Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
It was a big decision, but U.S. Rep. Jared Golden said he made it in a “rapid” fashion.
The Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District shook up politics here by announcing he would decline to run for a fifth term in 2026 in a Nov. 5 piece in the Bangor Daily News, citing increasing incivility and political violence that made him rethink threats against him and his family.
It upended the 2nd District race that originally looked set for a Democratic primary between Golden and State Auditor Matt Dunlap ahead of a showdown against former Gov. Paul LePage next November. National Democrats are seeking a new candidate to face LePage, who is generally seen as the favorite to win the seat.
In his first interview since his announcement, the centrist congressman dove into deeper detail Thursday with the Bangor Daily News on what went into his decision and who he leaned on to help make it. Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.
To get right to the point, when exactly did you make the final decision to not seek reelection?
I have never loved politics or the Congress. There’s a lot that I do like about it. I’ve gotten a lot of good out of it, and I hope I’ve done some good. But for me, in September, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, that was a really big moment. I don’t want to leave anyone with the perception that I was a big follower of Charlie Kirk. Honestly, I didn’t even know who Charlie Kirk was until that day.
But as I was reflecting on it for a couple days after it happened, I was looking back at the past year where we have seen two assassination attempts against the president and the lawmakers in Minnesota who were killed and [wounded]. That got me thinking a lot. I’ve been really worried that the media would overfixate on what I said in the op-ed about political violence and that people would come away with the feeling that I’m getting done because I’m scared of being the victim of political violence. That’s not the full story, because I’ve been facing the threat of political violence almost every year since I’ve got here.
I was home during the shutdown. I started to think about, “Does the juice still feel worth the squeeze?” We have a very dysfunctional Congress. Then there’s just the extreme partisan fervor in the country right now. Then the biggest sacrifice here for a lawmaker with a young family is being away from the family.
I was contemplating these things at home with my family, either out loud with them or just talking to myself. I just kept feeling that the answer was I don’t feel that these tradeoffs are adding up for me and my family at this time any longer. I also started to think I’m feeling like maybe I’m not going to be 100% here, and I think that this is a job to represent such a big community of people that deserves 100%.
So I had kind of reached this conclusion by mid-October. I started having conversations with my team. A traditional thing might have been to go home for the holidays and then make an announcement sometime shortly after Christmas to the New Year. You see politicians do this all the time.
I just felt like every day I wait now is taking time away from other people who might want to offer their name forward to represent the people of Maine’s 2nd District. I felt like I kind of had an obligation to just get out there and make the announcement as soon as I could.
Who knew about the decision first?
My wife. [Golden and his wife, Isobel, have a 4-year-old daughter, Rosemary, and a 1-year-old daughter, Shirley.] It’s hard to know exactly what a 4-year-old can understand about this job. She has a concept of where I go. She’s honestly excited about that. But it’s also hard to explain to her what 14 months from now means. Shirley is not really old enough.
My wife has frequently been one of my biggest critics, but she’s also been my biggest supporter, and she believes in me and what I’m doing and in the service, so she had a lot of questions and some hesitancy. It came from a good place in being like, “Are you sure that you don’t think the sacrifices are still worthy of the product and the mission, and do you have more to give?”
But she also has gotten to a place of being like, I was home for the traditional August break, then we have this long shutdown, and she’s like, “It’s pretty nice having you around every day.”
Did the possibility of not running cross your mind last Thanksgiving, when you mentioned the threat that made you and the family move to a hotel?
That did not trigger my thinking, and that was also not the first time that we’ve dealt with threats or that I had my wife and family reside out of the house for a couple days or a week while I was away in Washington.
There’s been a lot of threats. That one was a little more real in that they clearly had my address. Obviously, it was like a dox. There was not actually a bomb, but the police didn’t know that. The frequency and the tenor of them have gotten worse over time.
Not to toot my own horn here like Mr. Tough Guy, but I served the country in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ve had threats since 2019 and 2020. I just took steps to try and protect myself and my family and plotted ahead. So again, that is not the main reason.
You were facing your first primary since 2018. LePage was also ahead of you in at least one public poll. Did either of those things factor into your direction?
Not one bit. When Paul LePage announced [in May], I had several Republicans say, “Oh, you’re probably going to get done or run for governor because you’re probably scared to run against Paul.” My reaction was the opposite. We were looking forward to running against Paul LePage and beating him.
Have you ever observed the difference between public polls and election results? I’ll tell you a story from 2020. These public polls were saying I had a 20-point lead on [Republican] Dale Crafts. I worked with [Democratic pollster] Mark Mellman. He recently passed away. Mark came to the conclusion that my greatest margin of victory would be about 6 points, and we ended up winning by six in a district that Trump can win by as much as 10 points.
No matter what polls have said, I had a massive lead on Matt Dunlap, and then Paul and I were in a neck-and-neck race. I believe I could have won, and I believe I could have lost, and I think that would have been true in any of the previous elections.
Numerous House Republicans have announced plans to step down since you did. Have you spoken with any colleagues who are leaving, and what’s the prevailing attitude among peers about the general direction of Congress right now?
I’ve had some. There’s a lot of people retiring. I don’t talk to them all.
I think it’s safe to say that right now, if the American people think that Congress is dysfunctional, so do most of the members of Congress, and there’s a lot of frustration. This is a pretty bad Congress in regards to how it is functioning. None of the last congresses I’ve been a part of were much better.
How do you view the environment under Trump, and how do you view the direction of the Democratic Party?
It’s pretty hard to project what’s going to happen in the next three years. In December 2019, who saw COVID coming, which literally changed everything? I’m going to hold out hope that Congress will do something on health care, on the permitting reform front, not having another government shutdown. But I’d be crazy to guarantee that the current dysfunction or gridlock is not going to maintain.
I think that the party should be taking more seriously the feedback we got from the American people last election, and not just the last. I think it’s fair to say that the party is really struggling in certain regions. I think we should strive to be a party that can represent any community in America. And I think the Republicans should do that as well.
Democrats should want to be a party that is appealing to the broadest swath of the people and competing in 50 states. I fear that the party has allowed itself to be defined over this last decade as the party that is in opposition to President Trump, and I think it would be better if we offered up a positive vision of what Democrats want to do for the country and the American people.
