Slamming someone as a “career politician” is one of the harshest slurs available in the political arsenal these days.
It has become so routine that it is difficult to find a high-profile election where one, both or all of the candidates involved are not zinging one another as career politicians.
That is certainly the case in the congressional contest in Maine’s tough-as-nails 2nd District.
U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a Republican who has served the sprawling district since 2014, insisted this week, “We cannot afford career politicians,” such as his Democratic challenger, Jared Golden of Lewiston.
That followed Golden’s shot at Poliquin in a television advertisement last week that lumped Poliquin among the “career politicians” who ought to be dumped overboard.
Sometimes it seems nearly everyone in politics insist they are “not a politician,” while their opponents, unsurprisingly, are.
Republican Eric Brakey, a contender for a Maine U.S. Senate seat, had barely begun his first race for a political office in 2013 when he denied that he was one of those political veterans.
A Speedo ad that featured him dancing as a young actor in New York “shows I’m not just a career politician,” Brakey said in 2013, more than a year before he won a state Senate seat in Auburn.
More typical, though, is the governor’s race.
In June, Lauren LePage, communications chief for GOP gubernatorial hopeful Shawn Moody, took aim at Democrat Janet Mills, who is “a career politician,” according to LePage, daughter of Gov. Paul LePage.
Moody, who ran for governor in 2010 and again this year, has so far avoided the appellation. But the Maine Democrats pegged him as a “Newly-Minted Professional Politician” all the way in back in February.
In 2014, independent candidate for governor Eliot Cutler sought to distinguish himself in a three-way race against Democrat Mike Michaud and Republican Paul LePage, who was seeking re-election after a tumultuous first term.
Cutler denounced LePage as a “failed and embarrassing tea party governor,” and took aim at Michaud as “a career politician with heavy ties to special interests.”
The trend goes far beyond Maine.
A quick scan through Google News references finds candidates accusing one another of being career politicians in Ohio, Oklahoma, Florida, Indiana, Virginia, Massachusetts, New York and beyond. It is even tossed around in Brazil and India.
If there are any American politicians who admit they are career politicians, they are lying low.
But Noel Grealish, who represents Galway in Ireland, fessed up to being one.
“I am a career politician, who works long hours to represent the people of Galway who need help and feel their voices fall on deaf ears,” he said.
Sometimes, those denying they are career politicians seem almost comical.
In 2015, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, hoping to win the GOP’s presidential nomination, had to fight off charges he is a career politician.
At age 47, he insisted he is “just a normal guy” who is not a career politician.
Walker ran for office for the first time at age 22. He lost, but ran again for a state House seat two years later and then kept right on running for ever-higher offices. Since he has never lost since 1993, that means he has been a successful politician for 22 of his 29 years of adulthood.
Never mind that, though.
Walker said, “A career politician, in my mind, is somebody who’s been in Congress for 25 years.”
Not in U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ mind. On the 25th anniversary of his service in Congress, Sanders, a Vermont independent, denied he was a career politician.
“Well, I think if you look at my record, I’m not exactly a career politician,” Sanders said.
By Walker’s criteria, both Poliquin and Golden are safe from the charge.
Still, Poliquin has been around long enough to have at least three election cycles where he tagged his opponents as career politicians.
In his losing bid to become the GOP’s U.S. Senate candidate in 2012, Poliquin slammed Kevin Raye, a former aide to retired U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, as “a liberal career politician.”
In the past two congressional races, including the one that snagged him his current seat, Poliquin repeatedly slammed Democrat Emily Cain, his opponent in both 2014 and 2016, as another career politician, because she served in the state Legislature.
That does not make Poliquin a career politician, however. By the time he ran for office, he had already logged a long, successful career in business.
Golden, too, is no career politician. Golden spent almost as much time in the U.S. Marines as he has in the State House. He has only held political office since 2014, the same year Poliquin first won.
Poliquin, though, did have losing races in 2010 and 2012, along with two years as the state’s appointed treasurer. Golden has never lost.
Given that the definition of “career politician” is clearly in dispute, Cleveland.com fortunately came up with a Career Politician Index Ranking method this spring that can rank politicians to see who most deserves what has become a pejorative.
By the Cleveland system, Poliquin has racked up a score of 78 for his political endeavors as state treasurer and as a two-term member of Congress, while Golden lags behind with a score of 18, the result of four years in the Legislature, two of them as the House Democratic whip.
One of the independents in the 2nd District race, Tiffany Bond, argues that people ought to “wonder what nonsense is being sold” when a candidate for office says being a career politician is a bad thing.
“Treat legislators for federal office like they are seeking a career,” she told voters the other day. “You want this to be their career, their day job. Make them demonstrate the skills required for the job.”
Bond said on her Twitter feed, “When you hear someone running for office complaining about career politicians, pop an eyebrow and ask why. After all, they are interviewing to make that job their career, right? Why is it OK to be a career for them, but not (for) who they want to replace?”
The term is used so often it is hard to believe it has much impact.
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer for porn star Stormy Daniels, who has become a television star by attacking President Donald Trump, recently insisted people in both parties have asked him to run for president in 2020.
“I am not interested in being a career politician. We already have too many of those,” Avenatti said, which is not quite the same thing as saying, “No, thanks.”
Candidates sometimes try to parry the careerism charge. In a 2011 presidential debate, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich told Republican Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, “The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is because you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.”
Romney replied, “That’s probably true.”
Romney added that had he achieved his childhood dream, “I would have been a football star all my life, too.”
A screen shot from a congressional campaign advertisement from Democrat Jared Golden that called his opponent, Republican incumbent Bruce Poliquin, a career politician who “needs to go overboard.”
U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, a two-term Republican from Maine’s 2nd District, said on Facebook this week that his Democratic challenger, Jared Golden, is a career politician. Both men were first elected to office in 2014.
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