What is heartbreaking is that it is so close.
Also: why is a “voter approval for tax increases” being defeated 60-40??? Why wouldn’t the voters of Maine want to APPROVE THEIR OWN TAXES?
TABOR....The Taxpayers Bill of Rights.....is being defeated.
39% YES, 61% NO.
If you lived in Maine, you’d understand why. Every few years TABOR gets on the ballot, and then the teacher’s unions spend $1.3 million on ads, the firemen and police get into the act, and so on. The “Yes” people only had a few weak ads on the TV and radio which were unclear, confusing and didn’t even mention TABOR or the Proposition number by name. The NO people....who had millions of dollars pumped into Maine from out-of-state....ran THOUSANDS of commercials on TV and radio, claiming that TABOR would make the recession worse, kids wouldn’t have heat in their schools in winter, public safety would be in jeopardy because of supposed cuts in police and firefighters, etc.
The anti-TABOR people claimed it’s passage would take away local control from cities and towns.
They also ran commercials on the radio with doctors, teachers, elected officials, etc. from Colorado claiming that TABOR was a disaster for that state, and don’t make the same mistake we made, blah blah blah.
Bottom line....the anti-TABOR people had millions of dollars and thousands of ads, the pro-TABOR people were as poor as church mice and had only a few weak ads. That’s why it lost.