PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 3, 2021
Tuesday’s landslide passage of Question 1 offers many takeaways, but none so loud as the one for Central Maine Power: No scare tactic is safe to touch. Evah. How did it break so one-sidedly? Theories abound – from the project’s environmental impact to a nagging sense that Maine would be compensated with what felt like chump change. But heading into this week, two other insurmountable hurdles stood tall. First, years of awful service, unbridled arrogance and unrivaled inefficiency rendered the utility powerless when it came to convincing the citizenry that what was good for CMP was also good for them. Second, well aware of surveys and polls that put them in the sub-basement of public opinion, CMP and the rest of the pro-NECEC coalition chose to bluff rather than play a hand that wasn’t all that bad. For now, all that’s certain is a rare vote that united virtually all of Maine. A vote that, when the dust cleared, wasn’t really about power. It was about punishment.