THE GREAT AMERICAN POLITICAL ROADTRIP: MAINE AND MARYLAND
MAINE
Politically, Maine has long been dubbed a "blue state." Every Democratic presidential candidate has won since Bill Clinton in 1992, and it's rarely contested. However, Maine, one of the country's most rural, least diverse states, has gradually supplanted New Hampshire as New England's most conservative. That shouldn't be surprising. Not long ago, Maine was the "reddest" state. With Vermont, Maine was one of the only two states that never went for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. However, it was close in 1940 thanks to so many French Canadian Mainers backing FDR's support for the British war against the Nazis after the fall of France until LBJ carried the state in 1964, only once since the Civil War had Democrats won the state - in 1912 with a plurality.
Some of the most prominent Republicans in political history came from Maine. The first Republican Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, came from Maine, as did House Speaker James Blaine, who held the job during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant and narrowly lost the 1884 Presidential Election to Grover Cleveland. Maine was the home state of Sen. Owen Brewster, a staunch anti-Communist and ally of Joseph McCarthy who regularly quarreled with aviator Howard Hughes (Alan Alda portrayed Brewster in the 2004 film The Aviator). Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman elected to both Houses of Congress, and Bill Cohen, who later served as Bill Clinton's Secretary of Defense, were also prominent Maine Republicans.
Maine's rock-ribbed Republicanism in the 20th Century stemmed from its Yankee abolitionist legacy, but the New Deal and FDR's foreign policy began shifting politics in the state.
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