Waterville staying in Maine's 1st Congressional District while Augusta moves out
Sep. 24—The city of Waterville and its Democratic leaning voters will remain in Maine's more populous, southern and compact 1st Congressional District, while the state capital, Augusta, will move to the 2nd District, according to a plan approved by a special bipartisan commission tasked with rebalancing the districts based on the 2020 census.
In a unanimous vote Friday morning, the 15-member Apportionment Commission approved the new shape of the districts, as well as new boundaries for the 151 districts that comprise the state House of Representatives.
The seven Democrats and seven Republicans, who are chaired by retired state Supreme Judicial Court Justice Donald Alexander, had been at odds on the districts but pushed for a consensus plan that could draw the necessary two-thirds support in the state Legislature next week.
A delay in the release of census data, blamed on the COVID-19 pandemic, has put the commission on a tight timeline compressing a process that is typically done in 18 months down to just six weeks. Early this month, the commission balked at releasing maps and has faced criticism for steamrolling the process and for not releasing quickly and publicly the competing proposals.
The panel was tasked with moving the lines in a way that evened the number of voters in each district based on Maine's meager 2.7 percent population growth over the last 10 years. To do that they needed to move about 23,300 voters from the 1st District, which includes the city of Portland, to the 2nd — which encompasses more than two-thirds of the state's land mass and includes the second and third largest cities in the state, Lewiston and Bangor, respectively.
Both parties had proposed moving Augusta out of the 1st District, but Democrats initially proposed also shifting Waterville, home of Colby College, into the 2nd District.
Shifting Waterville's voters to the 2nd District met Republican resistance because it would have made the more conservative and rural northern district more Democratic.
Registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Waterville by a nearly three-to-one margin — based on November 2020 election data, the city had 6,489 Democrats and 2,641 Republicans. The split is more even in Augusta, with Democrats holding a 1,250-voter edge.
The 2nd District, currently represented by U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Lewiston Democrat, has bounced between Republicans and Democrats in the last decade. Republican Bruce Poliquin won the seat in 2014, after incumbent Democrat Mike Michaud retired from the office to run unsuccessfully for governor that year. Poliquin held the seat for two terms before being defeated by Golden in 2016, in Maine's first ranked-choice Congressional election.
The district also supported former President Donald Trump in both his initial run for office in 2016 and again in 2020, but had previously supported the Democratic presidential candidate in the previous six election cycles, last supporting a Republican candidate in 1988.
Former U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican, also served the district as a congresswoman for seven consecutive terms before joining the U.S. Senate. But following Snowe, the seat was held by John Baldacci, a Bangor Democrat, who also later served as governor.
While the Apportionment Commission has come to terms on the state House districts and the state's two U.S. Congressional Districts, Democrats and Republicans remain at odds over the lines for the state's 35 state Senate districts. Earlier this month, they reached consensus on the shape of county commission districts in Maine's 16 counties.
Commission members, which include state lawmakers from both parties and representatives of the state parties, as well as Alexander, who has served as neutral chairman, will continue their negotiations Friday on the Senate districts with hopes of reaching a consensus by Monday, the deadline for their final report to the full Legislature.
The Legislature will then return to a special session next Wednesday to take votes on finalizing the new voting districts. If they are unsuccessful gaining a two-thirds vote on any of the new maps, those portions will be settled by the state's Supreme Judicial Court. The new districts will first come into play during statewide primary votes in June of 2022.
