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Gwen Walz, the wife of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, will hold Maine events on Friday, including in Bangor for the first major campaign visit to the swing 2nd Congressional District.
What’s next: The events in Portland and Bangor were first reported by the Portland Press Herald and were confirmed by a Maine spokesperson for the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, who assumed her party’s nomination after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race against former President Donald Trump in July.
The times and places of the events have not yet been nailed down. It will be the most notable series of events related to the Harris-Trump campaign since the vice president’s husband, Doug Emhoff, visited southern Maine for a roundtable and fundraiser in July.
What’s the context: Trump twice won the 2nd Congressional District and is favored to win it again, but Democrats have seen some hopeful signs that it could be competitive in what looks like a complete toss-up of a national election.
That includes a surprising poll released last month by the University of New Hampshire finding Harris up 5 percentage points. While it doesn’t match recent internal polls or party expectations, the vice president’s campaign is building out infrastructure there. It has at least one field office open in every Maine county, the campaign has said.
We have not seen much to answer that Trump’s campaign, which has been relying on the Maine Republican Party and surrogates like former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin to make its case. The former president visited the state five times in 2016 and two in 2020, so this may change.
