After dominating the headlines last week, the lobster industry will be at the forefront of the biggest campaigns around a noontime rally in Portland on Wednesday led by the Maine Lobstering Union and featuring some notable headliners.
Former Gov. Paul LePage and U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District accepted invitations to the lobster industry rally weeks ago. It is not clear whether their chief opponents, Gov. Janet Mills and former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, will show up. (Virginia Olsen, the union president, said she did not know and the campaigns did not respond to Wednesday morning questions on the subject.)
The rally has been billed by organizers as nonpolitical. But they have a big political goal. Attendees are expected to pressure Attorney General Aaron Frey to lead a lawsuit on behalf of Maine against federal rules aimed at protecting the right whale that are falling hard on the lobster industry.
The state is instead an intervenor in a lawsuit led by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, which announced Tuesday that it hired former Solicitor General Paul Clement to handle its appeal of a federal judge’s ruling. Later in the day, Mills directed $100,000 in public money toward the legal fund. Another $3 million was set aside for the court battle in a recent spending bill.
The former governor has criticized Mills for the state intervening in the lobster lawsuit rather than leading its own, telling Mainers to expect “LePage v. Biden” in January if he is elected. But the state is still deeply engaged and Mills’ office has defended the arrangement as the best way to organize the lawsuit.
Mills, LePage and the congressional delegation have spoken with one voice against the rules. But the governor was heckled by lobstermen last week at a meeting with federal regulators. Many of them are upset with Mills over her support for offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine, something LePage opposes and members of Congress have been tepid on of late.
That brings us to Golden, a Democrat who will be the one to watch at Wednesday’s rally. He and Poliquin have been jousting over the lobster industry during their campaign. At the meeting with regulators, he said regulators are being “controlled by a coalition of environmentalists and conservationists.” LePage later said Golden “hit it on the head” and linked the federal rules to “wind people.”
Golden is likely in the hardest race at the top of Maine’s 2022 ticket. If he backs LePage up on the idea that the state should be filing its own lawsuit, he may make things harder for Mills. The difference between intervening and leading may be small in practice. But this is the last month of the campaign and optics can overshadow substance.
