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(CNN) - Maine's independent senator-elect announced Wednesday he would caucus with Democrats, giving the party a ten-vote advantage over Republicans in the upper chamber. Angus King made the announcement Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol, where he and other newly elected senators and represenatatives are convening for a week of orientation. They will be officially sworn in as lawmakers in January.

Gay marriage advocates cheered victories in voter initiatives in Maryland and Maine on Tuesday night and seemed poised to win in two other states. The votes were first setbacks at the ballot box for opponents of same-sex marriage after more than 30 victories. With 93 percent of the vote counted in Maryland, Ballot Question 6, which legalizes gay marriage in the state, was leading by 52 percent to 48 percent, and supporters were already claiming victory in the heated and expensive battle. “Today the marriage equality map expands to Maryland, giving thousands more loving couples the opportunity to make lifelong...

According to a new Kimball Political Consulting survey, Governor Romney has a chance to pick up an Electoral College vote in Maine, which could determine the Presidential election. Maine is one of two states, Nebraska is the other, that award electoral college votes based on the popular vote in their Congressional districts. Maine's 2nd Congressional district is polling 50% in support of Barack Obama and 45% in support of Mitt Romney with 5% undecided. According to the pollster, Spencer Kimball, "there are several indicators suggesting the President is not vulnerable to defeat." Kimball points out that the President is still...

Reuters) - Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney are scouting an unlikely path to the White House through the vast forests and blueberry barrens of northern Maine. President Barack Obama is expected to win the Pine Tree State easily in the November 6 election. Regardless, Romney allies are buying TV time with the hope of carrying the state's thinly populated interior and scraping out one electoral college vote in Maine that could edge their man closer to the 270 needed to win the White House. With polls showing a dead heat nationally, Republicans in the state are focusing their...

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is poised to win one of Maine’s electoral votes if the results of a poll released Thursday hold true through the Nov. 6 election. Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in the northern part of the state supports Romney over President Barack Obama by five percentage points, 49 percent to 44 percent, a result that according to a story by Politico is outside the NMB Research poll’s margin of error. On a statewide basis, Obama leads 48 percent to 44 percent, which means he would get two of Maine’s four electoral votes. Obama would presumably also win the...

When you look at the competitive nature of so many Battlegrounds, the chances of an electoral tie between the two candidates is probably higher this year than at any time in the last century. What gets lightly covered though are the states where it is not “winner take all” like Maine and Nebraska who carved out an electoral votes by congressional districts where a candidate can steal the vote in a state that otherwise votes for his opponent. Barack Obama did that in Nebraska in 2008 stealing 1 electoral vote in the Omaha area. This time around Omaha looks ever...

Sixty-three former Roman Catholic priests in Washington state will announce on Thursday that they support Referendum 74, which would make Washington the nation’s seventh state to legalize marriage between same-sex couples. The stand comes as the state’s four Catholic bishops intensify a campaign of pastoral statements and videos urging parishoners to vote against marriage equality. In the latest pastoral letter, Bishop Joseph J. Tyson of the Diocese of Yakima told his 41 parishes that Referendum 74 “jeopardizes freedom rather than expands it” and “endangers our religious liberty and the rights of conscience.” “Once marriage is redefined as a genderless contract,...

As debate about the same-sex marriage referendum swirled around Maine, the social hall of Our Lady of Good Hope church was a bastion of Catholic conviction after Mass last week. About 30 people listened as two theologians from Massachusetts talked about the importance of marriage and why allowing same-sex couples to wed is contrary to church doctrine. Marriage is a lifelong commitment that is "oriented to the procreation and education of children," said Angela Franks, director of theology programs at the Theological Institute for the New Evangelization at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Mass. "The whole debate over marriage is...

AUGUSTA -- Across the country, voters have banned or rejected same-sex marriage at the ballot box more than 30 times since 1998. This year, as four states consider the issue, Maine voters will be the first in the nation to be asked by same-sex marriage supporters to approve it by popular vote. Until now, voters have been asked only to ban it or reject it. The idea of being on offense for a change appeals to supporters. "At some point, we are going to win one of these campaigns at the ballot box," said Matt McTighe, campaign manager for Mainers...

Here’s a message to the GOP from Vacationland: Maine is not lost!

By unanimous vote of those present, the 40 contested members of the Maine Delegation to the Republican National Convention being held this month in Tampa, Florida, did not accept a deal put forward by Charles Webster, State GOP Chairman.

AUGUSTA, Me. — Three years after voters in Maine rejected same-sex marriage, they will consider the matter again in November. This time, advocates say they have reason for optimism. “It’s about love and family,” says Ms. Nugent, seen with Sam Lundquist, a Falmouth resident. Carroll Conley Jr., at his office in Augusta, is executive director of the Christian Civic League of Maine and a leader of the opposition campaign. They point to a shift in public opinion, the personal support for same-sex marriage voiced last month by President Obama and what they believe is an effective door-to-door “persuasion” campaign throughout...

Maine has fewer residents who claim a religious affiliation than any other state in the union. The Pine Tree State is the only one in the country in which less than 30 percent of the population belong to a religious denomination or independent Christian church, according to a census conducted every 10 years by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. This follows a Pew study that found 40 percent of Mainers pray daily — the lowest percentage in the nation. “What’s alarming about those numbers is that more than 300 years after the country was founded by people...

During remarks in Portland, Maine, on Friday, President Obama said, “We won’t win the race for new jobs and new businesses and middle-class security if we cling to this same old, worn-out, tired ‘you’re on your own’ economics that the other side is peddling. It was tried in the decades before the Great Depression. It didn’t work then. It was tried in the last decade. It didn’t work. You know, the idea you would keep on doing the same thing over and over again, even though it’s been proven not to work. That’s a sign of madness.”

A poll released today by Public Policy Polling, a national Democratic firm, found that independent former Gov. Angus King would narrowly win a three-way race against Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree and Republican Secretary of State Charlie Summers. Former independent Gov. Angus King, left, Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree and Secretary of State Charlie Summers, a Republican. King garners 36 percent of the vote to Pingree's 31 percent and Summers' 28 percent because he pulls away 35 percent of Democratic voters from Pingree and garners 53 percent of the vote from independents, compared to 25 percent of the GOP vote, PPP's poll...

Former Maine Gov. Angus King — an independent — will announce a run for retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-Maine) seat in the Senate. Two sources close to King told the Kennebec Journal he would announce his campaign Monday night. King did not respond to messages seeking confirmation. A popular two-term governor and professor at Bowdoin College, King has a history of working with both parties and a demonstrated appeal to the state's large swath of independent voters. About 390,000 registered voters in Maine belong to neither major party — more than are registered as either Democrats or Republicans.

Last Saturday, the Maine Republican Party declared Mitt Romney the winner of the Maine caucuses. The non-binding caucuses were a low turnout affair, but Romney's victory over Ron Paul - who he beat by less than 200 votes - was a chance for Romney to reclaim some momentum in the wake of Rick Santorum's three-state sweep four days earlier. Now, however, it looks like Romney could ultimately be stripped of that victory. If that happens, it will be the second time this cycle Romney has been stripped of a caucus victory. The first came in Iowa, where Santorum was declared...

Wedding bells will soon be ringing for Sen. Susan Collins. The Maine Republican is engaged to Thomas Daffron, 73, the chief operating officer for the D.C.-based Jefferson Consulting Group. According to the consulting group’s website, Daffron served as chief of staff to former Sens. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) and William Cohen (R-Maine). He was also a speechwriter for the late Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.), a campaign manager for former GOP presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole, and a consultant during all three of Collins’ Senate campaigns. Collins, 59, has never been married.

AUGUSTA, Maine — Sen. Olympia Snowe has rejected criticism that she is a RINO (Republican in name only) and has vowed to run an all-out campaign to win the GOP nomination and re-election to the United States Senate. “I don’t take anything for granted, never have and I never will,” she said in an interview. “I am going to campaign hard like I always do and I am already campaigning.”Snowe said she is tired of those in the right wing of the GOP calling her a RINO. She said her credentials as a fiscal conservative were well established when she...