LEWISTON, Maine — State Rep. Mike Soboleski was heading out in his pickup truck Thursday after touring the Casella recycling facility on the city’s outskirts when he noticed several employees clustered together during a midday break in the parking lot.
Soboleski stopped his truck, got out and walked over to shake hands and introduce himself as a Republican candidate in Tuesday’s 2nd Congressional District primary.
Fellow freshman state Rep. Austin Theriault, the other candidate seeking the chance to face Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, is spending Saturday about 280 miles away at Spud Speedway in Caribou, where Theriault raced before rising to NASCAR. He planned to talk with and help register voters during the inaugural MudBowl featuring various truck shows.
A recycling facility and a muddy racetrack may not be the prototypical places for candidates to visit in the final days of a primary, but each spot offered chances for two freshman state lawmakers who have never sought higher office to chat one-on-one with voters. The November race in the swing 2nd District will be one of the biggest House races in the country.
Those interactions could make a difference on Tuesday, especially with name recognition not high for either candidate outside of political and auto racing circles. In interviews, supporters of Theriault and Soboleski highlighted how personal ties were driving their preferences.
Yet the candidates look to be competing for a small pool of voters. Interest is looking low in next week’s elections. Just over 3,900 Republicans in the 2nd District requested absentee ballots as of 3 p.m. Friday, 800 fewer than the March presidential primaries.
Theriault, a 30-year-old from Fort Kent, has former President Donald Trump’s endorsement and has raised roughly 10 times as much money as Soboleski, a 67-year-old Marine veteran from Phillips whose varied resume includes time as an actor, business owner and car salesman. Theriault’s side has flexed those factors in the form of many mailers and advertisements.
But conversations with supporters showed personal factors playing a larger role than the differences Soboleski and Theriault have tried to highlight between one another in, a Democrat from Lewiston who first won election in 2018 and has beaten past GOP challengers in a district Trump twice carried.
“We can’t look at the money,” said Bonnibelle Pratt, 69, who lives in the Aroostook County town of Oakfield and supports Soboleski. “We’ve got to look at the man.”
Pratt said “military people” like Soboleski “have a discipline about them.” She knows Theriault and his campaign manager and expressed disappointment over them attacking Soboleski over tax issues from the 1990s. She also dismissed Trump’s endorsement by saying the former president does not truly know either candidate or their attributes.
Mitch Green, a technical school teacher from the town of Norway who previously owned a company that built race cars, helped Theriault during his early racing career and focused more on his personality rather than any concerns with Soboleski or even Golden. Theriault is sincere and owned up to mistakes he made while racing, Green said.
“Once he starts a project, he will not give up,” he said. “The kid is tireless.”
As part of visiting several businesses in the Lewiston-Auburn area Thursday with Rep. Reagan Paul, R-Winterport, and a campaign aide who took photos, Soboleski stood inside a Casella facility where recyclables are sorted, baled and then shipped to manufacturers and other users.
He reiterated he would first “get the lay of the land” if elected to Congress and work with sitting members while proposing legislation tied to veterans and violent crime, rather than what he described as Theriault’s “BS of ‘I’m going to save the world’” and “build the wall.”
Theriault has doubled down on his border-related goals, writing in a Bangor Daily News op-ed that “we should immediately seal up the border and vote out politicians who disagree.”
Soboleski, endorsed by dozens of current and former state lawmakers, also emphasized his status as a military veteran will help win over Republican and independent veterans who have previously supported a Marine veteran in Golden.
But Theriault, with state lawmaker endorsements of his own, had a response while campaigning Thursday around Augusta — an endorsement from Army veteran Travis Mills, a quadruple amputee from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who has become a best-selling author and runs a foundation that assists injured veterans.
Awareness of either candidate was less apparent among residents stopping for a bite to eat or gas in conservative-leaning Androscoggin County towns near the southern edge of the district, such as Mechanic Falls, Minot and Durham. Signs for eggs for sale, not political candidates, are more common on rural roads.
Inside the Durham Get & Go convenience store that is often the busiest spot and main takeout food option in the Androscoggin County town, a worker had nothing to say about Soboleski or Theriault while briefly mentioning concerns with Golden.
Other colleagues, she said, seemed unlikely to vote Tuesday.
