Maine failed GOP candidate refuses to take blame for defeat 

By Ted Cohen

The Republican who was pummeled the Maine governor's race is refusing to take any of the blame for losing to his Democrat opponent.

“Reverse engineer - is there anything we could have done differently and the answer is no,” Bobby Charles told The Maine Wire. “We cannot beat the national headwinds."

Charles lost by 17 points to former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree, making the eight-point loss by five-term U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to Democrat Troy Jackson look like a virtual victory.

"Both Senator Collins and I were facing a national hurricane,” he claimed. "In a normal year I think I would have prevailed and I think she would have prevailed.”

“I have absolutely no regrets about this campaign. We just didn't have a big enough number to overcome the hurricane nationally."

Digital Media Editor Graham Pollard pressed Charles on whether his campaign could have done anything better.

Charles again refused to take any credit for losing, even going so far as doubling down on his claim that he was in a “hurricane.”

“Actually we were a lean mean fighting machine,” he insisted. “This campaign was one of the best operated I've ever seen. This was an excellent campaign.”

Excuses excuses.

If a candidate isn't nimble enough to retool a campaign in the eye of an alleged political hurricane, then what happens when as governor he faces a real hurricane?

The "don't look at me" under Pollard's invitation for Charles to take ownership of a modicum of accountability for a disastrous defeat is Exhibit No. 1 for his having lost.

To imagine that Charles forfeited the lion's share of Maine's "independent" voters to a former policy director of the incumbent, Democrat Janet Mills whose corrupt tenure has been chronicled almost daily by The Maine Wire, makes his trouncing all the harder to even fathom.

If he had any inkling that the biggest mortal enemy to his campaign was Donald Trump, then Charles should have figured out a way to make Trump the target.

Knowing that an unpopular president stood between him and the Blaine house, if that were really the case and it appears it was, Charles, if he's the gubernatorial timber he claims to be, should have figured out a way to neutralize the biggest threat to his becoming governor.

What candidate facing a political tsunami created by a foreign war responsible for shocking gas and fuel-oil prices couldn't, for instance, stream a daily broadcast on X, Instagram and Facebook from a different gas station each day interviewing poor Mainers caught in its choking grip?

When then-Bangor mayor and Republican William Cohen ran in 1972 for Congress from the purple 2nd District, he successfully succeeded a Democrat with what turned out to be a resourceful gimmick - literally walking along the side of Route 1 from one end of the largest congressional district in America to the other.

The Cohen walk became a campaign-strategist's instant public-relations dream, attracting national publicity for its originality as an eye-catching (albeit cynical) scheme that caught on fire with the average working stiff feeling the candidate was in some undefined way making the everyman connection.

That Charles couldn't figure out a simple way to pull off an obvious 2026 populist version of Cohen's imaginative campaign messaged that he wasn't equipped to solve your biggest problems, didn't feel your pain, as it were.

Charles became your expensive fuel fill-up even in the face of an opponent whose policies will drain your wallet dry before you even get out of bed in the morning.

If you can't manage a simple campaign you're not prepared or ready to run a complicated state.