The partisan bickering in the Legislature has claimed another victim: Clean Elections. In 1996, Maine voters decided they’d had enough with how campaigns were funded, and they passed the Maine Clean Election Act. Candidates who choose to run “clean” can accept only a certain number of contributions to start, and only $5 contributions from voters in their district qualify the candidate to receive public funding. It’s a great idea – you get local support and public financing, keeping big-money d...

Imagine a friendship between the wife of a fierce Israeli military commander and the mother-in-law of the founder of Fatah and the Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Impossible, it would seem. But such a friendship did exist. The University of New England, with campuses in Maine and Tangier, Morocco, recently hosted an author who everyone should be reading if they care the least bit about human nature, world conflict, or geopolitics. Anthony David lectured on his book, “An Impro...

The hand wringing has already begun inside the beltway about when – and if – independent Michael Bloomberg enters the presidential race. The first question in the media revolves around who loses if Bloomberg runs. It’s a replay of the 2014 gubernatorial race in Maine where an Independent was accused of vote splitting. The pundits rush to tell people how to vote based on polls and vote splitting is very much the same and it’s a disservice. An article in the WSJ and Daily Beast both jumped on the...

What exactly has Donald Trump tapped into that has given him juicy front-runner status more than a year out from the 2016 presidential election? My guess is: anger. This anger is directed at a political system perceived as completely out of sync with the American public. Trump is the anti-Jeb Bush and the anti-Hillary Clinton. They’re dynasty politicians who are faring far below expectations in the court of public opinion. Hillary is tied up in the mess of State Department email security and Je...