BREWER, Maine — The campaign for New England’s most Trump-friendly House district shouldn’t have been a heavy lift for former two-term Republican governor Paul LePage — the self-styled “Trump before Trump.”
But stiff headwinds have come in for LePage. Tariff wars and an actual war in Iran have driven up costs for fuel and other necessities to unsustainable levels in this working-class northern Maine district, and all have come as a result of actions taken by the president himself.
That’s given Democrats an opening to compete in a race that many had written off after four-term Democratic Representative Jared Golden opted to retire.
Their nominee, state Auditor Matt Dunlap, was not party brass’s first choice to take advantage of a favorable midterm environment, or even their second. He first entered the race by challenging Golden, and after the incumbent withdrew, he won a primary over the party’s preferred candidate.
Hammering a message focused on the cost of living, Dunlap has seemingly closed the gap, with polls showing a tightening race and independent analysts rating it among the most competitive in the country. Both campaigns and outside groups have spent more than a combined $10 million on it.
In a sign of how Republicans view the race, House Speaker Mike Johnson stumped in Bangor for LePage last week, calling the contest “top five” nationally. Trump himself has yet to campaign for LePage in Maine, but Vice President JD Vance has twice.
After speaking at a town hall event in Brewer last month, Dunlap, who is professorial and low-key where LePage is loud and pugnacious, said, “it’s easy to underestimate me.” And he also argued that outsiders underestimate the district’s independent streak, particularly due to Trump’s historic unpopularity.
LePage may remain the favorite — Trump carried the district by 9 points in 2024 — but winning may require him to do some uncharacteristic things: tone himself and his support for the president down.
Coming out of retirement in Florida, LePage has not run as visible or combative a campaign as many longtime observers expected. The headline-generating statements that defined his two terms in Augusta, like openly wishing to kill a state Democratic lawmaker in a duel after leaving an expletive-filled voicemail for him, have been sparse in this campaign.
LePage has publicly rebuked the administration’s tariffs, though last year he said he was “all for” them; he also expressed opposition to the Iran war but opposes Congress stopping it. He has cast himself as someone who’d have influence with the president himself to advocate for the district.
“I know him personally, and I will say right now, I will be able to get into the Oval Office,” LePage said at a recent televised debate. “My opponent will not.”
In Maine, Republicans acknowledge the factors working against them. “It is going to be a close race, and I don’t think that $6-a-gallon heating oil is helpful to any Republican,” said David Whitney, the Republican National Committeeman for Maine.
But Whitney said that LePage’s chances were “very strong” and that voters would understand the choice is a “layup” based on the former governor’s resume.
He also nodded to the idea that this campaign’s LePage isn’t the same elbow-throwing LePage of the past. “The edges are rounded off a bit,” he said. “It doesn’t matter to me one way or the other, he’s still the same smart Paul LePage who very successfully governed this state.” (The LePage campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)
Democrats, meanwhile, are increasingly confident.
Joe Baldacci, a Democratic state senator who narrowly lost to Dunlap in the June primary, said voters don’t want a “rubber stamp” for Trump.
“I really think LePage has gotten rusty,” Baldacci added. “And I think he hasn’t had to play in this national political environment before, to this extent, when it’s going against him.”
The national stakes for this race are high — not unusual for a district that has changed party control more than most in recent years.
Democrats are increasingly favored to retake control of the House, but Maine’s Second District is the GOP’s best chance to flip a Democratic district not affected by redistricting.
And LePage, 78, would hardly be a typical House freshman. First elected as governor in the Tea Party wave of 2010, LePage was unlike any chief executive the state had previously had: archconservative, but also combative and sometimes offensive. Among other things, he infamously declined to attend Martin Luther King Jr. Day events in his first term and told the NAACP to “kiss my butt.”
In the same way Trump would soon after, LePage’s bombastic statements only endeared him more to core supporters by virtue of offending the opposition. In a 2013 Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting story on how LePage had shaken up the state’s “nicey-nicey” politics, one Republican observed that when the governor was offensive, his supporters would say: “Go Paul. Do it again.”
Despite his polarizing nature, LePage was reelected in 2014. During his eight years as governor, he made drastic changes and reforms, including cutting the state income tax, reducing state spending, and repeatedly blocking Medicaid expansion for the state until voters forced his hand in a 2017 referendum.
When he left office in 2018, he left Maine altogether, saying he would retire in lower-tax Florida. Though he returned in 2022 in a failed challenge to Governor Janet Mills, LePage’s residency proved awkward in this race. When pressed in a recent debate, he admitted he was a “snowbird” but insisted he is not in Florida year-round. (His reported in-state residency is above a car rental office in Augusta.)
Dunlap, 61, has been a fixture of Maine politics himself. A former legislator, he served as secretary of state from 2014 to 2021 and then as state auditor from 2022, positions that are both elected by the Legislature. (Dunlap was first selected as auditor in 2021 but had to leave the position until passing the required examinations.)
When Dunlap launched his primary challenge to Golden, it infuriated Democrats in Washington, who believed the party-bucking centrist to be the only one who could hold the seat. Before retiring, Golden himself argued Dunlap would be hopeless to defeat LePage.
When Dunlap faced Baldacci and former congressional staffer Jordan Wood in the primary, GOP-linked groups spent to boost Dunlap, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party’s official arm for House races, endorsed Baldacci. After a lengthy ranked-choice tabulation in the June 9 primary, Dunlap emerged the winner.
Washington Democrats weren’t quick to warm to him, thinking he lacked the politics and pedigree to hold on to Golden’s winning coalition. But the DCCC has since invested in him and his race, with Dunlap calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries “a huge help.”
Facing LePage, Dunlap faces an unusual challenge in running against someone who is universally known and is either beloved or despised.
“I recognize the fact that there are people who really like him. They like his style. They want somebody who’s going to grab the negotiating table by the edge and then flip it upside down,” Dunlap said. He said his strategy centers on reminding voters about LePage’s record as governor, specifically his repeated vetoes of Medicaid expansion — an attack Democrats hope will resonate more after health care cuts in Trump’s signature economic legislation.
The challenge for Dunlap is that even voters who are not especially fans of LePage are inclined to vote for him. At a recent fall festival in Mars Hill, in northern Maine, Jeff Anderson, a retiree from the coastal town of Jonesport, said he wished that Golden had decided to run again.
Anderson’s verdict on LePage was so to-the-point that the former governor himself might admire it.
“He’s a jerk,” he said, “but he did a lot of good things.”
Sam Brodey can be reached at sam.brodey@globe.com. Follow him @sambrodey.