After more than 17 years as a Cumberland County commissioner, James Cloutier says his work only recently started getting attention from the public.
The term-limited Portland Democrat said that only recent debate over a contract between the county and Immigration and Customs Enforcement drew major crowds to commission meetings. That discussion drove a local writer, activist and former Portland Planning Board member Marpheen Chann to run for Cloutier’s seat.
Despite the surging interest in Maine’s largest county government, Chann is so far the only person running for the job. The deadline for candidates in political parties to file to get their names on the ballot passed on Monday. Despite controversies that have increased turnout at county commission meetings across the state, few people are lining up to join.
Among 23 commission seats with partisan elections this year, only four will be contested by both parties. Those seats are in Franklin, Kennebec, Oxford and Waldo counties. Six other seats are so far only being contested in primary elections. This is a dip in interest relative to 2022, when voters in 11 districts were able to choose between the two parties.
County commissions are tasked primarily with handling public safety and emergency services, and have relatively little power in a state with a robust tradition of local government control. A series of budget crises this year have sparked angst from taxpayers across the state, but only eleven races are on track to be contested.
As Monday’s deadline applied only to candidates running as members of a political party, it remains possible for independents to launch campaigns. Outside Somerset County, which has nonpartisan elections for commission seats, only a handful of independents ran in 2022, the year most of the districts facing votes this November last held elections.
It’s not unusual for Cloutier’s district, covering deep-blue Portland, to go uncontested in the general election. When he first ran for commission in 2008, however, four Democrats jostled for the seat in the primary. Cloutier said he spoke to “quite a few” people about the possibility of running for his seat, seemingly to no avail.
“A lot of people that are interested in public service, really, surprisingly enough, want what amounts to at least full time effort for some period of the year,” he said. Local government and the state Legislature offer splashier opportunities to contribute.
Chann, so far unopposed for Cloutier’s seat, said part of his goal as a candidate is to encourage interest in county offices.
“The time is right for people to focus on county governments,” he said. “Counties in general have been in financial trouble, and I think that is partially due to not enough Mainers paying attention to what county government actually does.”
