Maine governor primary heads to ranked-choice count, Bobby Charles leads

Bobby Charles emerged as the clear early leader in Maine’s Republican governor primary, but not as the winner. With more than 38% of counted votes late Tuesday, and one tally putting him at 39.2%, Charles fell short of the majority needed to clinch the nomination outright, sending the race into ranked-choice tabulation that will decide whether his lead survives the transfer of lower-finishing candidates.

The secretary of state’s office expected the count to begin in Augusta on June 12 and finish by June 19. That process will matter as much for what it says about the Maine GOP as for who wins. Ranked-choice voting is no longer a procedural footnote in this contest. It is the mechanism that will reveal whether Charles can collect enough second-choice support from eliminated candidates, or whether his rivals have built a broader coalition around an alternative.

Ben Midgley, the former president of Planet Fitness, held second place with nearly 20% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Jonathan Bush, the health technology entrepreneur and nephew of the late President George H.W. Bush. Garrett Mason, Owen McCarthy, David Jones and Robert Wessels rounded out the field of Republicans who actively campaigned, while state Rep. Jim Libby remained on the ballot even after dropping out in April, because his withdrawal came after the deadline to remove names.

The race has already featured overt maneuvering around ranked-choice math. Wessels publicly urged supporters to rank Bush second, while Jones and Midgley announced an alliance encouraging their backers to rank each other highly. Charles attacked those moves as attempts to “manipulate and game ranked choice voting.” That clash shows the deeper fight inside the party: whether Republicans are assembling around a candidate with a strong first-choice base, or around a wider anti-Charles bloc that can survive the eliminations.

Maine voters approved ranked-choice voting in a 2016 referendum, and the system is used in state primaries and certain federal elections, though not in the 2026 general election for governor. Maine is one of only two states to use ranked-choice voting in some statewide elections, alongside Alaska. The Republican nominee will face the Democratic nominee in November, when Maine elects a new governor for the first time in eight years because Gov. Janet Mills is term-limited and cannot seek a third consecutive term. Democrats have held the Blaine House since Mills took office in 2019, but the outcome of this ranked-choice count will help determine whether Republicans have enough internal unity to try to take it back.