Hannah Pingree

Hannah Pingree, the Democratic nominee for Governor of Maine in 2026, fresh off of the victory in the ranked choice voting count last, I guess you could say Friday because it was 1.30 in the morning when it was announced. Hannah is with us now, and we really appreciate her spending some time on the program. Hannah, how are things this morning? Hey, Matt, we're wearing a go. It's not a beautiful day out there. It is not. We're excited about the result, and we're gearing up for what's next. So I think it's probably obvious that I'm going to have to ask you about that result first. That was a long campaign. You had five candidates running on the Democratic side. And when you went through the first round, it was really sort of kind of amazing to see how four of you were all kind of clumped together in that sort of like mid-20s range. When you go through not only that vote and the campaign itself, but then how. the second choice and third choice preferences went once they started doing the retabulations. What do you attribute you winning to? How did you ultimately pull this one off? Give me your assessment of how you got here. Okay, great. Matt, I'll give you my assessment and then you can give me yours. But, you know, obviously it was a long campaign. Most of us were in it for at least a year, and we spent the whole year traveling the state of Maine, hearing from people. And on the Democratic side, it was a pretty positive campaign. I mean, we did almost 30 forums and debates. And, you know, after a lot of them, they were like, well, I like all of you. And you're agreeing on quite a few issues. And so I think that sort of positive nature of the campaign did. divide up the vote. And I had a lot of people coming to me saying, I really liked you, but I really liked this other person, too. How do I decide? And, you know, for me, the good thing about ranked choice voting is I could say, well, rank me number one. And if I'm not your number one, I was your number two. And in the end, you know, the way it played out was, you know, we did, we were in second place. with number one votes, you know, very close behind Shaw. And on the number two votes, we had a whole lot. And we did well with Angus King's votes, but we also did well with Shena and Troyes. And I think it does speak to, I'm a person who tries to work with people from all sides. I did that as Speaker of the House. You know, there was certainly the more progressive and more moderate candidates in this campaign. We tried hard to get along with all of them. I think that my message is really pragmatic. How do we get something done? And I think in the end, the number two votes were really important in this campaign. And I think, you know, there's going to be a lot of debate about ranked choice voting, but it does allow you to, you know, to run a positive campaign, to work, to allow yourself with some of your other opponents. And frankly, I got along pretty well with all four of them. And I think that bodes well for what it means going into a general election. We didn't, you know, we weren't mean to each other. We debated on the issues. We had some disagreements. But in the end, I think it really is helpful for me going into a general election to have the support of all of my opponents. We had huge turnout, as you know, almost double what the Republican turnout was. Lots of independents decided to vote in the Democratic primary. And I think that's good news for winning in November.

We're speaking with Hannah Pingree, who's joining us talking about that campaign. I'm looking through the numbers right now, Hannah, and I think the way you described it is pretty darn accurate. I mean, when the Angus King sort of voters were retabulated, I was a little surprised, actually. You ended up winning the retabulation. You had 37% of those Angus King voters. I thought more of them were going to go to Shaw. He did get 32% of them. But what was interesting to me was that I think... A lot of folks identified you, Troy Jackson, and Shenabello's as sort of like progressive choices in this race. But you seemed to stand above the other two a little bit in that choice. And then that happened again in the next round. When Shenna was eliminated, you were the choice of 47% of those folks that retabulated. And Troy Jackson did fine, you know, 29% or whatever of those folks. But I think you were clearly the choice there. Why did you emerge as the clear choice from that trio? I think we worked together, Troy Shenna and I all, you know, we were in the legislature. I was in the legislature with Troy for six years and then he went to the Senate. I, you know, worked with Shenna on a lot of different issues over the years like marriage equality and abortion rights access. And, I mean, honestly, I can't tell you exactly why I emerged, but I think I had appealed to people who were both moderate. I've worked really well with Republicans over the years. I've negotiated budgets. I have worked on a bipartisan basis. And so I think some people understood I was the one most able to get things done. But I also was aligned. I've been a supporter of, you know, labor unions. I've been a supporter of some issues that do matter to progressive voters. And I think. electability is essential and i think for some voters you know they sort of thought okay all three of these guys are good i agree with them on the issues but hannah's the one who knows how to work across the aisle and she has a great chance of of winning in november So let's turn our attention, of course, forward now because you are the nominee and we're looking forward to the general election. You have the Republican nominee, Bobby Charles, so you know who you're running against there. And you already knew that Rick Bennett was going to be in the race as well as an independent candidate. There is no ranked choice voting in the general election, as you know. So this is going to be a rather interesting three-way duel. How do you see it shaping up right now? How do you look at the race? right now as we sit here in June. Do you believe you have the advantage? What is that campaign going to look like? Well, I will say, I mean, the good news is for me is I'm actually running against two Republicans. And so I think that is a great start. Democrats are very energized. Independence showed up to vote in the Democratic primary because they were allowed to do that, and they did that in huge numbers. And so for me, I think it's building a coalition of Democrats, independents, and even moderate Republicans. I have worked with moderate Republicans for my entire political career. And I think they want to get things done. They want reasonable people who are...

To follow up my prior question here, it does strike me as many things that people are upset about or identifying as problems that they're none too pleased about. Do have much longer stories than that. Can you kind of expand on this topic? Sure, sure. And honestly, I am not going to be running on more of the same. I mean, I've got two kids in school. I look at our kids and our education results, and we clearly need to do better. We've put a lot of money in education. We've seen some change in progress. But some of this sort of downward trend, it started under Governor LePage. COVID made it worse. I'm actually really worried about the amount of time kids are spending on screens, and we've seen a correlation there. And so things like really going big on education and ensuring our kids are actually learning, that they're actually reading at the right grade level. They're ready. You know, they're ready for high school. They're ready for kindergarten. I mean, those are things where I want to go big. And so I'm not going to be running on more of the same. You know, you and I have talked about energy issues. Energy is crucial to the state of Maine. And again, this president has certainly raised gas prices. He's raised electricity prices. But we're going to need, you know, we have a huge rural grid. It is not in good shape. We're going to need to do much more to hold our state's largest utilities accountable and actually bring down prices. So we can attract business here, so people can afford their energy bills. I will certainly be talking about big change that we need, not more of the same. And I think that's what main people want to hear from me. And I know you mentioned in passing housing also being an issue that's when you talk to voters, obviously one of the things they are most concerned about. Affording a mortgage, affording rents, et cetera, seems to be increasingly out of reach for a lot of folks. I know that's something that you did obviously work on in your time at the Mills administration. And, you know, you've said a couple times now. You want to go sort of bigger and bolder. You want to do more. You want to kind of dive into this a little bit more aggressively. Can you tell me sort of like what, I guess, maybe wasn't done before that you'd like to do now that would have a meaningful impact on those prices in Maine? Yeah. No, I mean, housing is to me, it's an issue I've worked on in my hometown where I grew up where young people couldn't afford to buy a house 20 years ago because it's a coastal town where lots of summer people came in and bought it up. And, you know, I've seen that trend go to the entire state of Maine. And for me... If young people cannot afford to buy a house, if people can't find rent, nothing else about our state's economy is going to work. And so I have been working for many years on this issue. And I'm proud of some of the things we've done. We have made it easier to do things like build accessory dwelling units, build more housing in downtowns.

We have funded a lot of affordable housing, but also workforce housing, senior housing, affordable rentals in rural areas. We've helped save a lot of mobile home parks, so when private equity is trying to come in and buy them up. And I think everything that we've done has made a difference, but it hasn't been enough. And so when I talk about bigger and bolder, you know, we need to do a lot more on the private sector side to actually make it easier to build housing and not have people say no. And then we need to keep investing in those programs like affordable homeownership that are starting to move the needle. With housing, it really is a supply issue. And we need more supply. That's what's going to bring down the prices. But it's also what's going to allow young people to stay in the state. And I think we're a state where we desperately need workers. We need young people to be able to stay here. We need young people coming out of college to be able to afford to move here to work in our economy. To me, that's the issue I want to go bigger on. And it is about investing money, but it also is about taking down the roadblocks and the barriers that make it too difficult to build housing in this state. Hannah Pingree is joining us, Democratic candidate for Governor of Maine in 2026. Hannah, unfortunately, we're out of time, so I have to leave you there. But as you go out the door, if you're interested in learning more about you, your campaign, you want to donate, you want to get involved, et cetera, what would you suggest folks do? What's the website, et cetera, et cetera. Hannah for governor, check us out, follow us on all the social medias. Obviously, we're going to have a big campaign. We're going to be all over Maine in the coming months. Love talking to people wherever I can. And so follow our campaign, get involved. Love your help and support. And Matt, I hope to be back talking to you again soon. We'll have many more conversations. I know it. Thanks so much, Hannah. Appreciate it. All right. Have a great day. You as well.