Discussion of an official return was pretty quickly dismissed by the legislature ("THIS IS NOT AN IMPORTANT DISCUSSION DURING A PANDEMIC") but you can see it flown - and worn on shirts and hats - all over the state, not just in Portland. How deaf can a legislature be to something that was immediately embraced by the public but just immediately dismis... oh.
How can it not be important to help a state feel a sense of pride? I feel like that's what's happened with the flying of the OG design.
Not going to delve into the Maine-specific elements, that's outside my area of knowledge, but there's few political attacks more effective with little to no risk than criticizing politicians for doing something that doesn't have a major, direct impact. Unless there's something outright offensive about a design (these days typically content deemed racist, colonial, or both), then debating changing a flag is basically pure aesthetics (sometimes with a side dish of nostalgia). In my personal opinion, Maine's current official flag is deeply dull and completely forgettable, which is obviously not ideal for branding and identification purposes, but it's not going to offend people (other than by being so
boring).
Changing it inevitably stirs up passions, both among those who want a change (who may be a majority) and who don't, and then, frequently, over what to change the flag to, at the end of which you get...a flag. Maybe with some merchandising potential, maybe some people feel some more civic pride, that's all well and good. But in terms of substance, basically nothing.
That's where the political difficulties come from. There's a big "wow, you must have solved
every other problem in the state, if this is what you're working on" thing with proposals like this. Like, is there really nothing of more importance and impact that the legislature could be working on? There usually is, and people generally tend to understand that, so proposals like these tend to make the politicians look out of touch and un-serious...and the smarter ones know that, so they don't go down this road willingly on their own because it's plenty of political peril for very little reward.
These are the kind of things that
really need a super-strong grassroots effort, usually over quite a bit of time, to get done, just because the circumstances are such that most of the time the political environment doesn't reward pursuing such things for the legislature/government.
