Summers, Pingree win in 1st District

June 11, 2008 Bangor Daily News by Walter Griffin.

Democrat Chellie Pingree and Republican Charles Summers held commanding leads late Tuesday night in the primaries for Maine's 1st Congressional District seat and were headed toward winning their parties' nomination.

With 473 of 615 precincts reporting, Pingree had polled 17,643 votes, or 44 percent, on the Democratic side and Summers had tallied 14,610, or 60 percent, on the Republican side.

Trailing Pingree were Adam Cote with 10,794 votes, or 27 percent, Michael Brennan with 4,715 votes, Ethan Strimling with 4,511, Mark Lawrence with 1,880 and Dr. Steve Meister with 428.

Democrat Chellie Pingree is overwhelmed by her supporters Tuesday night at her headquarters in Portland. Pingree defeated five other Democrats in Maine's 1st Congressional District primary. (AP/Pat Wellenbach)

Trailing Summers on the Republican ballot was Peter C. "Dean" Scontras with 9,801 votes, or 40 percent.

Pingree, 53, of North Haven pulled large margins from Cumberland County, where she captured 7,785 votes to Cote's 4,465, and Knox County, where she polled 2,056 votes to Cote's 279. She was leading Lincoln County by 973-270, Kennebec County by 1,142 to 1,113, and Sagadahoc County by 701-221. Cote was winning his home base of York County by 2,271 votes to Pingree's 1,814.

Pingree had been considered the favorite in the race since she announced her candidacy last year. She operated businesses on the island for more than two decades, served eight years in the Maine Senate, mounted a hard-fought though unsuccessful run against Sen. Susan Collins in 2002 and most recently served as president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C., advocacy group Common Cause. As of the most recent reporting deadline, Pingree had raised more than $1.1 million for her campaign.

Newcomer Cote, 35, of Sanford has reported $465,000 in contributions, a number of which came from Republican donors. He was viewed by many as the most moderate candidate among the Democrats. He changed his registration from Democrat to Republican in 2000 to vote for presidential candidate John McCain and changed back last year shortly before filing his nomination papers.

Cote, a graduate of Colby College, is a lawyer with the Portland firm Pierce-Atwood and also serves as a staff judge advocate for the Maine Army National Guard. He spent a year serving with the Army in Iraq and was present in the mess hall during a suicide bomb attack that killed and wounded more than 100 soldiers.

Brennan, 55, a state senator from Portland, is a social worker and currently works as a policy associate at the Muskie School of Public Service, where he directs projects related to child welfare, mental health and public policy. He also is an adjunct faculty member at the University of New England.

Strimling, 40, is a state senator from Portland who gave up his seat to run for Congress. He is a native of New York City and attended the University of Maine. A strong advocate for liberal issues, Strimling has been involved with the Maine People's Alliance and has served as executive director of Portland West for the past decade.

Lawrence, 49, of Kittery is district attorney for York County. The son of a Portsmouth Naval Shipyard worker, Lawrence worked his way through Bowdoin College and the University of Maine School of Law as a lobsterman and in local factories.

Meister, 53, of Portland, the only physician in the race, received his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine and has been a staff physician at Maine Medical Center since 1996. Before that, Meister served as a clinical professor at Georgetown University's department of pediatrics in Washington, D.C., and as the head of pediatric care and director of child abuse evaluation at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, Calif. He has published a number of papers and is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Meister served with the U.S. Marines during the first Gulf War and directed an emergency room at a field hospital at the Kuwait border.

On the Republican side, Summers, 48, of Scarborough returned from serving with the Navy in Iraq last month and also had the advantage of being well-known in the district. Summers moved to Maine in 1982 after finishing college in Illinois. He held jobs in the hospitality industry in Bangor and South Portland and ran a small business in Biddeford.

He ran successfully for the Maine Senate when he captured a historically Democratic seat representing the Old Orchard-Saco area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He has worked as an aide to Sen. Olympia Snowe and as New England regional administrator for the Small Business Administration. He has served in the Naval Reserve for the past 13 years.

Scontras, 38, an Eliot businessman, grew up in Kittery, where he starred on the local high school football team and played on a partial scholarship for the University of Maine team that contested the national championship. Scontras attended graduate school in Washington, D.C. He worked with various technical companies before moving back to Maine "for the quality of life" and rejoining his extended family in southern Maine. Scontras describes himself as a strong family man and one proud of his Greek heritage.

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