Free Republic

Olympia Snowe made her case for a return to governing from the “sensible center,” and she did it with conviction. But while the audience was both loud and supportive at a women’s summit in Charlotte, no one – and that includes the former Republican U.S. senator from Maine — thought it would be easy. Snowe was considered moderate in her approach and her politics when she decided not to run for a fourth term in the Senate in 2012. How bad had it gotten? Republicans and Democrats honored her at separate celebrations, a departure from the past. “It’s not even...

Gregory Hodge, of Jefferson, is urging people on the political left and right to look critically at their party affiliation. Hodge was the state committeeman for the Lincoln County Republicans until he and 11 other Republicans unenrolled from the Maine Republican Party and resigned related positions this week, Hodge joined five other state committee members, Republican National Committee member Mark Willis, and five other registered Maine Republicans in writing a letter outlining their disaffiliation and the reasons behind it to Maine GOP Secretary Chuck Malaheris. The Aug. 18 letter criticizes a number of people, actions, and groups, including rule changes...

Liz Cheney has not made a case for her challenge to Mike Enzi in a Wyoming Republican primary next year, former Sen. Olympia Snowe told POLITICO. The Maine Republican senator said the decision by Cheney to take on the genial third-term senator is “unfortunate,” given that Enzi travels home often and reflects his constituents’ conservative beliefs while also working “to do the right thing for the right reasons” legislatively. “There is no reason to challenge him. What is the basis? That he’s not working hard enough? He’s working very hard,” Snowe said. “That he’s not conservative enough? I think it’s...

President Obama believed that opposition to his healthcare reform law would fade after the 2010 election, according to former Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Obama courted Snowe’s support in an attempt to make the bill bipartisan. He assured her GOP opposition to the law would be short-lived, she said. “He thought the opposition to it would lessen after the [2010] election. I said, ‘It’s just the beginning.’ I said, ‘It’s going to grow because I can tell you it’s not going to go away and it’s going to get worse,’” Snowe said in a radio interview moderated by Julie Mason, host...

Stopping veteran Dem retirements is top priority for Reid, SchumerBy Alexander Bolton - 11/25/12 06:00 AM ET One of the highest immediate political priorities for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Democratic political guru Charles Schumer (N.Y.) is to persuade veteran colleagues not to retire in 2014. Democratic sources identify four senators as most likely to retire: Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Another possible veteran retirement is Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who has yet to announce his decision. But Democratic aides expect him to run...

Jack Hayes, the director of the National Weather Service, stepped down Friday in response to an investigation that top officials at the weather service had misappropriated $43.8 million by giving bonuses and extensions to contractors without proper justification. The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Commerce, which oversees NOAA, released the report on May 18, detailing an audit of nine contracts that include incentive pay for good work. The contracts have a maximum potential value of $1.6 billion. The investigators said there may be other contracts that provide additional awards from 2008, 2009 and 2010 but that...

Independent U.S. Senate candidate Angus King is being criticized by Republican candidates for contributing to President Obama's re-election campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Do you believe a political candidate can successfully run as an independent while if he or she also has donated to a party or Democrat or Republican candidate? Angus King, Independent candidate for the U.S. Senate, right, speaks to former Independent gubernatorial candidate Eliot Cutler at an event in April. King has come under fire for purchasing tickets to an Obama fundraiser before Olympia Snowe withdrew from the race. King, who has declined to say which...

Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe’s announcement on Tuesday that she will not seek re-election after more than three decades on Capitol Hill certainly sent shockwaves across Washington, D.C. What does it exactly mean to LGBT-friendly Republicans? Snowe is among the six Republicans in the U.S. Senate who voted for a bill that repealed the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian servicemembers. She is also a co-sponsor of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The vast majority of her Republican colleagues were obviously unwilling to meet her in the middle on these issues. "As I enter a new chapter, I see a...

Just across at CNN. No details yet, but Fox reporter Trish Turner is tweeting bits of what she claims is Snowe’s statement. Quote: “I have no doubt I would have won re-election”“I do find it frustrating, however, that an atmosphere of polarization and ‘my way or the highway’ ideologies has become pervasive in campaigns and in our governing institutions.”“…what I have had to consider is how productive an additional term would be. Unfortunately, I do not realistically expect the partisanship of recent years in the Senate to change over the short term. So at this stage of my tenure in...

BANGOR, Maine — They tried to play nice, but it was pretty clear at Saturday’s Penobscot County super caucus that the Republican candidates vying for U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe’s senate seat are not happy with her actions in Washington.Snowe, a three-term senator and former eight-term U.S. House member, was the first to speak at the political gathering of Republicans from 25 municipalities. They came together at Husson University to elect delegates to the state convention in May and participate in a presidential preference straw poll.“Regardless of who the nominee is, come 2013 we will have a Republican back in the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

1. Ben Nelson, D-Neb. 2. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. 3. Jon Tester, D-Mont. 4. Scott Brown, R-Mass. 5. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah 6. Dick Lugar, R-Ind. 7. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio 8. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. 9. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine 10. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A tea party candidate who plans to run against Sen. Olympia Snowe in next year's Senate Republican primary is inviting Snowe to debate him.

The Senate rejected a Republican measure Wednesday to expand offshore oil and gas drilling in U.S. coastal waters, signaling a continued partisan stalemate over energy policy and, more specifically, how to respond to rising gas prices. The bill was defeated in a 42-57 vote. Sixty votes were required for passage. Five Republicans -- Alabama's Richard Shelby, Louisiana's David Vitter, Maine's Olympia Snowe, South Carolina's Jim DeMint, and Utah's Mike Lee -- voted against the bill.

Washington (CNN) – Though Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe hasn't drawn a Democratic challenger yet, she's plenty prepared for a re-election battle. According to fundraising numbers for the first quarter released Monday, Maine's third term senator has over $2 million in cash on hand. Snowe raised $877,019 in the first quarter of 2011 and spent $62,433 on her 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. She will report $2,050,053 in cash on hand 17 months before the Senate election, according to numbers released by her office. Snowe for Senate Treasurer Rick Bennett said, "It's a good start for her campaign fundraising effort. The total...

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is a ripe target for a Tea Party challenge as she runs for re-election next year. She won't be able to count on support of all of her Republican colleagues -- at least not Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Asked directly in an interview with Jonathan Karl's "Subway Series," "Will you be endorsing Sen. Snowe?" Toomey had this to say: "Look, I think this is a very dynamic environment and probably almost every Republican senator's going to face a primary challenge." While Toomey said he won't be supporting Snowe, he won't oppose her either. "I'm not going...

There have been rumors that Andrew Ian Dodge will challenge Olympia Snowe in the 2012 Republican primary. Well, today at CPAC, he announced his candidacy and he's doing his first post-announcement interview here at Right Wing News. Enjoy! First question: if a Republican in Maine says, "Andrew, why should I support you instead of Olympia Snow in the 2012 primary?" -- what would you tell him? I would tell him that Olympia has been there too long. She routinely votes against the Republican Party line and that roughly speaking, she thinks she runs the place and, in fact, she...

At CPAC today, during his panel titled "Andrew Ian Dodge and the World of Tomorrow," Tea Party activist and author Andrew Ian Dodge announced his candidacy for Republican Senator for Maine, challenging sitting Republican in Name Only Olympia Snowe. Polls show that Snowe is vulnerable to a conservative challenger, with 59% of the Republican base saying they would prefer a "conservative" challenger. ...basically everyone else in the state has a more positive view of Snowe, the poll found. Dodge writes at Pajamas Media and is a leader in the Maine Tea Party Movement, but is he the conservative Maine Republicans are looking...

Washington (CNN) – Still swaggering after its recent electoral successes, the Tea Party movement appears to be growing more emboldened as it tries to blaze a path to power. One new bold move: An activist group is publicly parading a list of lawmakers the group is determined to oust from office. On Thursday, the Tea Party Express added two more names to its "2012 Tea Party Target List" - Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. (snip) "Olympia Snowe dishonors the notion that the Republican Party is supposed to be the fiscally conservative, constitutionalist...

Maine Democrat Rosa Scarcelli suggested that a decision to challenge Sen. Olympia Snowe in 2012 could hinge on whether the three-term Republican is forced to fend off a primary challenge. Scarcelli, the CEO of an affordable-housing agency who ran for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, is widely seen as a rising star in her party and says she's very interested in running for public office again. But the 41-year-old also bills herself as a nonpartisan pragmatist who stresses she won't run against Snowe if the senior senator continues to vote as a moderate. "Olympia Snowe in my mind...