaten by John G. Utterback, onetime mayor of Bangor, by about 2,000 votes. Republican John Edward Nelson, ten years in the House, trailed 1,500 votes behind Edward Carl Moran. Jr, twice before defeated Democratic candidate for governor. Only Republican winner was Congressman Carroll Linwood Beedy, reelected.
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