Maine doesn’t need Jonathan Bush’s interference in local races | Steve Collins
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Jonathan Bush doesn’t seem to take defeat lying down.
After coming in a distant third in the Republican gubernatorial primary in June, Bush is now angling to win grassroots support around the state in the future, launching “Maine for Keeps,” a new initiative to get Republicans elected in our larger cities.
By doing this, Bush is injecting even more partisan politics into the cities’ municipal campaigns — exposing, once again, how foolish it is for us to go on pretending these races are nonpartisan.
Bush told WVOM radio this week that he’s using $50,000 of his own money to target races in Lewiston, Bangor and Waterville in a bid “to make it easy for the candidates that kind of come from the land of sanity to win and to take back those city councils.”
Translation for those who have yet to master the tricky language of politics: He is promoting GOP candidates to oust officials aligned with the Democrats.
This isn’t a strategy pioneered by Bush. The Maine Republican Party didn’t hesitate, quite openly, to block Democrat Ben Chin from winning Lewiston’s mayoral races in 2015 and 2017. Maine Democrats angle to win municipal races, too, if only by the practice of calling attention to their candidates.
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To his credit, Bush isn’t hiding what he’s doing. As he explained, “I’m fighting where I think we’ve got Republicans and unenrolled folks” with enough business sense to overcome opponents aligned with the Democrats.
As far as I can see, Bush backs a GOP agenda that consists mostly of trashing the cities its champions hope to represent. Following the misbegotten lead of the Maine Wire and other agitators, this involves slamming these communities’ safety and cleanliness and insisting that everything has gone downhill for years. What malarkey.
Not that I’m a fan of most city councilors or mayors; it’s at best a mixed bag. Yet for Bush to come in and say that sitting councilors in these cities don’t have “a basic sense of right and wrong” or “basic sanity” is ridiculous.
Perhaps, though, it’s no more silly than the notion that Bush is somehow going to be the savior whose unexpected cash can turn Maine’s municipalities into Republican strongholds. With President Donald Trump at the helm of the party, that’s not about to happen.
What does strike me about Bush’s foray into city politics across the state is that it could become a turning point for the handling of municipal elections. It’s time we dropped the pretense that they are somehow above politics.
I looked at a few sample ballots in Lewiston this week, trying to get it straight in my head who’s running for what, and was appalled to see that beneath each candidate’s name was not his or her party affiliation, which would help the average voter decide. Instead, the ballots listed their home addresses, which seems both useless to voters as well as risky in this bitter age.
Take Lewiston’s mayoral race. The ballot lists the names of five candidates and where each of them lives (three on the same street!). But it provides nothing to help a voter distinguish among them, as party affiliations do in state and federal races.
I don’t believe Bush has any career prospects in Maine politics. The money resulting from his Maine for Keeps effort, though, could perhaps be remembered as the push needed to toss out nonpartisan elections, and stop hiding what’s most important about candidates from voters who lack the information only party insiders possess.
Meanwhile, instead of trying to buy far-flung city councilors, Bush should consider running for municipal office in his own town. There’s a good chance sanity is needed in Cape Elizabeth, too.
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Tagged: election 2026
Steve Collins became an opinion columnist for the Maine Trust for Local News in April of 2025. A journalist since 1987, Steve has worked for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Maine and served. More by Steve Collins
