BERWICK, MAINE – Somersworth, New Hampshire, is just across the river. But on both sides of the border on Monday, a common issue was on voters’ minds.
Ever since the Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights, the subject has had a steady presence in two of the closest-watched races of their kind this year: the U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire and another between Gov. Janet Mills and former Gov. Paul LePage in Maine. The states have similar attitudes and laws on the subject, allowing abortions until viability.
Melissa Smith, 32, of Berwick, saw a “similar tradition” across the border with Maine Democrats being in lockstep with their New Hampshire counterparts and vice versa with Republicans. For those in the middle, she expects the issue to play a big role.
“I think it’s going to push some people who were on the fence to go a certain way over another,” said Smith, who works in education and plans on voting for Mills, a Democrat.
New Hampshire plays a unique role in Maine politics. Its first-in-the-nation presidential primaries soak up regional attention. Republicans in Maine — particularly LePage — often nod longingly to the Granite State’s lack of income and sales taxes and better economic metrics, including a consistently lower unemployment rate. The states have similarly liberal cultural attitudes.
Maine has voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1992. New Hampshire has since 2004, but it is now controlled by Republicans at the state level despite an all-Democratic congressional delegation. Sen. Maggie Hassan is up for reelection against Republican Don Bolduc, while Gov. Chris Sununu is a virtual lock for a fourth two-year term.
The economy is the largest issue for voters in both states, with 39 percent of Mainers rating it as such in a recent Emerson College poll compared with 33 percent in a New Hampshire survey by St. Anselm College. Abortion was second at 20 percent in New Hampshire and third at 16 percent on this side of the border.
Sununu urged his party to hit the economy hard last month, according to the New Hampshire Bulletin. LePage has focused his campaign on that, but he has an anti-abortion history that Mills has run against. He has responded by saying he would veto a 15-week abortion ban here. Independent Sam Hunkler is also on the ballot in the gubernatorial race.
LePage is targeting voters like Paul Diego, 68, of Berwick, who said he switched to voting Republican in 2018 after years as a Democrat. The rising cost of goods had forced him to go back to work after retirement. He is preparing to become a school bus driver.
“I couldn’t afford to support my family,” Diego said. “I was taking money out of my savings account every month to pay the bills.”
But David Bell, 43, of South Berwick is the kind of independent voter who may help decide the election. He plans on figuring out how he should vote on Election Day. He said personal autonomy was his biggest motivator, citing abortion availability and the legalization of marijuana.
Like many others interviewed, he sees New Hampshire as far more conservative than Maine. He said the state he used to live in “had gone real Alabama.”
Across the Salmon Falls River in Somersworth, a city of roughly 12,000 people, voters seemed to know little about Maine politics. Like the ads in Hassan’s race this year, the all-out media blitz for U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ massive reelection race in 2020 bled over the border.
Gayle Richards, 73, of Rochester, which borders Lebanon and Berwick, said she admires Collins and would vote for the Republican if she lived here. But she is looking forward to casting her vote in New Hampshire’s Senate race for the Democratic incumbent.
“I think [Collins] got duped by [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett] Kavanaugh” on abortion, Richards said. “We all did — he blatantly lied.”
Richards is old enough to recall a time when abortion under most circumstances was illegal across New England. She remembers her and friends chipping in to gather the $600 for a fellow student who had been raped to travel to New York and get an abortion in the late 1960s.
Many in Richards’ neighborhood align with the GOP. Still, she expects at least some to switch sides, and not just the women many strategists are worried about.
“A lot of people in this neighborhood have daughters and daughters-in-law and granddaughters,” Richards said, “and we’re in a very precarious place.”
