BREWER, Maine — Voters in a rare House district that went red for president and blue for Congress are on the verge of replacing one of the most centrist House Democrats with a hard-line conservative who called himself “Donald Trump before Donald Trump.”
Election forecasters see Maine’s former Republican governor Paul LePage as the likely winner in this rural district despite his history of incendiary comments such as “Black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers.”
LePage, now a MAGA devotee, would represent a sharp break from the incumbent Jared Golden’s moderate approach.
But LePage isn’t running against Golden, who retired rather than facing what could have been a tough primary contest. In his place, Democrats nominated state Auditor Matt Dunlap, a progressive who embraces policies such as Medicare-for-all and defeated a moderate backed by the party establishment in the primary.
The next direction of this politically eclectic enclave will be decided by independent-minded voters who have defined the district with their split-ticket voting.
“I don’t feel like there’s anybody for the independents,” Pam Remieres, 64, said on a recent sunny afternoon in Lewiston, where she lives. “Everybody just seems extreme right now on both sides.”
Voters here backed Trump in three presidential elections and elected Golden to represent them in Congress for the past eight years. Golden said he decided not to run again because politics had grown too uncivil and polarized.
While announcing his exit, Golden called out the leading candidates to succeed him.
“Paul LePage and Matt Dunlap are a far cry from being standard bearers of the generations that will inherit the legacy of today’s Congress,” he wrote in a Bangor Daily News op-ed, later adding that “robust ideological diversity requires elected officials who are willing to represent the district as it truly exists — not as their party’s most vocal extremes might wish it did.”
Golden has not endorsed in the race, and his office did not respond to requests for comment. In Congress, Golden often votes with Republicans, a habit that has helped him fend off GOP challengers. He was one of two Democrats whose votes helped advance GOP bills to the House floor this month, angering Democratic leadership.
LePage and Dunlap are trying to prove that they, too, are willing to work across party lines. They’ve drawn heavily from the parts of their résumés that illustrate their day-to-day work in Maine.
Golden’s exit is forcing his constituents to reconsider what they want in a representative.
“Can they get the job done?” said Risteen Bahr, a 75-year-old who lives in Bangor and has watched both candidates speak. “They have to convince me a lot.”
A staunch conservative
LePage, a former mayor of the college town Waterville, rode a wave of grassroots conservative anger to be elected in the tea party wave in 2010. He served two terms as governor from 2011 to 2019. His political career has been marked by brash, controversial comments.
He said drug traffickers with names like “D-Money” often come to Maine and “impregnate a young White girl.” When discussing drug dealers, he said“the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.” He told the NAACPto “kiss my butt” when its leaders complained that he skipped Martin Luther King Jr. Day events.
LePage has said he is not racist and has previously defended himself by citing how his family welcomed a Jamaican teenager to live with them for a few years.
“People that try to cast aspersions on him or what he is might not know his background, or choose to ignore his background,” said Brent Littlefield, an adviser to LePage’s campaign.
Last month, when he joined Vice President JD Vance for an appearance at a manufacturing facility in Brewer, LePage made no apologies for being unfiltered. He presented it as a skill that would help him in Washington.
“I don’t go along to get along,” LePage said.
On legislation that would help benefit Mainers, LePage said in Brewer that he would “work with anyone and everyone to make it happen, even Bernie Sanders.”
Vance, who also stumped for LePage in May, implored listeners to send him to Congress, describing him as a political friend and a fighter who would look after Mainers.
Bahr wasn’t so sure.
A registered Republican, Bahr, like many of her neighbors here, often votes for candidates of different parties on the same ballot. She had yet to make a decision on her congressional vote. The stances and styles of LePage and Dunlap, she thought, were so different from those of Golden, whom she appreciated for his willingness to work with Republicans.
She liked that LePage, in his own remarks before the vice president, talked about cracking down on fraud within government welfare programs. But she was wary of his “bull in a china shop” temperament, worried it would make working across the aisle harder.
Supporters of LePage during his two terms as governor and failed 2022 comeback bid are less concerned. Many of his remarks are more than a decade old and have been overshadowed by the deluge of vulgar and inflammatory comments from Trump since he entered politics. Supporters praise LePage for how he handled the state’s budget during his tenure, something he has emphasized repeatedly on the trail.
“I thought he was truthful,” said Craig Rubner, a Republican who voted for LePage during his gubernatorial runs. “Blunt, very blunt, but truthful.”
A progressive challenger
One month before Golden said he would not run for his seat again, Dunlap announced plans to challenge him, vowing to stand up to Trump more than the incumbent.
Golden hit back. Dunlap, he said, was a “30-year party crony.”
“If Matt Dunlap thinks this district will choose him over Paul LePage, he’s got another thing coming,” he said.
In the June primary, Dunlap was the progressive standard-bearer. He has called for expanding federal welfare programs, instituting universal child care and raising taxes for America’s ultrarich. LePage and his Republican surrogates have cast him as too extreme for the district.
Democrats had similar concerns.
The campaign arm of House Democrats endorsed Maine state Sen. Joe Baldacci, whom they saw as the stronger, more moderate candidate in the primary. The group put Baldacci on its coveted “Red to Blue” list, a program that brings funding and other resources to candidates vying for targeted seats. It only added Dunlap to the program in August.
Baldacci, who endorsed Dunlap after losing the primary, said he was pleased to see national Democrats investing in the race despite his loss. When asked whether he thought Dunlap was too far to the left for the district, Baldacci told The Washington Post that was “up to voters to decide.”
In an interview with The Post, Dunlap rejected the idea that progressive policies weakened his candidacy.
“We call these things progressive because we have never done them,” he said.
Bahr, the undecided voter, remained skeptical.
She is among the seniors in Maine, the oldest state in the country, who rank health care and social safety nets high on their list of concerns. The payments for her eye injections and her husband’s cancer treatments were already tough. At the same time, she doesn’t think Medicare-for-all is doable.
“The whole system needs to be revamped in order to make that kind of policy work, and I don’t see that happening,” she said.
The day after Bahr watched Vance campaign for LePage, Dunlap gathered supporters a two-hour drive away in Lewiston for a town hall at a library. Dunlap pitched himself as a candidate who would listen to, rather than talk at, the people who live in the district.
An attendee who had started canvassing for Dunlap asked the candidate how to persuade independent voters to support his campaign.
“What would be some thoughts from you for those unenrolled voters, those people that are really in the middle?” the attendee asked.
Dunlap acknowledged that he knew the district had voters across the political spectrum but rejected descriptions of the district that made it seem as if it were a “hostile wilderness.”
But Dunlap said he saw campaigning as more about talking to his neighbors and friends than meeting and persuading hostile strangers.
“When you see people and recognize them and make them understand they matter, we’re halfway home,” he said.
The post A centrist House Democrat may be replaced by ‘Trump before Donald Trump’ appeared first on Washington Post.
