Second District Blues (and Reds)
It sucks to live in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.
Oh, the scenery is nice. Except where it’s not (New Vineyard, looking at you). Traffic is light. But not in the summer. And sometimes the winter. And we don’t have to put up with Live Nation. Except in Bangor.
Also, there are plenty of pot shops and enough roadside dive bars to keep things from getting too dull.
But there’s more to life than chillin’. Health care is hard to find. Jobs are in short supply. Schools are closing. And the nearest supermarket could be half a tank of gas away and have a produce section that would turn a foodie’s stomach.
Despite these shortcomings, that’s not why living in the 2nd District sucks.
It sucks because of our representatives in Congress.
It would be one thing if we could blame the shoddy quality of the people we send to Washington on some odious outside entity such as Iran or Elon Musk or the New York Yankees. But it’s the voters who live here who’ve consistently sent subpar politicians to Capitol Hill. And every indication is those voters have learned nothing from their past mistakes and are prepared to continue adding to that string of mediocracies in November.
Since the turn of the century, the 2nd District Congress-creatures have been Democrat John Baldacci, Democrat Mike Michaud, Republican Bruce Poliquin and Democrat (sorta) Jared Golden. That’s a significant step down from their 20th-century predecessors: Democrat William Hathaway, Republican Bill Cohen and Republican Olympia Snowe, all of whom were quite smart, and the last two attained national reputations for their acumen.
But it appears the 2nd District is about to descend another step or two (or fall all the way into the unfinished basement).
The GOP nominee in the November election is former governor Paul LePage. LePage spends most of his time in Florida (where he owns a home) rather than in Maine (where he doesn’t). When he announced his move south, he said it was to avoid Maine’s income tax. But if he’s elected, he’ll once again have to pay this state’s levy because congresspersons must have a legal residence in the state they represent.
Although given LePage’s right-wing positions on issues and admiration for the Trump administration, he’s more likely to represent Ron DeSantis, governor of the Sunshine State, than anybody from Lubec.
Regardless, the quality of his representation has been called into question by the foremost expert on LePagiana: Paul LePage himself. In a 2017 interview, he was asked about rumors he might run for the U.S. Senate. “I wouldn’t make a very good legislator,” he said, adding that he thought committee meetings, where most congressional work gets done, “would be boring.”
On the Democratic side, the results of the four-way primary aren’t known at this writing, but the prospects for improvement are slimmer than safe passageways through the Strait of Hormuz.
The national Democratic Party’s choice for the job (oooh, the national Democratic Party, so cool) is state Sen. Joe Baldacci, brother of previous, barely remembered (for good reason) representative and governor John. If five o’clock shadow won elections, this one would already be over.
Then there’s State Auditor Matthew Dunlap, who isn’t very good at his current position, wasn’t any better when he was Maine’s secretary of state and isn’t exactly lauded for his stint running the pro-gun Sportsmen’s Alliance of Maine.
Next up is Jordan Wood, former aide to a California congresswoman, former U.S. Senate candidate and (like LePage) a very recent resident of the 2nd District.
Finally, there’s Paige Loud, a social worker who in spite of her name has run a campaign best characterized as quiet.
All these near nonentities claim to have a deep understanding of the 2nd District and its problems, a statement that’s almost always a lie.
The district includes most of the state’s geography and encompasses two of its largest cities (Lewiston and Bangor), a big chunk of coastal tourist hotspots, quaint fishing villages, not-so-quaint industrial fishing piers, a bunch of quasi-Canadians, several Indian reservations, struggling farmland, ugly wind farms, boozy ski resorts, a distressed forest-products industry, huge tracts of land where nobody lives, defunct mill towns, prime sites for data centers, the northern edge of the Portland suburbs and quite a few invasive insects. Nobody understands this nightmarish mashup of competing interests, and anyone who says they do should be restrained, sedated and transported to the nearest mental-health treatment facility.
Which probably won’t be found in the health-care desert of the 2nd District.
Presumably, in the wake of the primary election, most of the above-mentioned politicians will have been suitably confined where they can do no further harm. Those not so constrained will do little further damage because, as previously noted, life in Maine’s 2nd District already sucks.
Al Diamon lives in the 2nd District with its sketchy Wi-Fi, but manages to e-mail a monthly column to The Maine Sportsman and an item every Wednesday for the Bangor Daily News’ e-mail newsletter Maine Politics Insider. He might receive an e-mail sent to aldiamon@herniahill.net.
