It is a big week in Maine politics, with Super Tuesday and the presidential primary this week. From an interview with Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to the ongoing race between Republican presidential candidates Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump, our analysts weigh in.
State of the Union Address
In his State of the Union Address this week, President Biden says he will fight for reproductive rights, push for more aid for U.S. allies and funding for the southern border. The speech was at times very politically charged. He didn't name the former president, Donald Trump, but did call him and Republicans out on a number of key issues, promising to defend democracy.
ZACH: "Betsy, the president's approval ratings aren't good. Did he deliver?"
BETSY: "Oh, I think he more than delivered. I think he showed people that he has the fire in the belly. I think he looked you know...I think he talked about his accomplishments, I think which were really, really important. And I think he set out what this you know...I think between this and the Republican response, it set out what this is going to be about for Biden and Democrats. It's going to be about working families and unions and middle class. It's going to be about choice and it's going to be about democracy. It is about the very system that we work on.. democracy is at peril. And so I think those are going to be the Democratic points. And then I think we saw the Republicans lay theirs out, which were immigration and how Biden isn't great."
RAY: "So I'll agree he did. He gave the best Democratic National Committee nomination speech we've seen at a State of the Union address. This was the most political address I've ever seen. The Constitution, under Article Two, Section Three requires the president from time to time to give an update of the union. He did not do that. He basically just took political shots all night as though he was at a Democratic National Convention Committee meeting and I found it disgusting. Personally, I thought the president I mean, he started off comparing Republicans to Nazis with the 1941 stuff with Roosevelt. For me, I...Biden has lost it. And, you know, he got up there and he gave the speech, and good for him. He could stand up for 70 minutes. But he raced through the remarks as though he didn't even hear the applause lines going on. For me, it was terrible, just terrible. If the president is going to speak to Congress, tell us what's happening in the nation, which he did not do. Americans are struggling."
Gender Affirming Care, Abortion Bill
In Augusta this week, a bill that would protect access to abortion and transgender care led to some heated debates. The bill would prohibit people from interfering with access to legal, reproductive, and gender-affirming care in the state by protecting doctors who provide that care. Supporters said that care is in many cases even lifesaving. Republican opponents said they're concerned about kids coming here for treatment against their parent's wishes.
BETSY: "I think we have to be really clear about what this bill actually does, what this does is it protects medical professionals who are doing their job and providing what's legal care here in Maine. And so this idea that somehow someone's being kidnaped and brought over the border and comparing it to that, no physician, no nurse practitioner, nobody involved in this does this lightly, says, 'Oh, sure, come on in.' It is something that is done with the parents. It is done with...This is a taking the very difficult situations, moral, difficult, internal things that are incredibly hard and making a political football out of the people who are the most vulnerable and then throwing our doctors and our medical professions under the bus. It is awful. And the actual talk about not being civil, the actual hearing was disgusting and an incredible example."
RAY: "So I don't support gender-altering care for minors. I don't if an adult wants to do that, then that's their decision. I believe in freedom. I think this bill goes much further than Betsy described because doctors could do things if they were from another state. They're guaranteed malpractice insurance here. I guess the real question for me so I want to be clear, I'm against L.D. 227, but what we're really seeing is how much of these hearings actually matter. There were 12 pages of people signing up to argue against it, and there was one and a half pages of people signing up to argue for it. Do legislators actually listen? We'll see."
Haley drops out of the presidential race
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign after a crushing defeat by former President Donald Trump on Super Tuesday. Still, she didn't endorse her former boss and former president Donald Trump.
ZACH: "Betsy, why can't she just get behind the former president here?"
BETSY: "Cause she doesn't support him, and she...she thinks he's awful. So I think, I think it's I mean, it's really hard. How do you support someone who you've been campaigning against for months and months and months, pointing out all the reasons that he is not fit to be president and then have to turn on a dime and say, oh, I mean, you watch them, you watch them. Mitch McConnell does the same thing. He struggled to answer this guy that he has said is not good, how he's going to endorse him. It doesn't make any sense. And so it really is hard. And I think we have to look at what...I think is really sad is that in this country where we have so many problems that we have, the system has produced two people that I think people on both sides have questions about."
RAY: "Right. Yeah. I mean, I think Nikki Haley has killed any possibility of 2028. I don't understand what she's doing. I do love the way you couch this which seems like a long time ago. It does feel like a long time ago. Well, this has been going on for I mean, this race has literally been going on for three years. And now it looks like the two guys that we thought were going to be in it are going to be in it. I don't know what Nikki Haley's doing. I haven't understood it since she lost big in New Hampshire. But Sununu could have been her ace in the hole, and he wasn't."
ZACH: "But Republicans are clearly fractured. Here you have someone like McConnell who has been a vocal critic of Trump saying he's endorsing him and then someone who's campaigned against him, has worked for him, who wants to kind of unite the Republican Party but can't get around him."
RAY: "So I think Republicans have to come to a conclusion here, and that is we either want to reelect Joe Biden, or we unify and defeat him. And that's really the bottom line."
BETSY: "But defeating defeating Joe Biden means reelecting Trump."
You can watch Political Brew every Sunday on The Morning Report at 6 a.m. You can also catch it any time on NEWS CENTER Maine+.