Political analysts have cited a number of factors contributing to Paul LePage’s victory in the 2010 gubernatorial race. But among the prevailing conventional wisdom that followed Election Day, a number of people credited one person with helping prevent the incendiary candidate from losing the election: Dan Demeritt.
Demeritt joined the campaign in the fall, at a time when LePage’s brash, impolitic comments appeared to be eroding the Republican’s once-sizable lead in the polls. Republicans and Democrats have said the quotable Demeritt brought some media savvy to the campaign and kept LePage out of trouble.
There are a lot reasons why Demeritt wasn’t as successful once LePage became governor. Some people blame LePage’s repeated controversial conduct. Some people blame Demeritt, who had his own penchant for shooting from the hip.
Demeritt resigned last week. Official word from the administration was that the press flack stepped down to address recently reported financial troubles.
But Demeritt’s tax and foreclosure issues were well known before the story became public.
In fact, Demeritt’s situation had been shopped more than a month ago to news outlets and blogs by an anonymous tipster.
It’s unclear why others chose not to run the story, but the Sun Journal’s review of the foreclosure documents showed an individual who had overextended, yet was working to pay back the debts. Demeritt, as the Bangor Daily News recently reported, was not much different from other business people who had run into trouble during the economic downturn.
From our editors’ perspective, Demeritt’s troubles would only have been news if he’d been an elected official or if he was running for office.
There was also the motive of the anonymous tipster.
The individual said he was a state employee upset with LePage’s budget proposals. But something wasn’t quite right. A search within the Maine Heritage Policy Center’s state employee database yielded no matches to the tipster’s name, nor did the name come up during a statewide search of public records.
After failing to convince other news organizations to do the story, the individual took other, conspicuously savvy, measures. The tipster created a Twitter account and posted his scoop on the #mepolitics thread, a hive for political junkies, operatives and news media.
Demeritt, by his own admission, made many enemies. Many were Democrats, although some of them would often say he had the toughest job in Augusta.
He ruffled some Republican feathers, too.
Even during the afterglow of the GOP sweep of the Blaine House and Legislature, Demeritt seemed reluctant to disengage from campaign mode with some Democrats and progressive groups.
Some described him as quick-tempered and thin-skinned, characterizations often assigned to LePage.
During the transition, Demeritt waged a tireless defense of his boss. When news about LePage posted to newspaper websites at 12:01 a.m., Demeritt would sometimes be up waiting. He’d often fire off long, feisty emails to reporters in the middle of the night.
The late-night correspondence with reporters slowed after the inauguration. By that point Demeritt and the administration had other problems, including a rumored rift with the legislative branch. There was also what several Republicans described as a “nuclear war” between the governor’s office and the Maine Republican Party.
The tip about Demeritt’s financial trouble arrived amid rampant rumors of GOP infighting. However, it’s difficult to determine if Republicans were the source of the information given that Demeritt also ticked off progressive organizations.
Demeritt was described by both sides as overly zealous in his defense of LePage.
Still, he was at the center of much of the gossip about the GOP rift.
One spat went public. In late January news broke about Demeritt’s infamous “11,000 bureaucrats” memo. Seemingly lost in the resulting furor over the memo’s contents was that it was leaked by a Republican.
Democrats blasted Demeritt for the memo. He also took some hits in the GOP.
Vic Berardelli, a former GOP communications flak who worked on Jason Levesque’s congressional bid, described the memo as “idiocy,” “totally inept and potentially politically suicidal” on the conservative website As Maine Goes.
Word circulated in February that Demeritt was on his way out. He would be fired. He was being reassigned to the Department of Economic and Community Development.
Demeritt managed to hang on another month before an arson at one of his apartment buildings apparently prompted the Kennebec Journal to run the story about his financial troubles.
Demeritt resigned shortly thereafter.
The administration announced the news in a brief release. The statement contained no direct comment from LePage.
That same day the Maine GOP re-tweeted a link to the story. The link was followed by a short comment, “Good luck Dan. Thanks for yr (your) service.”
(This column was updated to correct a statement that the anonymous tipster had deleted a Twitter account. The account is still active.)
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