LEWISTON, Maine– Rob Rogers has seen his rural corner of New England turn into one stronghold for Donald Trump in two consecutive elections. But this year he is hopeful of becoming vice president Kamala Harris could regain a potentially decisive electoral vote for the Democrats.
“Let me just say that in this presidential election, I’m surprised the Republican Party can’t do better,” said Rogers, a registered Democrat who is a cartoonist in tiny Chesterville, Maine. “I think it’s close, but I just don’t know how it’s going to go.”
Democrats may need voters like Rogers to be right.
In a presidential contest that is expected to be close, every electoral vote could matter this year. That’s why the Harris campaign has turned its gaze north to Maine, home to one of the largest, coldest and most rural congressional districts in the country. At least one part of the state could play an unexpected role in determining this year’s presidential election — not to mention control of Congress.
Maine is one of two states that apportions electoral votes by congressional district – the other is Nebraska. Trump has won the vote in Maine’s second congressional district by more than seven percentage points twice in a row. Both times it was the only electoral vote he won in New England, and in 2020 it was his only electoral vote northeast of Appalachia.
This is evident from a poll by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center suggests Harris could be competitive there.
She does have a chance to win back the potentially important electoral vote, Maine House Assistant Majority Leader Kristen Cloutier said at a rally for the vice presidential campaign Tuesday in Lewiston, the largest city in the district.
“I know I can vote every day from now until the election,” Cloutier said. “And believe me, there is a role for everyone.”
The presidential race takes place against the backdrop of a fierce battle in Congress between a gun-owning former Marine and a stock car driver who could also be decisive. In one of New England’s most politically mixed districts, Jared Golden, the Democratic incumbent presidentis defending his seat against Republican state Rep. Austin Theriault.
Golden, first elected in 2018, has won his last two elections by comfortable margins, but experts say he is vulnerable. It would be surprising but not impossible to see Harris claim the district’s electoral vote while Golden loses his seat, said Mark Brewer, a political scientist at the University of Maine.
“In some ways it would be hard for me to acknowledge the fact that Harris is doing better because that means Trump is doing worse. And I find it difficult to imagine that Trump is doing worse in the 2nd Congressional District, while at the same time Austin Theriault is doing better than the last two Republicans,” Brewer said. “But those things can be true at the same time.”
Both parties spend money in Maine, but not much. Democrats there have spent more money on presidential ads than Republicans, but neither party has made major investments in advertising, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Democrats have invested about $150,000 in Maine’s two media markets for the presidential race, while Republicans have closer to $125,000. The bulk of that spending goes to digital advertising in the Portland-Auburn media market, which includes parts of both the 1st and 2nd Districts.
The Trump campaign actually outraised Harris by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in the race, but her campaign has gotten a boost from more than $96,000 in ads from the One for All Committee, an outside group.
And both parties think the battle for Congress and the electoral vote is winnable. Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine GOP, said in an email to supporters Friday that “Maine is a battleground for control of the White House” and Congress.
The 2nd District is geographically much larger than Maine’s liberal 1st Congressional District, which Democrats have consistently won in recent years. While the first district is centered around Portland, the second consists mainly of small towns like Bangor and the rural northern and eastern parts of Maine, where autumn leaves change color earlier and the state’s traditional industries – logging, potato farming and lobster farming. fisheries – are the backbone of a working-class economy.
The statewide vote in Maine had been reliably Democratic since 1992, until Trump came along. His victory in the 2nd District in 2016 marked the first time a candidate lost the statewide vote but still received one of Maine’s two electoral votes. With polls in the seven states expected by most experts to decide whether the election is remarkably close, there are several scenarios in which a single electoral vote in Maine or Nebraska could be decisive.
An issue on the minds of many Maine voters is gun rights. Maine has a higher gun ownership rate than most of the Northeast, and both Golden and Theriault have impressed upon voters that they are staunch defenders of gun rights. After the state was shocked by a mass shooting in Lewiston killing 18 people, Democrats declared a series of new gun lawsbut in a state with a strong hunting culture, not everyone was on board.
In Auburn, next to Lewiston, JT Reid’s Gun Shop owner John T. Reid said he plans to vote Republican, in part because he thinks Trump and Theriault will do more to protect the Second Amendment. Reid said he has seen Trump’s popularity in the district rise over the past eight years and can’t say exactly why the New York billionaire has such a wide following in rural Maine, but he thinks guns are part of the reason are.
“I just think he’s more realistic about what’s happening in the country, and about guns in general,” Reid said.
Both Harris and Trump have campaign presences in Maine, but the state is not subject to the kind of saturation ads or high-profile candidate visits you see in swing states. Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills Trump chided on social media on Oct. 8 after the former president reportedly criticized her and confused her gender talking to supportersbut the races in Maine are otherwise devoid of drama.
Yet both presidential candidates are raising money here. Harris has raised more than $3.4 million in Maine as of Aug. 31, federal figures show. That’s more than she raised in Nevada, a key swing state, and Rhode Island, a Democratic stronghold. The same figures show that Trump raised just under $800,000, which is more than North Dakota, a state he carried twice.
Golden surpasses Theriault by about $6.6 million to $2.9 million, federal figures show. The two congressional candidates have participated in three lively televised debates, and Theriault has used an email campaign to try to portray himself as someone more in touch with the needs of ordinary Mainers than Golden. Golden, meanwhile, has portrayed himself as a moderate with a history of deviating from Democratic Party orthodoxy.
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Leah Askarinam of the AP Decision Desk contributed from Washington.