This is the current face of Maine:
This is what it needs to be:
You can help change the face of Maine with as little as a $5 contribution.
In 2010, Maine elected Paul LePage. In hindsight, it was a warning sign, but at the time it didn’t seem to say all that much because he won with only 38 percent of the vote. During his first term, LePage referred to the IRS as “the new Gestapo,” told the NAACP to “kiss my butt,” and said that a Democratic state senator was “the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.”
It’s easy to see why LePage’s friends and foes alike call him ‘Donald Trump before Donald Trump.’
After four years of tumult, LePage faced an uphill battle against a popular longtime Democratic congressman, Mike Michaud. Shockingly, he defeated Michaud with 48 percent of the vote. At the same time, Democrats lost Maine’s 2nd congressional district for the first time since 1992.
In 2016, Maine’s problem comes home to roost at the presidential level. Democrats lost Maine’s 2nd congressional district again along with its electoral vote (Maine is one of two states that divides electoral votes by congressional district winners). Trump came within 20,000 votes of taking the state—Hillary Clinton’s entire margin of victory came from the city of Portland.
Despite its narrow vote for Hillary, Maine is a perfect microcosm of what is happening in our politics. The rural areas that were voting for Democrats (President Obama won the 2nd fairly easily in 2012) broke heavily the other way. If we are going to win back the 2nd, win back the House and be a governing party again, we need to start with the people in this state who should be with us—college students and new immigrant communities.
That is what we in the Lewiston Democratic Party are doing. We have detailed plans to reach out to students at Bates College this election to help get a progressive city council and force Medicaid expansion through a statewide referendum. We also have three new immigrant candidates running for school committee (hailing from the same Somali community that Trump attacked in 2016). We have the drive, we have the ability, we just need a small amount of money to put our plan into motion. This is how we fight back, this is how we retake Maine. This is how we stop Trump.
Give what you can and we will change the face of Maine.