Now that the primary election is over, we can relax and enjoy a few months when we don’t have to take politics seriously. Which is fortunate, because there are two gubernatorial candidates on the November ballot who definitely shouldn’t be taken seriously.
No, one of them isn’t named John Baldacci.
If the poll showing Baldacci being supported for a second term by only 39 percent of voters is correct, that still leaves the incumbent Democrat well ahead of a couple of independents cluttering up the campaign trail. John Michael of Auburn and Philip NaPier of Windham bring little in the way of qualifications for high public office to the race, except the likelihood that any debates in which they participate will produce at least a couple of comments so bizarre that most of the news media won’t dare to quote them in their entirety.
For that, we should be thankful. Columnist Russell Baker termed debates “a largely irrelevant ritual.” Retired anchorman Walter Cronkite called them “part of the fraud that our political campaigns have become.”
Don’t expect Michael and NaPier to correct those deficiencies. But there’s a good chance they’ll turn this year’s crop of irrelevant, fraudulent rituals into entertaining, irrelevant, fraudulent rituals. While the allegedly serious candidates try to avoid saying anything of substance, these two kooks will have the opportunity to subject a large audience to a display of their personal eccentricities.
Of which, there’s no shortage.
Michael is a former Democratic state representative (he’s also been a Republican and a Perot supporter), best remembered for his verbal assaults on anyone with the audacity to challenge his oddball perspective on politics. In 2001, he was censured by the state House and banned from the state Senate after a profanity-laced tirade against two legislators. In a 2002 radio-talk-show appearance, he created an uproar when he described how he had been treated by the Legislature by employing a couple of racial epithets.
This time around, Michael is, according to supporter Bob Celeste, running as a “pro-Christ, pro-life ... conservative,” intent on ending public funding for abortions and “all persecution of Christians” by state police and tax collectors, a problem most Christians probably didn’t know they had.
For the record, during his legislative career, Michael consistently voted pro-choice. Among the many referendum drives he helped organize over the last decade were such non-churchly efforts as attempts to legalize video gambling, smoking in bars, and medical marijuana.
His credentials as a fiscal conservative might be called into question by records showing that while serving in the Legislature in 2001, he charged the state for at least $4800 in housing expenses he never incurred. He’s also accepting public financing for his campaign. Hard to think of a bigger waste of more than a million bucks.
As for his commitment to Christ, it may be real, but if he’s ever mentioned it in a public appearance over the last couple of decades, I missed it. He did, however, tell the Portland Press Herald in 2003 during his unsuccessful pro-tobacco petition drive, “I just don’t understand why certain types of people decide their morality needs to be pushed on everyone else in the world.”
In spite of his temper tantrums, opportunism, and inconsistency, Michael may have to concede his position as Official Campaign Wacko to NaPier, a retired IRS agent who describes himself on his Web site as “Thu Peoples Hero” (no explanation for the odd spelling and lack of punctuation) and “An American Patriot turned Revolutionary.”
The incident that turned NaPier to revolution was his 1995 arrest for threatening Windham police officers with a gun. After refusing to drop the weapon he’d been firing off his front porch at nothing in particular, he was wounded by the cops. During his trial, he claimed the officers ambushed him, subjecting him to what his Web site calls “a brutal savage physical assault.” He was found guilty and sentenced to 15 months in prison. He blamed his conviction on an elaborate conspiracy by “Esquire lawyer judges and their police.”
His platform calls for pardoning all felons, encouraging convicted criminals to move to Maine, banning lawyers from serving as judges, lowering the voting age to 16, and abolishing the state income tax.
At times, he sounds clueless, as when he proposes forbidding the news media from “labeling” people as felons.
At times, he sounds egotistical, as in this 2002 interview: “We need somebody like me [as governor] that knows a lot more than the average person.”
At times, he sounds scary, as in these quotes from his Web site: His enemies are an “uppity bunch of self-appointed aristocrats [who] have become a cancer among us [by] controlling our government and feeding off of our lives.”
Suggested new rule for this year’s gubernatorial debates:
Check all guns at the door.
Email the author
Al Diamon: ishmaelia@gwi.net
