⏪ Tribal-rights parallels

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By Michael Shepherd - July 8, 2022
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Good morning from Augusta. There are 123 days until Maine's November elections.

What we're watching today

Tension between the governor and members of Congress echo the battle over a historic tribal settlement. In a breakdown between Maine's top elected Democrats, Gov. Janet Mills is attempting to work around members of the congressional delegation to get lawmakers to slow down a measure championed by Reps. Jared Golden and Chellie Pingree that would allow Maine tribes to automatically benefit from legislation helping tribes nationally going forward. They now have to be specifically written into laws.
It boils down to the 1980 land-claims settlement that has been at the heart of a tribal sovereignty movement at the state level. Mills has largely resisted more sweeping demands from tribes, although the parties inked a major compromise this year that will hand a new mobile sports betting business to the tribes.
She is part of a long list of governors and other state officials who have tried to preserve Maine's power in disputes with the tribes. The settlement from four decades ago was the result of a massive tribal lawsuit against the state that called into question the ownership of two-thirds of modern-day Maine. The result was an $80 million settlement that mostly regulated tribes like cities and towns, an arrangement that they have come to regret.
The political battle over this settlement is not widely known nearly 50 years later. Key state officials never even wanted to move to a settlement in the 1970s, as Bates College professor Joseph Hall noted in a 2016 article. Bull-headed independent Gov. James Longley complained that the state was being left out of negotiations, while Attorney General Joseph Brennan, a Democrat who later served as congressman and governor, opposed a settlement because he figured the state would win the court battle. Anti-settlement sentiment was high in letters to Maine's major newspapers at the time.
Then-U.S. Sen. William Hathaway, the Democrat who ousted the legendary Margaret Chase Smith in 1972 and faced upstart Rep. William Cohen in a tough 1978 re-election battle, took on the moral cause of supporting the tribal claims and championing the settlement, an unpopular position that contributed to Cohen's victory. The powerful Sen. Edmund Muskie was more ambivalent, offering only tepid support of Hathaway's position. He mostly sat out subsequent negotiations and was serving as President Jimmy Carter's secretary of state by the time the deal was done in 1980.
While Mills has worked against the tribes at times, her openness to negotiations is a far cry from the tenor of 1970s politics in Maine and former Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican running against her in 2022, had a more fraught relationship with the tribes. But the state's position is proving to be far different than the congressional one in a parallel to that era. There is again a lot on the line for tribes who want to bring more federal support to their areas.
Mills is arguing that the state is getting cut out of a major issue affecting tribes here, while Golden sees the issue squarely as a congressional one. Sens. Angus King and Susan Collins have not indicated stances so far and may have to soon. Golden's position comes with some risk as he faces a tough re-election battle with former Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican. History echoes through the current tribal-rights landscape at every level.

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News and notes

Two big developments are coming on the stalled $1 billion corridor.
— The Central Maine Power Co. project has been on the ropes since voters rejected it in November, leading to the suspension of a major state permit. Maine's high court may issue decisions as soon as next week on long-running cases about the legality of the referendum and state land leases.
— Corridor opponents are also focusing heavily on a long-delayed July 20 hearing before the Board of Environmental Protection on the validity of a site permit. They are asking activists to show up to the Augusta Civic Center to rally outside the meeting and listen to arguments during the two-day hearing.
Maine's junior senator continues to press the intelligence community.
— Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, hit the administration of President Joe Biden for "two significant breakdowns in a year" in an interview with the Associated Press, referring to the aftermaths of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia's Ukraine invasion.
— King pressed the intelligence community in May to do "soul-searching" after predicting Ukraine would quickly fall to Russia. The senator was briefly considered to be Biden's director of national intelligence after the 2020 election.

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What we're reading

— The economy is still outpacing abortion rights on the list of Mainers' top state-level issues, according to a recent poll for a Republican group that found a nearly tied generic ballot for legislative races in 2022.
— People from states with abortion bans are already traveling to Maine for the procedure, providers said on Thursday.
— The first Mainer charged in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, Kyle Fitzsimons of Lebanon, will be tried next month before a federal judge in Washington after waiving his right to a jury trial.
— Private jets are a major reason for massive growth in business at the Waterville airport. Fuel sales are up 60 percent over 2021. Over Colby College’s recent graduation weekend alone, a dozen corporate jets were at the airport, the city manager has said.
— An Arizona lobster drive-thru business bought a Bailey Island wharf in an inflation-minded bid to maintain its $9.99 lobster roll price. Angie's Lobster is trying to cut out middlemen to build the "most efficient restaurant business the world has ever seen" and plans to sell bait and food at cost to fishermen.

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Photo of the day

Lobsterman Dave Anderson rinses the hull of his fishing boat prior to giving it a fresh coat of paint before the tide comes in on Thursday at Cape Porpoise. (AP photo by Robert F. Bukaty)

📷 Lead photo: Gov. Janet Mills (left) and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree (right) of Maine's 1st District meet with members of the public in Portland to discuss how to respond to asylum seekers arriving in the city on June 14, 2019. (BDN photo by Troy R. Bennett)

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