Jordan Wood is on the move.
By switching from running for the U.S. Senate to now seeking U.S. Rep. Jared Golden’s seat that will be open next year in Maine’s 2nd District, the 36-year-old Democrat is also planning to move from a 1st District seaside home in the Bristol summer enclave of Round Pond — which his husband bought for $2.1 million in 2021 — back to near where Wood grew up in Lewiston.
Wood is hardly the first Maine candidate in recent years to relocate to the 2nd District while seeking higher office. The pattern is political opportunity, with candidates from either party viewing the rural district in the northern half of the state as up for grabs. U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree has maintained a solid hold on the more progressive 1st District to the south.
Former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin ran out of an Oakland residence to win the 2nd District in 2014 while also owning a waterfront mansion in the 1st District town of Georgetown. He then relocated to the Bangor area for his failed attempt to unseat Golden in 2022 after a redistricting proposal from Republicans took Oakland out of the 2nd District.
Conservationist Lucas St. Clair was living in Portland when he kicked off his 2018 primary against Golden, buying a home in Hampden 10 days after that. Property records show that he sold it in 2020, while Poliquin offloaded his 2nd District home in 2024.
And former Gov. Paul LePage is a Lewiston native and former Waterville mayor who moved to Florida after leaving the Blaine House in 2018, moved back to Maine in 2020 and went back to Florida after losing a comeback effort to Gov. Janet Mills in 2022. He is now using an Augusta address in his bid to win the 2nd District seat back for Republicans.
LePage will face the winner of the Democratic primary in June that currently features State Auditor Matt Dunlap of Old Town and Wood, though former Senate President Troy Jackson of Allagash has been approached about leaving the gubernatorial race to run for the 2nd District.
Wood, a former Capitol Hill operative, said during a Thursday evening town hall-style event in Bangor that he and his husband were planning on looking at houses over the weekend in the Lewiston-Auburn area. Wood, who has a 10-month-old daughter, said the 2nd District “is home.”
“I know the people [and] the issues, and they’re a lot of the same issues that voters are concerned about in the Senate race too,” added Wood, who joined the race to unseat U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Caribou, on a progressive platform in April but was languishing in polls behind Mills and political newcomer Graham Platner.
LePage, who was previously mayor of Waterville, and his wife had been living in Ormond Beach, Florida, where the former governor had registered to vote in recent years, but LePage registered to vote in Augusta in April before announcing his 2nd District bid.
His address is an apartment in a commercial building down the street from the State House that is owned by a company linked to 2018 Republican gubernatorial nominee Shawn Moody, whose eponymous collision repair shop chain has a location next door. LePage lived in the 1st District town of Edgecomb in the 1st District for his 2022 gubernatorial race that Mills won by double digits.
LePage campaign spokesperson Brent Littlefield said in a Friday statement the former governor “has spent every single year living in Maine spring, summer and fall since he became a snowbird like many Maine retirees, living out of state for a period of the year.”
Littlefield reiterated that LePage voted in Augusta during the Nov. 4 election. He did not answer a question about where LePage intends to permanently reside if he wins next year’s election.
One candidate who has not moved in and out of the district is Dunlap, a former state lawmaker, Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine leader and secretary of state. He grew up in the Town Hill village of Bar Harbor, moving to Old Town to attend the University of Maine.
“My move to Old Town was supposed to be temporary,” Dunlap said Thursday. “I moved here for one semester as a graduate student in 1989, and I’ve been there ever since.”
BDN writer Kasey Turman contributed to this report.
