Five House Democrats in Trump-won districts fight for survival in upcoming elections.
ORONO, Maine: A Tale of Two Political Landscapes
A brick exterior wall of the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute features, behind glass, a recent USA Today article touting its scientific research. The story focused on the U.S. Ocean Climate Action Plan put in place by the Biden administration, which used data about rising sea temperatures produced by the university environmental research center.
Off campus a couple of miles away, within walking distance along the Penobscot River on a temperate midsummer day, a swath of lawn signs in front of shingle-style houses touts former President Donald Trump — specifically, his 2024 GOP primary campaign for the White House, which he’s favored to win, setting up a general election rematch against President Joe Biden, to whom Trump lost in 2020.
A Political Battleground
This dichotomy in a population center of the Pine Tree State’s sprawling northern tier goes beyond traditional town-gown tensions, where liberal college students and faculty clash politically with more conservative local residents. It also reflects the politically competitive nature of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, represented since early 2019 by Democratic congressman Jared Golden. Trump beat Biden in that district 51.6%-45.5%.
It’s the only district in New England that in 2020 backed Trump over Biden. It’s also among five districts that voted for Trump and a Democratic House member in 2020. Conversely, 18 House districts won by Biden also voted for a Republican representative in Congress.
Combined, these crossover districts will be at the epicenter of both parties’ efforts to win a House majority in the 2024 elections. All part of a political knife fight to gain or keep control of the House, which Republicans now narrowly control with a 222-213 majority.
Golden in his 2024 reelection bid can expect lots of outside spending in the district, the largest east of the Mississippi River, stretching up to the U.S.-Canada border. Maine is one of two states, along with Nebraska, which allocate an electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, along with two to the statewide popular vote winner. Trump won a single Maine electoral vote in both his 2016 win over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and his 2020 loss to Biden.
Golden, in his 4 1/2 years in Congress, has sought to distance himself from national Democrats, who aren’t looked upon kindly by some voters in his blue-collar district, known for its thick woodlands, rugged coastlines, and smaller towns. His bio leans into that. In 2002, Golden left college after one year to join the Marines, and he served combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. After returning home to Maine, Golden attended and graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. He went on to work for Maine’s Republican senator, Susan Collins, on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.
Golden eventually became a Democrat and was a state House member from 2014 to 2018. That year he beat Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin as Democrats captured a House majority midway through Trump’s White House term. In Golden’s 2020 reelection win, he outperformed Biden in the district by almost 14 points, even as the same election decimated Democrats’ ranks in rural America.
One Republican candidate, so far for 2024, is running for the 2nd District seat, mortgage broker Rob Cross.
“My roots in Maine run deep. Like so many Mainers, I learned the value of honesty, hard work, compassion, and faith from my family,” Cross said in April while announcing his House candidacy. “As a husband, father, and new grandfather, I’m working to ensure the next generation of Americans can enjoy the freedom, prosperity, and security past generations fought so hard to gain and protect.”
Cross ran unsuccessfully for the state Senate in 2022.
Another Republican considering a congressional bid for the seat held by Golden include state Rep. Lauren Libby of Auburn. More Republicans could still jump into the race, among them state House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham and state Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart.
Alaska At-Large
Though a continent away, with much of Canada in between, Alaska and Maine have many similarities beyond the just abundant moose roaming the states’ vast wildlands (and sometimes residents’ backyards). Both also use forms of ranked choice voting.
Under ranked choice voting, also known as instant runoff voting, voters have the option to rank candidates in order of preference: first, second, third, and so on. The lowest vote-getters are then knocked from the ballot and their support redistributed to the most popular office seekers. Supporters say ranked choice voting improves fairness in elections by allowing voters to rank candidates in order of preference. Under this system, centrist-leaning candidates tend to do best because success means appealing not just to a partisan fringe but a much wider group of voters.
That was the case in New York City, where Eric Adams won the 2021 mayoral election over several far-left rivals, and in Alaska the next year, where Rep. Mary Peltola became the first Democratic House member from the state in nearly 50 years.
Peltola was a state House member from 1999-2009, an across-the-aisle friend of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee. After Rep. Don Young died in March 2022, Peltola jumped into what became a 48-candidate field to replace the Republican lawmaker, first elected in a March 1973 special election for Alaska’s lone House seat.
The special election was the first time Alaska had used ranked choice voting, based on the top four candidates who made it through the primary. Peltola won the House seat by beating Palin and Republican tech executive Nick Begich III. (A fourth finisher, independent Al Gross, dropped out.)
Peltola won the summer 2022 special election, becoming the first Alaska Native member of Congress. Peltola in November won a full two-year term, part of House Democrats’ much better-than-expected midterm election showing.
In November 2024, Peltola will seek reelection on the same ballot as presidential candidates, in a state where in 2020 Trump beat Biden 53%-43%. And at least one former rival is back — Begich, a rare Republican member of Alaska’s most prominent Democratic family. (His grandfather and namesake was Young’s immediate predecessor, while his uncle Mark Begich was a one-term senator from 2009-15.)
Peltola has tried to steer a middle course in Congress. She’s a member of the conservative-leaning Blue Dog Coalition. The mother of seven, meanwhile, touts her support for abortion rights. The Alaska House race figures to be one of the most tightly contested in the country next year.
Ohio 9th Congressional District
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), the longest-tenured woman in Congress ever, is seeking reelection in this Toledo area and northwestern Ohio district. It’s a different area than the reliably blue northern Ohio district Kaptur had represented, in different shapes, after being elected in 1982. But a Buckeye State Republican redraw of House district lines, with the goal of bolstering GOP political fortunes, saw Kaptur move a bit south to the 9th District, where Trump in 2020 beat Biden 50.6%-47.7%.
Now the Republican primary race is heating up more than a year in advance. Several northwest Ohio Republican candidates are in the running, including Craig Riedel; former state Rep. Dan Wilczynski, a former mayor of Walbridge, a Toledo suburb; and Steve Lankenau, an ex-mayor of Napoleon.
Riedel lost the 2022 GOP primary election to J.R. Majewski, who earned 43% of the vote in his general election defeat at the hands of Kaptur. Majewski turned out to be one of House Republicans’ biggest disappointments in the midterm elections when they expected to win dozens of seats but barely eked out a majority. Majewski, a Trump acolyte, lost support in the months leading up to the general election when the Associated Press reported that he had misrepresented his military service.
First elected to Congress in 1982 at the age of 36, Kaptur entered elected office after spending years as a city planner and as an urban adviser to President Jimmy Carter. She has proven crossover partisan appeal as a long and leading voice against free trade deals, an issue never particularly popular in Ohio but made downright politically toxic in the Trump era.
Pennsylvania 8th Congressional District
Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) looks to extend his winning streak in this Scranton/Wilkes-Barre and northeastern Pennsylvania district, where Trump in 2020 beat Biden 50.9%-48%, a similar margin to the former president’s defeat there of Clinton in 2016. Cartwright is the only Democratic House member to win reelection in a district that twice backed Trump and in the midterm elections of 2018 (when Democrats won the majority) and 2022 (as Republicans earned control of the chamber).
Cartwright in 2020 and 2022 beat Jim Bognet, an attorney and political consultant. Cartwright, an economic populist, successfully hammered Bognet as a Washington swamp creature, in Trump parlance, with ties to K Street influence-peddling operations.
Still, Cartwright is among more than two dozen House Democrats deemed vulnerable by the party’s campaign arm, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. The DCCC recently unveiled its list of 29 members of the Frontline Program for vulnerable incumbents, identifying lawmakers in their party who are at risk of losing reelection next year.
Potential Republican candidates include state Sen. Rosemary Brown and Seth Kaufer, a physician and GOP activist.
Washington 3rd Congressional District
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in 2022 capitalized on Trump-era internecine Republican rifts to put this southwestern Washington district into Democratic hands for the first time in 12 years. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler finished third in the all-party primary behind Gluesenkamp Perez and a fellow Republican, Joe Kent, a retired Army Green Beret.
Beutler had been among 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump in early 2021, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot. That gave an opening to Kent, a critic of aid to Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia, who was sympathetic to Trump’s false claims about a rigged or stolen 2020 election.
In the general election, Gluesenkamp Perez, an auto shop owner with her husband, played up an independent streak, far from the liberal tendencies of most House Democrats. She beat Kent 50.14%-49.31% in November 2022 in a district where Trump had beaten Biden 50.8%-48.6% two years earlier.
Once ensconced in the House, Gluesenkamp Perez has emphasized her bipartisan bona fides. On May 24, her reelection campaign posted a mildly profane tweet, also Golden of Maine and Peltola of Alaska, in a photo in which the trio look more like members of a ‘90s Indie band than House lawmakers.
“Teams get s*** done, so I’m teaming up with Jared Golden and Mary Peltola to rebuild the Blue Dogs into something useful for working people. We know who we are, and we know how to win. Congress needs more people like us, and a lot fewer weirdos with white nationalist friends.”
Kent is running again in 2024.
“We are only beginning to learn who our Democrat Congresswoman Marie Perez really is,” Kent said in a January candidate statement. “The moderate mask has fallen off and revealed a woke extremist.”
Gluesenkamp Perez, meanwhile, has spent much of her time in southwest Washington, visiting businesses and educational programs. She also hosted multiple roundtables and meetings around the district to hear from farmers on agricultural concerns.
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