For years now, whenever someone would draw up a list of the most vulnerable incumbent governors in the country, Maine’s Paul LePage would be right near the top. Pugnacious, hot-headed, and occasionally vulgar, LePage was consistently underwater with his approval ratings, especially after he would make national headlines for telling the state chapter of the NAACP to kiss his butt or television viewers everywhere that a Democratic state senator always wanted to “give it to the people without Vaseline.”

And then there was last week’s kerfuffle over an Ebola quarantine that saw the governor lose a stare-down with a bicycling nurse.


National pundits thought the Republican—an extreme conservative in a famously moderate state—had little chance of being reelected, particularly as he had won office the first time with less than 38 percent of the vote when he narrowly defeated a little-known independent in a five-way contest at the height of the Tea Party wave in 2010.

Yet yesterday, LePage won reelection by about four points—the final results aren’t yet in—defeating a popular six-term congressman, Mike Michaud.

Even on a night when voters from east to the west, in just about every time zone, elected new Republican leaders—and even on a night when Republicans won more gubernatorial races than expected—Paul LePage’s victory confounds at first glance.

How on earth did one of America’s least popular and most divisive governors get reelected?

Half of the answer is the same way LePage won in 2010, by his opponents splitting the vote between candidates. Eliot Cutler, the lawyer and one-time Carter administration official who nearly beat him in 2010, ran again, this time much less successfully, and polls indicated that about two-thirds of his supporters would otherwise back Michaud.

Polling in the low teens in the final weeks of the campaign, Cutler was under enormous pressure to bow out, especially after the Republican Governors Association started buying ads promoting his candidacy in strategic effort to undermine Michaud. But at a hastily-organized press conference Oct. 29, Cutler sent mixed messages, defiantly proclaiming he would stay in while noting that he had little chance of winning and that, therefore, was urging his supporters to vote for one of his rivals if “compelled by their fears or by their conscience.” The message was so muddled the campaign had to release a FAQ to explain what the candidate had and had not said, but that didn’t stop some of his most prominent supporters—like popular two-term governor and current U.S. Sen. Angus King—to publically switch their endorsements Michaud.

Paul LePage's Greatest Hits “Sen. Jackson claims to be for the people, but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” To WMTW-TV in Portland, Maine “If you want a good education, go to private schools. If you can’t afford it, tough luck. You can go to the public school.” At an education panel hosted by a community college “And as your governor, you're gonna be seeing a lot of me on the front page saying ‘Gov. LePage tells Obama to go to hell.’” During his 2010 campaign "What I am trying to say is the Holocaust was a horrific crime against humanity and, frankly, I would never want to see that repeated. Maybe the IRS is not quite as bad—yet." To Vermont's 7 Days

In the end, over 8 percent of voters cast ballots for Cutler, sealing Michaud’s fate.

But a third-party spoiler only got LePage part of the way back to Blaine House, the historic Maine governor’s mansion. After all, for most of his time in office, LePage’s job approval rating was in the mid-to-high thirties as his administration tangled first with the Republican legislative leaders (who refused to back his plan to roll all environmental laws back to weaker federal standards in 2010), then with Democratic ones (before whom the governor banned his commissioners from appearing). The governor had become a national joke, and many Mainers had come to regard him as an embarrassment.

It’s the other half of the answer to LePage’s reelection that helps explain the GOP’s remarkable success in races across the country: A disciplined campaign, a socially conservative and economic-focused message, and surprisingly strong rural turnout boosted by local issues. Add to that a touch of the national unease and unhappiness with Barack Obama—who won Maine in 2008 and 2012, both times by nearly 15 points—and you have all the ingredients for a national GOP wave that dwarfed even some of the most optimistic party projections.

It turns out that many Mainers embraced the key goals of LePage’s governorship: cutting taxes, environmental and labor regulations, welfare services, and public spending—supposedly among the principal obstacles to improving the state’s economy, which has been sluggish for the past 150 years or so. He’s delivered on many of those promises, signing a $150 million tax cut, the largest in state history, which reduced the top income tax rate and doubled the estate tax exemption from $1 million to $2 million. He refused to expand Medicaid, vetoing five legislative bills to do so, imposed a five-year limit on welfare benefits, and vigorously investigated welfare fraud and abuse—allegedly to stop Maine from being a welfare “destination state.” He also repealed laws restricting big box stores and mining.

Despite his potty mouth, he’s also attractive to social conservatives, who appreciate his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, which distinguished him from both his rivals. His life story is also appealing to many: the eldest of 18 in an impoverished working class family, he ran away from an abusive father at age 11, lived on the streets for a time, and with the help of a sequence of benign businesspeople, succeeded in going to college and become a successful manager. When charged with fighting a war on the poor, he is able to argue he knew more about being poor than most of his critics.

He also managed to keep himself in check in recent months, avoiding major gaffes and confrontations and even joking about his past indiscretions, saying at one debate “ even a Frenchman can be taught to cool down.” One of his campaign’s slogans was “actions speak louder than words.” In debates and public appearances he appeared relaxed, confident, and unbowed. Nationally, Republicans followed his lead; after tossing away chances in recent years with comments like Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” explanation, there was hardly a word nationally off-message.

Then there’s the unusually high turnout yesterday—perhaps as high as 60 percent—which benefited the governor. This may have been prompted by a pressing public policy issue: whether Mainers should be prevented from feeding donuts to bears. A campaign to ban the practice of baiting bears with pastries and other garbage—and then letting hunters shoot them—may have mobilized large numbers of rural voters who tend to appreciate hunting and the “plain spoken” LePage. (The ballot measure was defeated, by the way, by some five points—about the same as LePage’s margin of victory.)

Democrats had hoped their nominee, Mike Michaud, would have been able to eat into LePage’s base in the mill towns and rural settlements that comprise much of interior Maine. Michaud, after all, was a mill worker himself, and drove a forklift on a paper mill floor until only a few years ago. A native of small paper mill town built in the forests of northern Maine, Michaud never attended college, but managed to become the president of the state senate and a six-term congressman representing the more rural “have not” of the state’s two congressional districts.

But Michaud is a poor public speaker and gave uninspiring performances in televised debates. He also came out as gay early in the campaign and, in contrast to his earlier positions when he was a state legislator, supports abortion rights and same-sex marriage. All of this may have played a role in his subpar performance in many of the communities that had sent him to Congress by wide margins, even against conservative challengers. Early this morning, the Associated Press called his empty House seat for Bruce Poliquin, an arch-conservative LePage ally who didn’t even live in the district until the campaign began.

And finally, LePage had the national tide in his favor, which swept away Democrats across the country, and gave the GOP a new toehold in New England. Republicans also seized control of the Maine state senate yesterday and made gains in the house, just two years after being swept from both chambers. “What we’ve done tonight in America transcends me and every other governor,” LePage said in his victory speech a few hours ago. “What it is, it’s about the American people. We have spoken. We’ve said enough is enough.”

Apparently not in Maine’s case. Voters here have decided they haven’t yet had enough of Paul LePage.