As candidates vying for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District seat gear up for their last televised debate, let’s unpack some of the points made during the first debate a week ago between two-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin and his Democratic challenger, Jared Golden.
Maine’s 2nd District, one of the most rural in the country, stretches between the state’s eastern, western and northern borders, encompassing parts or all of 11 of the state’s 16 counties. Voter registration in the district has tilted toward the GOP in the four years since Poliquin won the seat in 2014.
In 2016, the district gave its electoral vote to President Donald Trump in a historic split from the rest of the state. Since Trump was elected, Poliquin has voted with the president’s position 97 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Tapping the district’s rightward shift and the advantages incumbency offers, Poliquin has sought to portray Golden as culturally and politically out of touch with the district’s hardscrabble, majority working-class electorate that tends to value independence more than party allegiance.
To read the rest of “Beyond the name calling: Where Golden and Poliquin stand on key issues,” an article by contributing Bangor Daily News staff writer Alex Acquisto, please follow this link to the BDN online.
