Ah well, I wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition only a moderate loss and perhaps even an eked-out win. But a moderate loss it was:
Ralph W. Sarty Jr. (R) 1,199 53%
Katherine Marie Smith (D) 1,046 47%
Just 153 votes shy of a tie. Those crucial 153 votes, well, 154 for a win, never showed up. But it was a good fight, and a close race. Better than a moderate loss, actually. Youth did very well indeed against twice-its-age experience.
I don’t have the breakdown by town yet. That will be interesting to see. I’ll post it when I get it.
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The closeness of the race is encouraging. I was speaking to my husband just last night about fresh new blood running for office and sited this young lady. I do hope she tries again stronger for the experience.
Wishing you well.
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It is a good thing for the people of the district. Unfortunately, while she may have had youth, that is all that Kate had on her side. She simply did not have the background that would allow her to have an impact. While Ralph is older, he has knowledge of how to get things done. He is not a political insider but simply a person who has dedicated his entire life to making the state of Maine a better place to live. He will turn out to be an excellent choice.
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Hi Mard,
Wow; that was pretty close. A vote always counts, but times like this, each vote takes an enormous importance.
Was this Ms. Smith’s first race? She did pretty well.
As Danielle sai, the next time she will do even better.I’am sure that you did your best to help out. Good going, Mardé !
See you later.
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Thanks, Danielle, for your understanding of this. I do think she had the talent, knowledge and energy to make a difference. This will be a hard learning experience for her but she can take away a lot from it.
Yes, Barbara, this was much closer than I feared. (I feared a Sarty landslide!) She did run before against a much weaker candidate and, as an unknown, almost beat him. This will be a hard blow for her but hopefully she’ll recover stronger.
Stephen, thank you for your view. You may very well be right about Ralph Sarty. We’ll have to wait and see.
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Bad luck, so close… but the thing about youth is she can do it again. It must be the young that take back your land.
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Well said, Aileni! It must be the young that take back our land. In this regard, Kate Smith got a 100% rating on legislative advocacy issues from Equality Maine, Maine’s oldest and largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender political advocacy organization. We need young, energetic progressives, like Kate Smith!, taking back our land, in my opinion. Thanks, Aileni.
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Heck .. đ ..
But, all wrong to better. Now Kathy can have some time to consider me as potential better support for next time elections (as husband, of course đ ).
Cheer up, Marde, there`s allways a tommorow.
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Thanks, Valentin! Yes, there’s always tomorrow. Kate — not Kathy, you better get her name right before you propose đ — might like a quick tour of Romania at this point in her life. Also, perhaps you could provide her better support, being more .. đ .. than me!
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I am curious about the “taking back our land” comment. What exactly does that mean? Ralph spent years working for the Warden service and is commited to preserving Maine lands. I believe it is one of his passions as he is an avid outdoorsman. The new blood thing is kind of funny in that it pertains to both. Don’t you think? Ralph is older but, outside of being a selectman, has never been in an elected position. He really is just a salty Mainer with a passion for the state…
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Thanks for your comment, Stephen. I think Aileni was using “land” in a figurative sense and was referring to the whole country as a “land”. The “taking back” part meant taking it back from the Bush/Cheney crowd, I believe.
I’ll agree that Ralph is a salty Mainer with a passion for the state, and yes, he will provide new blood, having never served in an elected position before. He certainly has high ambitions for “taking back” the state. Let’s see how he does.
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Interesting that it was such a close race, but I am hopeful that Ralph will live up to his rhetoric. While no ‘insider’, Ralph has friends in Augusta. Hopefully he can put those contacts to good use and get started right away toward his promise of bringing some common fiscal sense to the town.
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So, all the town (Augusta) needs is common fiscal sense? Not that there are any problems that “common sense” can’t solve?
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No. Of course Augusta needs a lot more than /fiscal/ common sense, but that is all that I’ve heard Ralph promise to address.
We’ve the highest tax burden in the nation and not a lot to show for it. If a big government spending a lot of money and restricting Individual Liberties worked to solve social ills, Maine would be the most socially advanced State in the nation.
For a so called very ‘conservative’ state, the Demopublican wing of the Corporate Incumbent Party (CIP) has a pretty tight majority hold on our legislature. As a consequence, entitlements continue to grow at the expense of the small business person trying to feed and clothe his own family. (The only Health Insurance that I can afford is: Don’t get sick.)
Even worse than my pocketbook, while still in the minority the Republicrat wing of the CIP also seem to be able to find the votes to restrict every social aspect of life from whom adults can love and marry, to how we medicate ourselves, to putting limits on free speech (to wit, Hastings most recently celebrated legislation against protesters (vile as they are) in the public commons near funerals.)
Indeed Augusta needs a lot of common sense. I’m not holding my breath. As long as both wings of the CIP feel that using Government (aka force) to control their neighbors lives as the most appropriate tool to address what they perceive as society’s ills, I don’t see that much will change.
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Ahh, it didn’t take you long to respond to my little queries. Well, I don’t take nearly as dim a view of things as you do in the above comment.
Maine is a very large rural state with an aging population, a lousy infrastructure, and a conflict between its two halves, the upstaters and the flatlanders, plus it’s 98% white. That says a lot in terms of what’s wrong and I’m sure it doesn’t cover all of it.
Look, Michael, I don’t want to get into a long argument or p***ing contest with you here. You’re a very good neighbor. Maybe we can just agree to disagree, and write each other off as stubborn curmudgeons?
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Oh, Marde I wouldn’t live anywhere else. I didn’t mean to suggest that I don’t love Maine and that my life isn’t BLESSED compared to 99.9% of the rest of the population on the planet, just that I’m not all that happy with the direction that either the Federal Government, nor the State Government is taking in our name.
Interestingly, as I’ve always understood it “Flatlanders” aren’t folks in the southern or more populated climes of our lovely state, but rather folks from away who move here and then wish to make Maine over into the very sort of placs that they were so desperate to escape from in the first place.
I agree that you are very good neighbors as well. I value that and would never suggest that a differing of mere political outlook should in any way put that into jeopardy. Hel, I completely disagree with my dad on politics now and he and I have a great relationship. (I respect his Right to be wrongheaded.)
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Way to go, Michael! It’s important to respect people’s rights to be wrongheaded. đ
Yes, your definition of flatlanders is more accurate. Some congregate in the coastal areas and expect to be waited on. đ
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Sorry your candidate lost, however closely. Better luck next time.
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Thanks for your concern, Dragonstar. In a year’s time the seat will need to be defended again because this election was in the middle of the resigning rep’s term. So, who knows what will happen then? It’ll be presidential election time as well.
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Ralph Sarty has the backbone and the will power and the knowledge to take a real stand on issues and counter the feelgood subversive and outright hypocrytical policies of the current administration. Though “Republican” is synonomous with traditional values, many of Sarty’s concepts are very forward thinking and yet much more realistic and feesable for the rural Mainers. For too long the policies of our state government have focused mainly on the urban areas from Kittery to Brunswick and though many of the concepts and formulas work for that area of Maine the rural Mainers have footed the bill and seen very little if any benefit. It is time for rural Mainers to get behind a representative who can be their voice in Augusta, and I believe wholeheartedly that Ralph Sarty Jr. is that man. No more pandering to the urbanites! Sarty for Governor!
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Thanks for your heartfelt comment, Jonathan. I hear what you’re saying but what are these “feelgood subversive and outright hypocritical policies” now being pursued? I mean can you give an example of one? Is it possible that there’s too wide a gulf between rural issues and urban ones in Maine for politics to be applied as the “art of compromise” it should be. Does this reflect the fact that Maine may really be two states: the urban one near the coast and the vast reaches of rural Maine throughout the rest of the state?
Of course I oversimplify, but doesn’t the vastness of the Maine rural areas create a nightmare of logistic and infrastructure problems by its very existence? I think this is why many want to create economies of scale by combining functions and regions, although indeed the school consolidation may be far more difficult than originally conceived.
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Could you please remove your campaign signs by Ingalls Pond? It seems that losers are always slack with the litter.
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Ooooooh, thanks for your gentle reminder.
My excuse is that I removed signs, morning of Nov. 7, from Denmark only, leaving the others to remove signs in the other towns. I’ll get right over there and remove whatever signs are still there.
Actually, in the case of the 2006 election, the winner Phil Cressey had signs still up a couple weeks after the election.
UPDATE: OK, I drove over there, to Ingalls Pond on routes 117/113/5, and the sign that Mark Bryant and I put up is no longer there, and there are no other Kate Smith signs by Ingalls Pond. The round trip took me about 40 minutes.
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