This month’s selection of media coverage highlighting the insight, expertise and achievements of �ֲ���ý professors has a little bit of everything, from the presidential election to personal economics, news about a top literary award, and even, a major fish tale.

For a creative writing professor who is also a novelist, there’s nothing like being in the running for a major book award to spread the word about your novel in a wide variety of publications. That’s what happened to Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ’96 this week when her novel The Most was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Meanwhile, economics professor Paul Shea weighed in on American personal savings rates for Marketplace and the newest issue of The Atlantic includes a deep dive by Tyler Austin Harper, assistant professor of environmental studies, into the secret world of extreme fishing. Wetsuit required. Read below to learn more and get links to coverage of other faculty members in the news.

Jessica Anthony ’96

National Book Foundation announces the longlist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction — People

The fourth novel by Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ’96, The Most, made the National Book Foundation’s longlist of 10 books for its 2024 Fiction prize. The news was featured in numerous outlets, including , and , along with .

Here’s what the had to say about Anthony’s book:

“This year’s Fiction Longlist features two titles that interrogate the role of gender in marriage, in sex, and in artmaking. On an unusually warm Sunday in November, housewife, mother, and former tennis champion Kathleen Beckett puts on her old, red bathing suit, enters her apartment complex’s semi-abandoned pool, and refuses to come out. Set over the course of eight hours, Jessica Anthony’s The Most paints an intimate portrait of marriage in the late 1950s — and the secrets, expectations, and lost loves that tells the story of one seemingly unremarkable couple and a larger cultural moment.”

The finalists will be announced Oct. 1.

For more on Anthony’s much-lauded novel, and her insights into her craft, see earlier coverage from �ֲ���ý News.

Paul Shea

Americans are spending a lot and not saving much. Economists aren’t too worried. Yet — Marketplace

Marketplace tapped into Dowling Family Professor of Economics Paul Shea’s expertise for a story about news from the Bureau of Economic Analysis . The savings rate in July was only 2.9 percent, while at the same time consumer spending increased.

“The spending part is a sign of a strong economy,” Marketplace‘s story read. “But the data shows we’re continuing to buy stuff while not putting money away. You can see the problem here.”

Paraphrasing Shea’s reassurances, Marketplace reporter Caleigh Wells wrote “it’s not that saving rates are frighteningly low, it’s just that they’re coming down from when they were really high early in the pandemic, when people had money to spend and nothing to spend it on. Now things are different.”

Then she quoted Shea directly: “The average household is, in a way, normalizing. They’re starting to move towards more normal levels of debt.”

Francesco Duina

Who cares about inequality, and what should we do if we want less of it? —Researching Sociology

Writing for the blog Researching Sociology, Dana Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina and colleague Cary Wu . 

Historically in America, across party lines, the richer one was, the less worried they were about income inequality. “In 1987, for instance, poorer Democrats and Republicans [both] perceived income differentials to be too big,” the scholars write.

But now, party affiliation plays a huge role in how people view income inequality. Across all income levels, “those who identify as Democrats care a great deal about income inequality while those who identify themselves as Republicans…care a lot less.” But “concern [about income inequality] among poorer Republicans has actually dropped over time.”

For the blog post, the scholars drew from their recent article, , “Political Polarization and the Dynamics Between Actual Income and Perceived Income Inequality in the United States, 1987 to 2021.”

John Baughman

Maine political scholars see no precedent for divisive, unpredictable presidential race — Portland Press Herald

Published prior to President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, , associate professor of politics, and other Maine politics scholars about the fraught race.

Baughman spoke to comparisons to the 1968 election, when incumbent Lyndon Johnson declined to seek a second term. While comparisons to the 1968 election are valid, today’s political climate is driven more by negative partisanship than in the past, Baughman said.

“I don’t want to overplay how fraught politics are today in light of what was happening then with Vietnam and civil rights, but I think there is one thing different now that is important to consider, and that’s the role of negative partisanship in driving behavior of voters.”

Tyler Austin Harper

Inside the dangerous, secretive world of extreme fishing — The Atlantic

Tyler Austin Harper, an assistant professor of environmental studies who is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, writes about his penchant for . Eighty nights a year no less.

This despite some expert guidance he got when first getting into the sport of “wetsuiting” a few years ago: “The advice I received from another fisherman was simply: �ٴDz�’t.”

Wetsuiting is a form of saltwater fishing that involves wearing a wetsuit and wading or swimming out to offshore rocks — almost exclusively at night, often during storms — to access deeper water or faster currents than can be reached in traditional waders.

For Harper, the quarry is striped bass, a popular gamefish that migrates every spring, mostly from the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, to as far north as Maine, and back down again in the fall.

White Dudes for Harris’ was a missed opportunity — The Atlantic

Harper, who also has an interest in politics, wrote in another piece, in July, that , a group of voters supporting the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Democrats have “peddled condescending, divisive, and often bizarre rhetoric in the name of ‘anti-racism.’”

“So imagine my shock when I found myself, slowly but surely, charmed by the White Dudes for Harris call.” 

Still, he writes, the “White Dudes” name “risks solidifying the public’s impression that the Democratic Party is for overeducated elites with laptop jobs and performative progressive politics. That is a shortsighted move “when the GOP is on its way to achieving a multiracial working-class coalition, cobbled together with increasing shares of Black and Hispanic voters driven by male defections from the Democratic coalition.”

Harper’s other recent writing for The Atlantic includes:

• ““
• ““
• ““

Paul Schofield

‘These people are looking back at us’ — Seattle Met

Paul Schofield, an associate professor of philosophy whose research focuses on moral and political philosophy, writes frequently on the issue of homelessness. Last month Schofield was quoted in a Seattle Met story about a retired history professor, J.M. Simpson, in Washington state. 

The writer of the article had learned about Simpson’s work via in April, lauding the photographer and sharing some of his photographs. The thread has over 24,000 likes and three million views. In the story, the writer quotes extensively from Schofield’s response to Simpson’s work:

“It’s easy to imagine them having friends and having dreams and having things that they care about just as a result of sitting there with the photo for a few minutes,” noted Schofield, whose writing on homelessness had caught Simpson’s attention.

“It’s got to be something about him that brings this out,” Schofield concluded.

A selection of recent mentions of �ֲ���ý and �ֲ���ý people in the news media.

Karen Hastie Williams ’66

Karen Hastie Williams, barrier-breaking lawyer, dies at 76 — The New York Times

News outlets around the country reported on the trailblazing achievements of Black lawyer Karen Hastie Williams, who died July 7 at age 76.

In 1974, Hastie Williams became the first Black woman hired as a clerk on the Supreme Court, working for Justice Thurgood Marshall.

“She was the first woman and the first person of color to make partner at Crowell & Moring, a white-shoe law firm in Washington, D.C., and she repeated the same achievement on a series of corporate and nonprofit boards,” according to The New York Times.

She and her husband were “among the capital’s power elite, part of a generation of Black professionals who had entered the establishment in the post-civil rights era. Mrs. Williams made it a point to give back. At Crowell, on corporate boards and in a long list of nonprofit positions, she set herself up as one of the city’s leading mentors for women and people of color in legal and government circles, propelling dozens of promising young lawyers into successful careers.”

Read the stories:

• “,” The New York Times, Aug. 8, 2021
• “” The Washington Post, July 24, 2021
• “,” LDF, Aug. 11, 2021
• “,” DC Bar, July 27, 2021

Al Fereshetian and Curtis Johnson, �ֲ���ý athletics

Curtis Johnson taking baton from Al Fereshetian as �ֲ���ý men’s track and cross country coach — Lewiston Sun Journal

Speaking to Wil Kramlich of the Lewiston Sun Journal, Al Fereshetian used a track analogy to explain his decision to retire after 26 years as head coach of men’s cross country and track and field.

“You know, you want to pass that baton,” said Fereshetian, who has been .

If one of the runners in a relay race gets too tired, Fereshetian explained, “then you almost are stumbling to pass that exchange, and that doesn’t make for…a very successful relay. 

“So, I feel like I’ve been able to maintain a good pace up to this point, but I can see if I hung in there too much longer I’d probably be hitting that point where I wouldn’t be able to keep moving that baton the way I want to — and the way it needs to for the team to be successful.”

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, June 26, 2021

John Baughman, politics faculty

Celebrities running for office are boosted by the political moment — Teen Vogue

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman tells Teen Vogue writer Tyler Baum that celebrities with little political experience who run for office can take advantage of the growth of “negative partisanship.” 

That’s the tendency, explains Baughman, of many voters “not simply to support their own party…but to actually vote against the other party’s candidates.” 

When a voter is motivated to vote against one candidate, it lowers the bar for what it takes to earn the vote, says Baughman, opening the door for a celebrity or other newcomer.

• Read the story: “,” Teen Vogue, July 22, 2021

Alexandria Onuoha ’20

Protecting Black women college students from “far-right misogynoir” — Suffolk University News

In a Q&A interview with Suffolk University News, Alexandria Onuoha ’20, a doctoral student in applied developmental psychology at the university, talked about researching the impact of far-right ideologies on Black woman college students.

Using ideas developed by feminist scholar Moya Bailey, who coined the term “misogynoir” to describe the racist misogyny directed toward Black women, Onuoha is exploring what she calls “far-right misogynoir,” the “direct hate and prejudice towards Black women from far-right groups and individuals.”

In her psychology studies at �ֲ���ý, she says, “at first I didn’t see myself reflected as a Black woman.” As her coursework and skills deepened, “I learned I can study things about my community in a scientific way that can impact change.” 

That culminated in a senior thesis on “attitudes toward Black LBGTQIA+ individuals and whether religious commitment affects perceptions toward them. I became more and more interested in the Black women college experience.”

• Read the story: “,'” Suffolk University news, April 8, 2021

Andrew Kennedy, chemistry and biochemistry faculty

�ֲ���ý College professor guiding students through COVID-19 data — Lewiston Sun Journal

In a Q&A with the Lewiston Sun Journal, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Andrew Kennedy explains how two students inspired a data-visualization project to track COVID statistics among schools of the New England Small College Athletic Conference during the 2020–21 academic year.

Jillian Serrano ’21 and Wuyue Zhou ’21 were student researchers in the Kennedy lab, which focuses on epigenetics: how genes can change their function without being altered themselves.

The pair “wanted to have a sense for how outbreaks would unfold at other, similarly sized colleges that were also coming back to their campuses in-person,” Kennedy said.

The result was a dashboard updated daily with information about COVID in the NESCAC. The two students “did everything,” Kennedy says. “I would simply meet with them daily for data visualization and to discuss what the data might mean.”

The power of data became clear in late March, when �ֲ���ý saw a surge in student cases. Based on data from similar spikes and lockdowns at other NESCAC campuses during the year, “it was predictable that a lockdown [at �ֲ���ý] would be able to arrest the spread of the virus on campus without exceeding available isolation housing for infected students.”

From April 1 to 13, �ֲ���ý implemented in-room restrictions for all students, which stopped the surge.

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, July 25, 2021

Amy Belding Brown ’69

An Irish immigrant saves the work of a brilliant poet in Emily’s House — Booktrib

Author Amy Belding Brown ’69 is a “master of historical fiction,” says a Booktrib review describing Brown’s new novel, Emily’s House, as “emotionally satisfying because of Brown’s exquisite writing.” 

The novel explores the relationship between poet Emily Dickinson and her confidante, Margaret Maher, the Irish maid responsible for saving Dickinson’s work from certain destruction, albeit against the poet’s expressed wishes.

• Read the story: “” Booktrib, Aug. 3, 2021

Julia Sleeper ’08 and Kimberly Sullivan ’13

Tree Street Youth celebrates 10 years of community, safety and hope — Lewiston Sun Journal

The Lewiston Sun Journal looked back at the humble beginnings of Tree Street Youth, founded as a summer activities camp in 2011 by Julia Sleeper ’08 and Kim Sullivan ’13 and now a robust nonprofit offering a range of youth-centered programs and partnerships.

“The building where Tree Street Youth started in 2011 had been a paint shop,” writes Sun Journal intern Ellie Wolfe ’23. “After that, it was a preschool. Then it was a big, empty building.” 

Sleeper, who is now Tree Street’s executive director, recalls how she and Sullivan “painted it up, designed a summer camp, and ended up running our very first summer program in 2011, with eight teenagers from the neighborhood as street leaders.”

• Read the story: “,” Lewiston Sun Journal, July 18, 2021

Jenn Lemkin Bouchard ’99

Jenn Bouchard returns to Mystic Saturday — The Westerly Sun

The Sun of Westerly, R.I., profiled Jenn Bouchard ’99, author of the novel First Course, when she returned to the area for a book signing at Banks Square Books in Mystic.

Bouchard spent part of her childhood in nearby Gales Ferry, Conn., when her father was executive officer of the USS Groton submarine in the mid-1980s. “Coming back is a bit of a homecoming for me,” Bouchard said. 

Bouchard’s novel tells the story of 24-year-old Janie Whitman, who after a series of life-altering catastrophes retreats to her family’s summer house in Maine, where she seeks solace and stability among family, friends, and food, and finds romance along the way.

As a notes, the book is “about food — and a lot more.”

The novel is set in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. that Maine has been a touchstone since her first college visit to �ֲ���ý.

“I had moved every two or three years throughout my life due to my father’s Navy career as a naval submariner, and I was so excited about the prospect of staying somewhere for four years.”

• Read the story: “,” The Westerly Sun, July 22, 2021

Nancy Hohmann ’68

Belle, the Oxford Hills therapy dog, knows when someone needs her — Advertiser Democrat

A feature story in the Advertiser Democrat of Norway, Maine, notes that “Nancy Hohmann and her therapy dog, Belle, are regulars at schools and nursing homes around the Oxford Hills of western Maine.”

Hohmann and Belle began their routine after Hohmann saw “how much pleasure a visiting therapy dog brought to her mother during her final days.” The retired public school educator “decided doing the same would be a good way to pay it forward: by providing that joy to others.” 

Hohmann, who has long experience helping people gain confidence by engaging with animals, including therapeutic horseback riding, describes Belle as “three-quarters golden retriever and one-quarter Irish setter craziness, which makes her all the more interesting,”

• Read the story: “,” Advertiser Democrat, July 28, 2021

Allen Kendunga ’18

Kickstarting Rwandan careers with entrepreneurship training — Ladderworks

In a Q&A story with Ladderworks, Allen Kendunga talks about founding Talent Match in Rwanda to help college students develop entrepreneurial skills through career development programs.  

“There is a saying that ‘to whom much is given, much is expected,’ and I believe I have been given much, so it’s high time I gave back,” Kendunga said. “I also strongly believe that the right education and platforms can transform lives. I have seen firsthand what young people can do if they are given the tools, information, and support to transform their communities.”

• Read the story: “,” Ladderworks, Aug. 8, 2021

Victoria Wyeth ’01

Victoria Wyeth: art in action — The Hunt

“Some people might resent being charged with propagating their family legacy,” writes Michael Bradley in a profile of Victoria Wyeth in The Hunt magazine. “Not Wyeth. She covets the role and enjoys the opportunity to educate people about her grandfather [Andrew Wyeth], his father — famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth—and her uncle, Jamie. 

“She introduces them to others on her terms, not as someone whose life is tied completely to some ancestral mandate. ‘When you come from a famous family, you can change who you are or be true to yourself,’ she says. ‘I choose the latter.’”

• Read the story: “,” The Hunt, Spring 2021

Before their duel in The Princess Bride, the Man in Black says to Inigo Montoya, “Get used to disappointment.”

It would’ve been an apt forewarning to Democrats on election night.

Though many pundits predicted a blue-wave election for Democrats — gaining the presidency, more seats in the House, and perhaps a Senate majority — that turned out to be wishcasting. “It was a status quo election,” says Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman. “In a strange way, this actually looks a lot like 2016: Very little has really changed.”

In fact, he adds, “I think 2020 has revealed who we are as a country. It was not a dramatic, widespread repudiation of Trumpism. And if voters did shift away from Trump, it was not against the Republican Party but against Trump personally as president.”

If Biden wins the presidency — and, of course, depending on the outcome of the Georgia run-off elections — “he will likely have to govern with a Republican-controlled Senate,” Baughman added. “We’re going to have at least two years, and possibly four years or even more, of divided government. And it means that the optimistic goals of Democrats on the public policy front will have to be scaled way back.”

On Wednesday, Baughman offered insights into the election along with politics department colleagues Stephen Engel, Alyssa Maraj Grahame, Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz as well as Stephanie Kelley-Romano of rhetoric, film, and screen studies. Their Zoom presentation was attended by well over 100 viewers.

It’s time to accept that voter behavior is not monolythic

Once again, the two major parties, especially Democrats, need to be reminded not to take for granted the voting habits of any group, said Grahame, a visiting professor of politics who made her point by sharing a conversation she had with a childhood friend on Election Day.

Her friend’s parents, Chinese immigrants, had voted for Obama and Clinton in prior presidential elections. This time, they and other Chinese American friends voted for Trump. “As immigrants, they would be targets of Trump’s particular brand of xenophobia,” said Grahame.

It’s the job of social scientists, she says, to ask questions like, “Under what conditions would it make sense for my friend’s parents to vote for Trump? From their perspective, how does Trump fit into their worldview?”

Turns out, her friend’s parents liked what they perceived as Trump’s tough-on-China attitude, feeling that Obama had allowed China to walk all over the U.S. “There are a lot of parallels between my friend’s struggles to understand her parents’ choice, and our collective struggle to make sense of the election.”

The message: “We shouldn’t be surprised to find out that voter demographics aren’t monoliths,” said Grahame. “There’s no voter demographic for whom either candidate enjoys exclusive support — and that would actually be troubling for democracy if that were the case.”

Pay attention to what the news is saying

As rhetoric from both campaigns ramps up in the post-election days, “it’s really important to pay attention to what the news outlets are saying, as opposed to what the spokespeople for the campaign’s are saying,” says Kelley-Romano, an associate professor of rhetoric, film, screen studies.

“Stick with the information that we have, because there’s going to be a lot of noise out there. I think the media is doing a good job at keeping that noise to a minimum.”

Pay attention to the difference between fanciful narratives and the rule of law

As we follow , it’s important to distinguish between partisan narratives (not to mention baseless conspiracy theories) and the rule of law.

Thus far, Trump’s attempt to say that some mail-in ballots are illegal or invalid “is a narrative framing,” says Engel. “There is literally no constitutional evidence for that claim, so I am skeptical of the lawsuits that are being brought thus far.”

At this point, Baughman believes Trump’s lawsuits declaring voter fraud are “unlikely to find success.” One reason is that the courts don’t want to toss the baby out with the bath water.

“In trying to possibly throw out bad ballots, they don’t want to throw out a lot of good ballots with the bad,” he says.

“There has to be some way for them to distinguish between the ballots that followed a correct process and those few that didn’t. In most cases that’s going to be impossible to do. They’ll be reluctant to throw everything out because that essentially throws out the integrity of the election.”

Election conspiracy theory may not gain traction (but will that matter?)

Though conspiracy theories abound, often pushed out by Trump himself, Kelley-Romano says the fact that Democrats didn’t do all that well in congressional elections might prevent conspiracy theory from gaining traction.

Indeed, says Baughman, in order for other Republican leaders to take on Trump’s call about election fraud means that those leaders would be undermining results in their own states, in some cases undermining elections they themselves ran.

So, says Kelley-Romano, “there are contradictions that will do a disservice to conspiracy theorists — but I never underestimate them. Trump will make a lot of noise — but already on Twitter, and even Fox News, there is a distancing from his rhetoric.”

Still, adds Engel, Trump’s baseless conspiracy attempts could affect a Biden presidency through “the political and rhetorical process of de-legitimizing. It is analogous but importantly distinct from Trump’s birtherism during the Obama presidency: Cast a cloud over Biden from the start in order to keep the Republican base aggrieved and motivated for 2022 and 2024.”

Our elected leaders should heed our own State Department

Hours after Trump falsely declared victory, the U.S. State Department issued a statement about the recent election in Côte d’Ivoire. It said, in part, “the U.S. calls on Côte d’Ivoire leaders to show commitment to the democratic process and the rule of law.”

“So there you go,” said Baughman. “Our own state department.”

We want clarity. Be prepared to be disappointed

Among Democrats, “there was great desire for this election to be an unambiguous repudiation of Trump’s America,” said Grahame. “But it’s almost definitely not going to be that. Our desire for clarity is its own critical failure. We all have to grapple with the fact that over 40 percent of American voters have said ‘yes’ to Trump’s America.”

“The dominant discourse about Trump — his racism and his authoritarianism — leaves us flummoxed about his apparent increased support, including among some non-white voters in certain areas. And we bemoan the extent of division in the United States.”

Rather than trying to dismiss or explain away the contradictions — by blaming low-information voters, wondering about swing voters, or saying that some voters can’t see what’s truly in their best interest — we should “instead confront the underlying systemic causes of such immense polarization.”

There are interesting outcomes everywhere.

Engel, a professor of politics, said much can be learned by looking at results outside the spotlight races. “There are some interesting outcomes, even if it’s a status quo election, even if there’s a lot of ambiguities.”

In Oregon, possessing small amounts of heroin or cocaine is now legal. Oregon also joined the District of Columbia in decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms. And in New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota, and Montana recreational marijuana use is now legal. Nearly a .

Engel said that “those are interesting outcomes from the perspective of legal nullification” — the legal theory that a state has the right to invalidate federal laws — “whereby the states are just ignoring federal criminal law with regard to drug possession and drug use.”

Also, in Colorado, a proposed measure that would eliminate abortion access after 22 weeks failed.

In terms of descriptive representation among newly elected officials, the election saw:

• In New York, Ritchie Torres and Mondaire Jones in the two houses of Congress. (Torres identifies as both Black and Latino, and will also be the first openly gay Latino member of Congress.)
  
• Cori Bush become the first Black woman elected to the House from the state of Missouri.

• The entire House delegation for the state of New Mexico be women of color.

• The number of Republican women voted to the House in this election be the most ever.

• Sarah McBride become the first trans woman elected to a state senate, in Delaware, making her the highest ranking openly transgender official in the country.

• At age 25, Madison Cawthorne, from North Caroline, become the youngest Republican ever to be elected to the House he is 25. (He’s the first person born in the 1990s elected to Congress.)

Some likely voters may not be playing ball with pollsters

While polls were criticized after 2016 due to failures to predict key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, they still do a very good job, says Baugham. Again this year, the national polls seemed to be pretty much on target, “though we can’t really yet say whether the polling was off at the state level.”

But there might be an emerging systemic problem with polling, in how some likely voters might be refusing to play ball with pollsters.

“It’s a genuine concern, about voters who distrust the media and distrust pollsters. And if those distrustful voters are more likely to be Trump voters than not, then it would mean that we’re undercounting them.”

“But I’m not convinced that we need to dump on the pollsters just yet because I think by the time we get to the end of the count, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up being pretty close to what they were projecting.”

Voting in Maine still reflects that ‘politics is local’

Maine voters criss-crossed party lines during the 2020 election, defying the trend in other states, where races are guided by the highly partisan national political landscape. “State and even local races are increasingly reactions to the national parties,” Baughman said.

Maine has been mostly immune to that trend, where, to paraphrase the, politics is still local, and less along strict party lines. “There seems to have been a much higher rate of old traditional split-ticket voting in Maine than then we’ve seen in other states,” said Baughman

For example, Democratic Rep. Jared Golden ’11 probably got support from Trump voters to win his second term representing the state’s rural 2nd District in Congress. Viewed as very vulnerable, incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins probably to support from Biden voters to retain her seat.

The Republican Party is expanding its base

“Trump seems to have increased support among a number of demographics, including non-white men, in certain places,” says Grahame. “It’s interesting because it’s not particularly consistent with the Republican Party’s approach to elections. He seems to have expanded his support from some demographics almost despite himself.”

In Florida and Texas, there’s strong evidence that .

Which is no surprise to Baughman, who says there were warning signs that the Biden campaign “had not done enough, with the right kind of outreach, to Latinx voters in various states, while Trump was investing in such efforts,” in south Florida, the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and other places.

Democrats didn’t quite believe that Trump could be successful with Latinx voters. “There was a degree of complacency,” said Baughman. “Because of the politics — around the border, immigration, and other factors —  Democrats sort of took for granted that Latinx voters are going to oppose Trump. That was clearly a mistake.”

Some voters’ ‘political socialization’ is still ongoing

The process of how we develop our political habits and perspectives is called “political socialization.” Some Americans, such as immigrants, develop their political socialization differently than other citizens, explains Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, an associate professor of politics.

For example, research shows that for Latinx voters, political socialization is not handed down by older family members, so they don’t have the “my grandfather was a Republican so I’m a Republican” experience.

Instead, their socialization can be active and ongoing, occurring “through their American experience,” says Pérez-Armendáriz. And since their American experience is ongoing, their voting habits can also be more fluid.

“While some issues that Latinx voters care about will align with the Democratic party, they can be persuaded to be on one side or the other more than other voters might be.”

In some states, there may have been a COVID backlash

Though some states’ aggressive pandemic policies, such Maine’s, have saved lives, some citizens in those states may have nevertheless voted for Trump as a protest against shutdown measures. “Shutdowns have been effective,” Pérez-Armendáriz says. “But that doesn’t mean they haven’t been extremely harmful to people in ways that affect how they vote.”

For example, some voters were disproportionately affected by shutdowns — not because they had to keep working in essential jobs that might be dangerous but because they could not work. “I never heard any Latinx laborers, for example, say, ‘What I would prefer is to not have work.’”

Pérez-Armendáriz says such protested voting may have occurred elsewhere, mentioning rural Maine, where during the spring and summer one saw many signs on vehicles and front yards with vulgarities directed at Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, clear if blunt responses to the state shutdown.

COVID may have helped Republican campaigning

“There’s a strong belief in campaigns that on the ground, face-to-face interaction is incredibly important,” says Grahame.

Yet, for reasons related to the pandemic, the Democrats scaled back their on-the-ground canvassing, while Republicans still pursued in-person campaigning and in-person rallies, including in South Florida, leaving “Democrats to work overtime to try to figure out ways to substitute for that.” Digital and social-media efforts can help, but they’re not a substitute.

Going forward, “which campaign did a better job getting out the vote during a pandemic will be one of the really important areas of study,” says Baughman.

It may not be ‘the economy, stupid’ anymore

In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign hammered away at President Bush by pointing out the national recession. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was strategist James Carville’s comment, meant to highlight the the need to stay on message.

“The idea was that the average voter would look at their own experience in the economy, give credit or blame to the parties, and vote accordingly,” said Baughman. “But as our party affiliations have become more calcified, we become more impervious to changes in the economy.

“As a discipline, political science needs to reassess how we think of economic factors, at least in the context of American elections in the face of this kind of high party polarization.”

In the wake of the midterms, will Democrats moderate or move to the left?

Will Republicans continue to own the issue of immigration? And will the country’s urban vs. rural political divide continue?

Comprising professors from the Department of Politics, a noontime panel the day after Election Day briefed the �ֲ���ý community on those questions and more in the wake of the latest high-stakes election cycle.

For the Democrats, “we saw an expanded [party] in terms of embodied diversity,” Professor of Politics Stephen Engel.

“We saw LGBTQ candidates win; the first openly gay male governor was elected in Colorado; and on the policy side we saw an anti-trans policy go down in Massachusetts.”

Professor of Politics Stephen Engel, seen in the classroom in April, says the midterms yielded greater “embodied diversity” for the Democratic Party. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill pointed out that the percentage of women in the incoming House won’t be much higher than the current one.

But she saw the elections of women of color, in particular, as building momentum for women entering politics, on the right or left.

“We have two Native American women entering the House,” she said. “Two Muslim-American women are entering the House. We see women of color entering the House from districts that have elected white men to office.

Associate Professor of Politics Leslie Hill, seen at a faculty panel following the 2016 presidential election, says the election of women of color in the midterms “is building momentum for women entering politics.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“What we’re seeing is a greater presence. What’s that going to do? Some folks suggest it will increase the confidence of more women to run for office.”

Hill, who is teaching a course on gender and sexuality in U.S. politics this semester, paid attention to the rhetoric female candidates used in their ads. She said that while they presented themselves as both mothers and, say, fighter pilots, emphasizing qualifications like military experience does “reinforce the idea of politics as men’s business.”

What did the election of more women to Congress mean in terms of the policies likely to be enacted? Hill did not want to speculate too much, but she said it helped the Democrats that Republicans did not focus on the growing economy in their campaigns.

“It gave room for those Democratic candidates across the board to be able to talk about healthcare, to be able to frame that very strongly, to be able to talk about some of the social policy issues, the family care issues, the family responsibility issues, the work equity issues,” she said.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman speaks during a faculty panel Wednesday on the recent midterm elections. (Emily McConville/�ֲ���ý College)

Instead of talking about the economy, as Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman pointed out, “the president and some Republicans talked about immigration and the caravan and birthright citizenship.”

That, added Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, was an indication that while healthcare is being debated on Democrats’ terms, immigration is being debated on Republicans’.

People who live far from the southern border see immigration as a key issue, and President Donald Trump and other Republicans are “bringing up birthright citizenship or detention of immigrants and building tents, because we’re not going to invest in prisons,” said Pérez-Armendáriz, whose specialty is international migration.

That kind of discourse is making it so that Democrats, especially in the Senate races that they lost, went far to the right. Joe Donnelly and others were like, ‘Yes, I support the wall.’”

Pérez-Armendáriz predicted that post-election, Democrats would allow funding for a wall along the southern border, and other border security measures, in exchange for protections for recipients of DACA protection. Immigration reform, meanwhile, would continue to be elusive, as policy is made by executive order and then litigated in courts whose judges were appointed by the administration.

Democrats, especially in the Senate races that they lost, went to the right on immigration, says Associate Professor of Politics Clarisa Pérez-Armendáriz, seen speaking to newly admitted students in April 2016. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“That’s a useful strategy, [for the White House] to think, ‘How can we do this implementation through the executive, put it through the courts, and the courts may increasingly implement restrictive immigration policy?’”

Pérez-Armendáriz said that even if Democrats were more successful in places like Texas and Arizona — in other words, if voters for either party were more balanced — she worried that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is too broad and they will remain unable to find common ground.

“Are we talking about, half the population thinks the world is going to end if the other half wins, and vice versa?” she said. “That’s a negative undercurrent of this.”

A fundamental question, said Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Jacob Longaker, will be the extent to which the party should try to court moderate Republicans or white people living in rural areas.

“Are we talking about, half the population thinks the world is going to end if the other half wins, and vice versa?”

“There’s an increasing urban and rural divide,” Longaker said. “We know that Democrats have been doing quite well in urban centers fielding very far-left candidates, and Republicans have been doing quite well in rural areas, though they’re being fended off in some ways and being challenged by more moderate, center-leaning Democrats.”

The party, Leslie Hill said, will “have to figure out how to have some very serious conversations about issues where they can land, where they can create some spaces.”

One of those spaces could be acknowledging and decrying white supremacy, which Hill saw in conversations about immigration. She said she was happy to see Stacey Abrams in Georgia and Andrew Gillum address racism and white supremacy specifically.

“For me to be able to see Stacey Abrams present herself and get so close, that’s profoundly important,” she said.

“That’s glass half-full for me. There are a lot of people who did not take a colorblind approach. They said, ‘No, I’m standing against that, and that’s really important because that’s a piece of the conversation that’s opened up.”

One day in October, Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap got an email from his counterpart in Minnesota. It was a press release from a conservative activist group, announcing that it had been invited to present at the December meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Dunlap, a member of that very commission, had not known the activist group was going to speak. Nor that there would be a December meeting.

For Dunlap, the incident illustrated the secrecy surrounding the short-lived commission, which President Donald Trump created in May to investigate claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election. In November, Dunlap was catapulted into the national spotlight when he sued the commission for information about its activities and schedule.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state, joined President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May 2017. He sued the commission in November. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Dunlap shared his story firsthand with a �ֲ���ý audience on Feb. 28, interviewed by Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman in the Muskie Archives. The event was sponsored by the Harward Center for Community Partnerships.

As secretary of state, Dunlap oversees a variety of regulatory functions — notably the administration of elections in Maine. That work “mostly consists of talking on camera” to local election officials, he said. Those officials are responsible for taking and counting votes, which Dunlap’s office certifies.

“The idea that there’s widespread voter fraud is really more of a myth.” 

Dunlap described the process as “pretty rock solid,” but the security of the national voting process came into question after the 2016 election, when Trump that he lost the popular vote because three million to five million votes had been cast illegally — “a ridiculous statement,” Dunlap said.

This past winter, Dunlap got a call from Kris Kobach, the secretary of state in Kansas, asking if Dunlap would want to serve on a commission to investigate such claims. Dunlap accepted, and in May, he heard that Trump was about to issue an executive order creating the commission, with Vice President Mike Pence as chair and Kobach as vice chair.  

“There might be a little press,” Kobach told him about the announcement.

There was a lot of press. Critics argued that the commission and Kobach, who has long advocated for strong voter ID laws, would work to suppress voters. Dunlap said his office was flooded with postcards urging him to step down from the commission.

But he saw the commission as an opportunity to tell Maine’s story.

“The idea that there’s widespread voter fraud is really more of a myth,” he said. “But let’s talk about what we do right and what we could do better.”

Dunlap’s time on the commission, he said, was characterized by moments of intense public scrutiny, followed by long periods of silence and secrecy.

One moment of scrutiny came when the commission requested that all 50 states provide voter information — a move many regarded as a first step to creating voter suppression programs. Dunlap refused, as did most state election officials, including, ironically, Kobach himself.

Then, shortly before a September meeting in New Hampshire, Kobach published an article on the website Breitbart, arguing that there were thousands of cases of voter fraud in that state alone: People had used same-day registration to vote, but months later, they had not gotten New Hampshire driver’s licenses, indicating they didn’t actually live in the state.

Dunlap said Kobach was defining “fraud” far too broadly. New Hampshire law allows some temporary residents, like college students, to vote without establishing permanent residency.

“�ٴDz�’t call it fraud because you disagree with it,” he said. “That’s a sales point more than anything.”

The New Hampshire dispute Dunlap’s profile, but though he fielded constant questions from journalists — “God help you if you’re quotable” — he had little to tell them. He had no idea what the commission was doing or planning, and neither Kobach nor the White House would tell him.

“I was finding out about things second- and third-hand, and I started sending emails and not getting a response,” he said.

Associate Professor of Politics John Baughman interviewed Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap at Muskie Archives. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

Matters came to a head in October, when Dunlap learned from the press that a researcher for the commission had been arrested on charges of possessing child pornography.

“I wrote a formal letter to the commission,” Dunlap said. “‘I want to know what’s going on. I want to know who we’re talking to. I want to know what we’re talking about. I want to know what our reference materials are. And most of all, I’d like to get a handle on our schedule.’”

From the White House: “Silence.”

“Then,” Dunlap said, “it got weirder.” Wanting to be helpful but remain anonymous, a member of Congress had their chief of staff contact another representative’s chief of staff, who told Dunlap that people in Washington were rooting for him, and that he wouldn’t get any information about the commission without a lawyer.

Dunlap took the mystery representative’s advice, assembling a legal team — “it’s like having a company softball team where all of a sudden Dustin Pedroia shows up” — and filed suit against the commission, arguing that it wasn’t following laws about transparency and ideological balance.

Dunlap won the suit, one of several filed against the commission.

“I said to the attorneys at that point, ‘I half-wonder if they don’t pull the plug on this now,’” Dunlap told the �ֲ���ý audience. “Sure enough, January 3, we got the email that they the commission.”

“The election doesn’t go your way? There’s always another election.”

But Dunlap’s lawsuit is still pending, and he hopes to make the commission’s activities and plans public.

During the interview Dunlap took audience questions, which ranged from Russian interference in the 2016 election to instituting a ranked-choice voting system in Maine.

Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap took audience questions during his interview at the Muskie Archives. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

If Dunlap could set the agenda of a commission on election integrity, he said, it would focus on voter access — the idea that “people have a right to vote, and you work backwards from that.”

Dunlap’s tenure on the commission, he said, helped him realize that people care about that right. There was strong public opposition to the group getting state voter data and to the possibility that it would try to suppress votes, an indication that people cared about the process of elections and believed in states’ ability to administer them.

“That’s how democracy should work,” Dunlap said. “As long as we stay in those parameters, we succeed regardless of what the outcome is. The election doesn’t go your way? There’s always another election. That’s something we should never forget.”

A day before the election, the �ֲ���ý politics department announced that it would offer a postmortem on Wednesday, Nov. 9.

And they couldn’t have picked a better title for the event: “What Just Happened?”

Those were likely the first words in households all over America Wednesday morning as both friends and foes of President-elect Donald Trump absorbed the news of his upset victory.

At midday, four members of the politics faculty propped their sleep-deprived eyes open for an hour to offer insights about the election and some predictions about U.S. governance under Trump.

John Baughman, an associate professor of politics, speaks during the Wednesday discussion in the Mays Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Concern evident in their faces and postures, about 200 students, staff, and faculty filled the Benjamin Mays Center to hear what John Baughman, Ben Moodie, Leslie Hill, and Will D’Ambruso thought about the outcome. In question-and-answer form, here are some takeaways:

Why didn’t the experts see Trump’s win coming?

Baughman, associate professor of politics and an occasional commentator for the news media, listed factors that the pundits didn’t see or couldn’t have seen.

He described some regional variations from past voting patterns, such as a strong showing for the Democrats by Latino voters that continued a recent trend — but that was offset by a surge, unforeseen by pollsters, in white working-class voters with less than a college education.

More culturally significant, perhaps, was Baughman’s observation that campaign organizations and their get-out-the-vote efforts in some ways “seemed not to matter” in a  presidential campaign driven less by party organization and affiliation and more by raw emotion.

�ֲ���ý President Clayton Spencer takes notes in the Mays Center during the “What Just Happened?” panel analyzing the 2016 election. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Baughman said that this was “not an election that seemed to turn primarily on debates over key policy choices, the way that we’ve seen in other elections.”

Instead, “policy took a back seat to other kinds of debate and rhetoric” that appealed to voters’ anger and fears. He also noted that racial and ethnic animus was “a key factor” in the outcome, and suggested that the rhetoric of prejudice, now embedded in mainstream political discourse, will be hard to remove.

“This is one of the most troubling aspects of this election, and something we’re going to be responding to for a while yet.”

Baughman added, in response to a question near the end of the gathering, “You can’t just turn off divisive, racist campaign rhetoric.” Washington will find some way to govern, but hate rhetoric has been legitimized.

If the economy was not a dominant theme in this election, Baughman did note that “changes in partisanship over time map very directly onto changes in income inequality.”

The overriding message from Baughman was that the U.S. has arrived in something like political terra incognita. “The establishment has been repudiated,” he said, especially within a Republican Party divided over Trump’s candidacy. “But it’s not clear yet what the alternative is.”

With the White House, Congress, and in all likelihood the Supreme Court in conservative hands for years to come, how can liberals have a meaningful voice in policy-making?

Activism at the local level is imperative, the panelists agreed. Especially so, as Baughman noted, because the Democrats have for years been hobbled by a shortage of strong candidates emerging locally and working their way up to regional and national influence.

“It’s up to people outside the political institutions to push for these sorts of things,” said Leslie Hill. “The other piece is us in the community and the ways in which we can figure out how to go forward. We have the vote, but we also have other ways of engaging politically, and that’s really important.”

What are likely economic effects of the election?

Flanked by John Baughman and Leslie Hill, Ben Moodie discusses the economic implications of a Trump presidency during the Nov. 9 “What Just Happened?” panel discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Ben Moodie, lecturer in politics and sociology, explained that during the campaign, Trump made evident his lack of interest in policy details. That puts “congressional conservatives in the driver’s seat” when it comes to federal finances — and between big tax cuts for the wealthiest and expanded spending on infrastructure and defense, the national debt is likely to balloon.

Such deficit spending would be good for economic growth given current conditions, Moodie said. Although more-progressive tax relief would be better economic medicine, more government spending — whatever the money is spent on — could nevertheless boost the national economy.

Funding for liberal priorities is certainly threatened. While the panel didn’t agree on the feasibility of repealing the Affordable Care Act, it will be pruned, perhaps drastically, as will Medicaid and other benefits for the poor. However, Moodie predicted, Social Security and Medicare will likely be spared.

What are the election’s political implications for women and for minorities?

Students, staff, and faculty fill the Benjamin Mays Center to hear a Nov. 9 politics faculty postmortem on the 2016 elections. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

Echoing Baughman’s concern about racist campaign language, Hill wondered if misogyny has become “the new normal” in political discourse. For young women in the room, she said, the 2016 races must have been a devastating introduction to political participation in both tone and outcome.

Hill shared a quote from a Nov. 9 article in The Guardian: “Faced with the choice between a qualified woman with flaws and a man who had lied, evaded taxes and faced many sexual assault allegations, voters chose the man.”

Hill looked briefly at some demographic trends in the election. She noted that while Latin women and Asian–Pacific Islanders (men and women) voted in numbers roughly matching the past two presidential elections, their support for the Democratic candidate this time was less.

In terms of gender equality in political representation and especially leadership, the nation was trailing its economic peers when it entered the 2016 election, Hill said — and the events of Nov. 8  didn’t helped. She pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act, which has materially affected access to the polls for African Americans and other minorities.

“I can only imagine what John Lewis must be saying,” said Hill, referring to the civil rights and VRA advocate who offered �ֲ���ý’ Commencement address in May.

Hill said that the prejudice and hostility unleashed during the 2016 campaign “may come down to people’s everyday lives. It worries me.”

Trump’s temperamental unsuitability to be in charge of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was an issue during the campaign. Should we be worried?

Lecturer in Politics William d’Ambruoso talks about international nuclear weapons security during the panel discussion. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Lecturer in Politics Will d’Ambruoso opened his segment with the laugh line, “I’m going to talk casually about armageddon.” But the outlook for Trump as commander in chief, he indicated, is actually complicated and hard to predict.

Seeking to reduce U.S. costs for defending its allies, Trump has supported opening the nuclear club to nations like South Korea. The question is, will more nuclear arsenals around the globe result in stronger deterrence and more stability, or the opposite — especially since the international commitment to keeping nukes out of the wrong hands is not ironclad?

On a different front, d’Ambruoso suggested that Trump’s ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin could actually reduce international tensions — “but human rights will be the loser,” he said.

D’Ambruoso summed up the uncertainty of Trump’s international role when he started an answer with, “I’m not exactly sure” but then added with a chuckle, “Well, of course I’m not sure!”

How will a Trump administration affect local law enforcement in terms of police misuse of force against blacks and others?

Jane Costlow, the Clark A. Griffith Professor of Environmental Studies, listens to the discussion in the Mays Center. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Racial-justice interventions by the U.S. Justice Department like those we’ve seen under President Obama are unlikely under Trump, said Baughman. And a Trump-packed U.S. Supreme Court is not likely to support African American rights. But the federal court system below that level could provide a buffer.

What will happen to political promises such as Trump’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton?

The next four years, Baughman suggested, will afford a chance to see how much Trump meant of what he said on the campaign trail. But his term “will also be an interesting test of political institutions” — notably the career civil servants who embody much of the experience and know-how in Washington.

Will they be a stabilizing force? Baughman wondered, noting that the civil service is “a part of our political system that we usually take for granted.”

What might a Trump presidency mean for LGBT equality?

“What Just Happened?” fills the Benjamin Mays Center on the day after the election. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Though unable to attend the Wednesday session, Stephen Engel, chair of the politics department, had already answered that question in October.

In a story for the McClatchyDC news service, Engel, who is the author of Fragmented Citizens: The Changing Landscape of Gay and Lesbian Lives, said that “the prospect for LGBT rights is not good” under a Trump administration.

Right off the bat, executive orders will likely be reversed, and, over time, courts will become more conservative.

A strategy to watch, Engel said, is states implementing “state religious freedom restoration acts.” Such acts could allow a baker, for example, to say no to making a wedding cake for a same-sex couple or a restaurant to deny an LGBT person a table based on religious convictions.

I’ve always been interested in politics, and I like to be involved in my community. I’m a school board member in my hometown and I make the 3 ½-hour trip once a month for meetings. Here, I’ve been with the �ֲ���ý Democrats and the �ֲ���ý College Student Government all four years.

Last year I was elected Student Government president. Our most challenging issue is disbursing $300,000 among the more than 100 student clubs. Our decision has a direct impact on the community. That’s one of the most interesting things about �ֲ���ý: we have a voice in important matters affecting students’ lives and the college’s future.

I’m a politics major. Two summers ago I apprenticed with Professor John Baughman, conducting research for his book on the development of Congress. Last summer I interned in Washington, D.C. for Maine Congressman Mike Michaud. They had me doing a lot of writing. The only other intern who did that much writing was another �ֲ���ý student, Michael Petrick ’09. That’s when it hit me how �ֲ���ý, by challenging us to write at a high level, prepares us for the real world.

Read more about career services at �ֲ���ý:

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