LEWISTON, Maine – Rob Rogers has seen his rural corner of New England turn into a stronghold for Donald Trump in two consecutive elections. But this year he's feeling hopeful that Vice President Kamala Harris could reclaim a potentially decisive electoral vote for Democrats.
“Let me just say, in the presidential election, I'm astounded that the Republican Party can't do better,” said Rogers, a registered Democrat who is a draftsman in tiny Chesterville, Maine. “I think it will be close, but I just don't know how it's going to go."
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Democrats might need voters like Rogers to be right.
In a presidential contest that’s expected to be tight, this year every electoral vote could matter. That's why the Harris campaign has cast its eyes northward to Maine, home to one of the largest, coldest and most rural congressional districts in the country. At least part of the state could play an unexpected role in deciding 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 Maine's 2nd Congressional District vote by more than 7 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.
A poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center suggests Harris could be competitive there.
She does have a chance to win back the potentially key electoral vote, Maine Assistant House Majority Leader Kristen Cloutier said at a rally for the vice president's campaign Tuesday in Lewiston, the biggest city in the district.
“I know I'll be getting out the vote every day from now until the election,” Cloutier said. “And believe me, there is a role for everyone.”
The presidential race is happening against the backdrop of a fierce congressional contest between a gun-owning former Marine and a stock car driver that also could be decisive. In one of the most politically mixed districts in New England, Jared Golden, the Democratic incumbent, is 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. Seeing Harris claim the district's electoral vote while Golden loses his seat would be surprising but not impossible, according to Mark Brewer, a political scientist at University of Maine.
“In some ways it would be hard for me to square the fact that Harris is doing better because that means Trump is doing worse. And it's hard for me to square 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 could be true at the same time.”
Both parties are spending money in Maine, though not a lot. Democrats have outspent Republicans on presidential advertising there, but neither party has made major investments in ads, according to AdImpact, which tracks campaign spending. Democrats have about $150,000 invested in Maine’s two media markets for the presidential race, while Republicans have closer to $125,000. Most of that spending is on digital ads in the Portland-Auburn media market, which includes parts of both the 1st and 2nd districts.
The Trump campaign has actually outspent Harris by a roughly 2-to-1 margin in the race, but her campaign has been boosted by more than $96,000 in advertising by the One for All Committee, an outside group.
And both sides think the congressional race and electoral vote are winnable. Jason Savage, executive director of Maine GOP, said in an email to supporters Friday that “Maine is a battleground for control of the White House” as well as 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 1st District is based around Portland, the 2nd is mostly made up of small cities such as Bangor and the rural northern and eastern parts of Maine, where the autumn leaves change color earlier and the state's traditional industries — logging, potato farming and lobster fishing — form the backbone of a working-class economy.
Maine's statewide vote had been reliably Democratic since 1992 until Trump came along. His 2016 victory in the 2nd District was the first time a candidate lost the statewide vote but still picked up one of Maine's two electoral votes. With polls in the seven states most experts think will decide the election running remarkably close, there are multiple scenarios in which a single electoral vote in Maine or Nebraska could be decisive.
One issue on many Maine voters' minds is gun rights. Maine has a higher percentage of gun ownership than most of the Northeast, and both Golden and Theriault have impressed on voters that they are firm protectors of gun rights. After the state was rocked late last year by a mass shooting in Lewiston that killed 18 people, Democrats ushered in a suite of new gun laws, but in a state with a strong hunting culture, not everyone was on board.
In Auburn, next to Lewiston, J.T. 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 2nd Amendment. Reid said he has seen Trump's popularity in the district climb over the last eight years and can't quite say why the New York billionaire has such a broad following in rural Maine, but he thinks guns are part of the reason.
“I just think he's more realistic about what's going on in the country, and firearms in general,” Reid said.
Both Harris and Trump have campaign presences in Maine, but the state has not been subject to the kind of saturation ads or high-profile candidate visits seen in swing states. Maine's Democratic Gov. Janet Mills chided Trump on social media on Oct. 8 after the former president reportedly criticized her and mixed up her gender on a call with supporters, but the Maine races have otherwise been devoid of drama.
Still, 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's raised in Nevada, a key swing state, and Rhode Island, a Democratic stronghold. The same figures show Trump has raised a little less than $800,000, which is more than North Dakota, a state he has carried twice.
Golden is outraising Theriault by about $6.6 million to $2.9 million, federal figures show. The two congressional candidates have engaged in three lively televised debates, and Theriault has used an email campaign to try to portray himself as more in touch with the needs of everyday Mainers than Golden. Golden, meanwhile, has portrayed himself as a moderate with a history of straying from Democratic Party orthodoxy.
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Leah Askarinam from the AP’s Decision Desk contributed from Washington.