Exotic Dancers, Tax Liens & Debauchery: Maine’s CD2 Republican Primary Is Getting Fiery

Maine’s Second Congressional District is big — 27,326 square miles, encompassing what passes in Maine for cities, Lewiston-Auburn and Bangor, as well as the vast North Maine Woods, the mountainous riverlands of western Maine, and the rambling downeast coast. But even all that space is not enough for the ambitions and sharp elbows of the two first-term Republican state lawmakers now locked in a bitter primary fight over who will get a chance to knock off the incumbent Democrat, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden.

Former Republican President Donald Trump carried the rural district by ten points against Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by seven points against Joe Biden in 2020. Unlike some parts of the state, American flags still outnumber rainbow flags and Ukraine flags in northern Maine. Homemade billboards advertising support for Trump are outnumbered only by similar works of art espousing “Let’s Go Brandon!”

By conventional wisdom, ME-CD2 has no business being blue. Golden only won the seat in 2018 thanks to the Democrat-backed innovation of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV). Despite losing to Poliquin under the traditional rules, that special RCV magic allowed him to be named the winner. But Golden has carved an idiosyncratic path for a Democratic Member of Congress, appealing to military veterans and Union Halls while eschewing the insane progressive hysteria of his colleagues on the Left. That’s part of the reason he’s managed to expand his share of the vote in subsequent elections.

However, 2024 is shaping up to be one of Golden’s most difficult re-election challenges.

The Cook Political Report last year listed the CD-2 race as a Democrat Toss Up. The most recent polling, published by Critical Insights (now known as “Digital Research”) last fall, showed 35 percent of registered CD-2 voters disapproved of Golden’s performance, while just 27 percent approved, a significant decline from the 56 percent of voters who approved of his performance in the fall of 2020. According to those numbers, Golden is the least popular federal office-holder in Maine.

The perception that Golden is more vulnerable than ever may be contributing to the heightened tensions between the Republicans who are jockeying for a chance to take him on. Everyone can see that the CD-2 primary this year is different than figuring out which sacrificial lamb will get a chance to lose to perennial powerhouses like U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King. There’s a sense that whoever wins the primary may have excellent odds of joining a Republican House Majority and, perhaps, a re-elected Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. The candidate who plays their cards correctly could win the opportunity to create an enduring political dynasty of their own in northern Maine.

But they’ll have to win the June 11 primary first.

Rep. Austin Theriault (R-Fort Kent) and Rep. Mike Soboleski (R-Phillips) are both Maine natives, and that’s about where the similarities between the candidates and their campaigns end. Last year, Theriault challenged Soboleski to at least three debates, a challenge Soboleski immediately accepted. Full disclosure: the Maine Wire is under consideration to moderate at least one of the primary debates. If the recent sparring is any indication, those debates could be explosive.

Theriault, 30, is a former NASCAR driver who entered Maine politics in 2022 with a victory in Fort Kent’s State House District 1, trouncing the Democratic candidate by nearly 40 points in a year that saw many Maine Republicans underperform. Although Theriault no longer competes professionally, he runs a small business that advises up-and-coming drivers out of his Aroostook County garage.

The Fort Kent native’s campaign almost immediately attracted the kind of national attention and legitimacy of which most candidates can only dream. Shortly after he announced his intention to run, a Bangor Daily News story quoted sources from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) saying Theriault was effectively the chosen candidate of Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), the NRCC Chair. He also has the unique distinction of being the only Maine congressional candidate in history to receive the endorsement of not one but two sitting U.S. House Speakers.

Soboleski, 67, announced his intention to challenge Golden in August via an interview with the Maine Wire. Although the Franklin County Republican’s stint in Augusta is just as short as Theriault’s, his professional résumé is longer — and more colorful. Soboleski served in the U.S. Marine Corps and later used the G.I. Bill to attend University of Maine at Machias. After starting and selling his fitness equipment business, he tried his hand at running a nightclub, Pirate’s Cove Tavern in Augusta (more on that later), and briefly sold cars.

Eventually he moved to New York to pursue a career as an actor and a stuntman under the stage name Michael Arthur. Soboleski made hundreds of appearances on the hit TV show Law & Order, and had small roles in movies starring Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise, Nicholas Cage, and Jack Nicholson. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, Soboleski has said he volunteered with the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit to assist with search and rescue efforts. Now semi-retired, he won House District 73 in 2022, a district that includes the famous Sugarloaf Mountain Resort.

For the first five months of the primary campaign, Theriault and Soboleski mostly competed through press releases and fundraising reports, rarely offering criticism of each other. Both endeavored to court Trump loyalists. Soboleski was the only Republican lawmaker who filed an intervention letter allowing him to speak in Trump’s defense when Secretary of State Shenna Bellows held hearings for her constitutionally dubious effort to block the Republican candidate from Maine’s ballot. Theriault has issued pro-Trump statements and touted endorsements from well-known MAGA-friendly Republicans in Washington, D.C.

Theriault, who has outraised Soboleski nearly ten-to-one just from Maine-based donors, has presented himself as the only candidate with the financial resources to run a credible campaign. Soboleski, while struggling to raise money, has touted a broader base of endorsements current and former local GOP elected officials — 42 as of Thursday. He’s also cast himself as the more conservative candidate based State House voting records. On policy, the two men have aired differences over taxes, drugs, prostitution, and green energy. But at recent Maine GOP caucuses, the intra-party fight went from merely competitive to a full-blown feud that some Maine Republican insiders fear could work to the advantage of the Democratic incumbent.

The northern Maine race is attracting plenty of national attention, thanks in part to Theriault receiving early support from both former GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and current GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Although Trump has yet to visit Maine this cycle or weigh in on the CD-2 primary, his presence looms large in the race. Trump signs and flags still speckle the district that he won big in both 2016 and 2020, and both CD-2 candidates are vying — in public and behind the scenes — to claim the Maine MAGA mantle. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that the campaign tactics have turned thoroughly Trumpian with 119 days remaining before Maine Republicans will determine which man will take on Golden in the fall.

THERIAULT V. SOBOLESKI

In Washington County, at a GOP meeting in Calais last Thursday, Theriault opened his brief stump speech by reading from his iPhone a litany of pointed accusations against Soboleski, studded with the fruit of professional opposition research. Theriault accused Soboleski of reaching for falsehoods because he was losing the money race, of misleading voters about Theriault’s voting record, and of not telling the truth about his own record.

“My opponent’s getting desperate because his campaign is getting low on money, so he’s aggressively lying, and it’s backfiring,” said Theriault.

“Unfortunately, you can’t trust what my opponent is saying,” he said. “My opponent is not being truthful.”

Soboleski’s lying had grown so egregious, Theriault claimed, that even Republicans like Sen. Matt Pouliot (R-Kennebec) Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had endorsed him because “people are tired of this campaign.”

In additional to the deceitful campaigning, Theriault went on to say that Soboleski had five unresolved tax liens against him while serving in the legislature, before accusing him of “failing to tell voters that he owned a bar that hosted male exotic dancers back in the 1990s.”

Theriault’s campaign advisors and supporters, in interviews with the Maine Wire after the Calais event, framed the Washington County fusillade as a reasonable and proportional response to Soboleski’s own attacks six days earlier in Waldo County, as well as attacks on Theriault in private. In particular, several Theriault supporters claimed that Soboleski has been privately suggesting Theriault is not conservative, especially when it comes to abortion. In their view, Soboleski was the first candidate to buck an unwritten rule of GOP caucuses: no friendly fire. Soboleski, they say, shot first, and Theriault was only responding in kind.

That inside baseball was probably lost on the Mainers assembled for the Calais GOP meeting. Most of them would have been unfamiliar with the behind-the-scenes dynamics of the race. None of them would have been familiar with what Soboleski had said six days earlier because no video of the speech was ever published — until now.

In video obtained by the Maine Wire of Soboleski’s Feb. 2 caucus speech, which Theriault said prompted his response, Soboleski began by saying that he would not make personal attacks on Theriault’s character. However, he did draw pointed distinctions between the two candidates over issues they voted on in the State Legislature, arguing that their voting records show he’s the more stalwart conservative.

“I would never attack a man’s character, but I can discuss voting records, and what they mean,” said Soboleski.

On voting records, Soboleski touted his 100 percent rating from the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), contrasting his ideological purity to Theriault’s more moderate rating.

“There are 61 of us that were rated down there. I am number one with a 100 percent rating. My congressional opponent is number 60. The second worst conservative voting record in the house right now,” said Soboleski.

(Note: CPAC — an organization that has found itself in a fair amount of scandal lately — appears to have confused Austin Theriault with “Timothy Theriault” in their 2023 scorecard. A review of the ratings that CPAC attributes to “Timothy Theriault” shows that those votes do not align with how Austin Theriault voted. Sloppy work on CPAC’s part. However, judging by the key votes the group used to create their ratings, the younger Theriault would have ranked as “less conservative” than most other Republican state lawmakers. It’s worth noting that the CPAC ratings typically punish more libertarian members of the Republican Party. Republican political insiders told the Maine Wire CPAC ratings, like most ratings from outside groups, ought to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.)

On four specific bills considered in Augusta last year, Soboleski said, he and Theriault took opposite sides, including a bill to phase out the income tax, a bill to create so-called “safe” injection sites, a bill related to prostitution, and a major wind power development in Aroostook County.

On taxes, Soboleski was right. Theriault voted against LD 835, a bill from Rep. David Boyer (R-Poland) that aimed to phase out Maine’s state income tax. He also correctly pegged Theriault as one of the Republicans who supported the controversial “Aroostook Renewable Energy Gateway.” That bill opened the door for the proposed King Pine Wind Power development and the high-capacity transmission line that was recently abandoned by LS Power. Theriault was also a Republican supporter of a bill to study whether creating “safe” injection sites will help Maine’s fight against the raging opioid epidemic, an idea Golden also backed as a state lawmaker.

On the prostitution front, things get a little murkier.

“My opponent voted for legalizing prostitution in the state of Maine, decriminalizing it,” said Soboleski.

“I don’t believe that’s the direction we need to go in. I believe that we need to stay with our morals, and with our with our Christian values, and debauchery is not the right way to go,” he said.

Although Theriault did vote in favor of a bill to decriminalize prostitution, so did many other conservative and libertarian lawmakers, including House Republican Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham (R-Winter Harbor), Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn) and Rep. John Andrews (R-Paris). Andrews is among the state lawmakers who have endorsed Soboleski’s campaign.

The goal of the bill was not to erect Nevada-style brothels in Bangor and Bar Harbor, but to avoid further punishing victims of human trafficking, and to place the focus on those who exploit sex workers, i.e. the pimps and johns. Rather than pro-prostitution or pro-debauchery, it would be more accurate to say Theriault’s vote was anti-human trafficking.

Yet if Soboleski is guilty of stretching the truth to paint Theriault as wanting to bring Red Light Districts and hookers in fishnet stockings to Maine, then Theriault, too, is guilty of creatively interpreting the facts to say Soboleski supports higher taxes.

In his Calais remarks, Theriault implored his audience to look up LD 1967, saying that the legislative record around this bill would show his opponent was a hypocrite on taxes. LD 1967 was an obscure bill about municipal franchise agreements and local access broadcasts. Lobbyists for the telecom industry and some Republicans dubbed the bill a “streaming tax” because it would include new municipal fees on services like Netflix.

When it came time for an enactment vote, Soboleski joined Theriault in voting against LD 1967, but he did cast an earlier vote in favor of accepting an amended version that included the fee increase. He said he assented to the first vote because of input from WSKI-TV, the small Carrabasset Valley TV service in his district. But he ultimately opposed LD 1967 on the final vote after learning more about the streaming tax.

Theriault’s claim, while technically true, leaves out the final vote. It’s hardly something that can substantiate the allegation that a Republican primary candidate is actually a tax-and-spend liberal, especially when the person making the allegation voted against a more clear-cut GOP bill that aimed to get rid of Maine’s state income tax. Thin as it was, the LD 1967 vote did provide Theriault with the pretext to pull some skeletons out of Soboleski’s closet.

“He voted for this tax increase while having not one, two, three, four, but five tax liens against himself,” Theriault told the crowd of Washington County Republicans.

Soboleski — who can be heard in the video exclaiming, “I do?” — does have a lengthy list of records under his name at the Kennebec Registry of Deeds dating from 1991 to 1998. A review of those records shows that Soboleski went through a divorce in 1990, had multiple liens for unpaid taxes and municipal bills in the following years, as well as a foreclosure in 1994 and some small claims settlements. Those records include 18 liens for unpaid municipal, county, state, or federal taxes, which were later satisfied and discharged. However, the records also indicate that five liens, all stemming from two businesses Soboleski owned during the Bill Clinton Administration, were not resolved or discharged but were forgiven years later.

Theriault, both in Calais and through his campaign staff, has said the records, especially the five unsatisfied liens related to Soboleski’s businesses show that Soboleski “cannot claim to be a fiscal conservative.”

Soboleski, in a statement to the Maine Wire, brushed off the accusation.

“These tax liens are 29-32 years old, were either settled with interest and penalties or forgiven decades ago, and are now meaningless,” Soboleski said.

“Unsatisfied taxes, including business taxes, are withheld from the debtor’s annual tax returns until satisfied. My tax returns have never been garnished. I have paid my taxes every year since then and have no outstanding State or IRS tax debt,” he said.

On the foreclosure, Soboleski chalked it up to the fallout out his divorce a few years earlier.

One of the business tax liens, though, points to the second of Theriault’s attacks. Namely, that Soboleski used his Pirate’s Cove Tavern nightclub on Water Street in Augusta to host exotic male dancers.

“He’s tried to lecture me and my colleagues on morality, sex and drugs while failing to tell voters that he owned a bar that hosted male exotic dancers back in the 1990s,” Theriault told Calais Republicans.

“I wouldn’t call that family values,” he said.

The salacious claim about dancers, as Soboleski admits, is true.

According to an old Kennebec Journal newspaper clipping the Theriault campaign has shopped around to various media outlets, Soboleski’s nightclub once ran a “Mardi Gras nights” promotion that included both male and female exotic dancers.

The Theriault campaign views the Pirate’s Cove promotion as a devastating blow to Soboleski’s credibility as a social conservative, something that undercuts his allegation that Theriault is soft on issues that matter to conservative Christians.

“Mike is falsely accusing me of not being socially conservative because I voted to raise penalties on pimps and lessen penalties on people who are frequently victims of sex trafficking,” Theriault said in a statement.

“The movie Sound of Freedom made it clear that we need to help trafficking victims and go after the perpetrators. Given the concern that many Republican voters have with the assault on traditional values, conservative voters should know that Mike hired male and female exotic dancers at his bar,” he said. “In fact, Mike made his goal for his club very explicit: ‘The French Quarter has the most exotic shows and we’re trying to simulate the French Quarter and Mardi Gras with exotic stage shows.'”

“Those aren’t the traditional values I was raised with,” he said.

But Soboleski is not running away from the club he ran as a younger man, and he laughed off Theriault’s comments in a phone interview with the Maine Wire.

“Nightclubs in the early 90’s were fun,” Soboleski said. “A male dance troupe touring the state performed at my club one time. The club did not permit nudity and they performed their routine in bathing suits. We had Bikini and wet T-Shirt contests too!”

In a written statement, Soboleski reiterated his more conservative voting record, again referencing the CPAC scorecard, and said Theriault was pointing to tax records and nightclub promotions from 30 years ago “out of desperation” and “to damage my reputation.”

“Establishment Austin and his elite DC campaign fail to connect with everyday Mainers,” he said.

“I’ve been through hard times, struggled to keep a roof over my head and sometimes even to eat. I understand life can be hard and I’m fighting every day to ensure all Mainer’s can live their best life,” he said.

DIRTY POOL OR POLITICS AS USUAL?

On paper, Theriault’s money lead looks conclusive. He raised an impressive $331,000 last year, according to his Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing, with most of that coming from Maine donors. His prolific fundraising drew donations from quite a few Theriaults, but also from well-known Maine names like Linda Bean, David Quirk, Shawn Moody, Herb Sargent, Thomas Sturgeon, and Tim Dysart, to name a few. The big haul surprised many longtime Maine politicos. Bolstering those locally raised funds, Theriault found support from GOP committees, including committees controlled by House GOP leadership in DC. The day he filed his 2023 report with the FED, Theriault sent out an email saying he’d banked more than a half-a-million total for his campaign. That massive haul has already sent a signal to GOP political insiders that he might be the only candidate in the race who can be competitive against the Maine Democrats’ fundraising juggernaut — if anyone can.

So why bother jumping into the mud with opposition research from the late 1900s? The escalation of attacks on Theriault’s part — whether a proportional response or something else — is a risky move. At least one pro-Theriault veteran of Maine politics said they’d have preferred Theriault avoid the attacks in Calais. Lashing out risks raising Soboleski’s profile and making Theriault look like the kind undisciplined candidate Maine progressives could easily attack as not ready for primetime.

For those inclined to support Soboleski, three-decade old tax liens and exotic dancers seem thin gruel for an attack ad. But Theriault’s campaign team insists these items are substantive issues that voters should know about. More importantly, they believe Golden’s campaign would weaponize both in a general election, dominating the airwaves with accusations that Soboleski is a deadbeat, tax-cheat nightclub owner.

Any analysis must also consider that the Republican Party of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney was shot and buried with the ascendency of Donald Trump in 2015. Boasts and attacks centered on family values and debauchery may prove meaningless, laughable even, considering both CD-2 candidates are pursuing support from a debaucherous, thrice-married Republican Party leader who grew famous running casinos and stripclubs.

Then there’s the way that Trump rewrote the playbook for handling the kind of political slings and arrows that once proved crippling if not fatal for GOP candidates. While Bush’s 2000 campaign was imperiled when a Maine newspaper revealed his 1976 DUI charge, Trump has proven immune to myriad scandalous charges from his past. Where Mitt Romney once flailed as the Boston Globe harangued him for strapping his dog Seamus to the roof of the family car during a road trip, Trump survived the infamous Billy Bush tape by writing it off as “locker room talk.”

How will Maine Republicans react to the fiery exchanges between their candidates, especially if things escalate during the as-of-yet unscheduled primary debates? It’s a question that can only be answered on Election Day. But to glean some insight, the Maine Wire talked with multiple longtime Maine political consultants, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the dynamics of the race, about the new tensions between the Republican candidates, and their chances at defeating Golden in the fall.

One Republican consultant who has worked several congressional campaigns in Maine said Theriault’s decision to attack aggressively could play well with Republican voters who are looking, especially in the Trump Era, for fighters.

“I kind of like to see these guys going after each other. That’s what the primary is supposed to be,” he said. “You’re supposed to get in there and have a sparring partner and whoever comes out as the best is the best candidate to go into a tougher general election.”

“Republican base voters want fighters. That’s what I think the biggest attraction initially with Soboleski would be. He’s an older, white, middle-class dude. He’s grumpy and he’s a fighter,” he said. “In the age of Trump and LePage and everybody else, that’s the magnetic personality the Republican base voters want.”

“Austin seems like a nice young guy. And so if he’s taking the gloves off, and he’s throwing punches at his opponent, I wonder if it’s him just sharpening his personality up a little bit to be able to be the fighter for the base,” he said. “That is probably what most voters instinctively want right now, the Republican voters.”

On the tax liens and male strippers, the GOP hand said those issues could be white noise thanks to Trump’s own past or they could be significant issues that undercut Soboleski’s claims to fiscal conservatism and family values.

“It all depends on how he responds,” he said. “Like, what is his explanation?”

Another conservative consultant said Maine races, especially primaries, usually depend less on esoteric issues and voting records than on voters’ overall impression of a candidate, developed through in-person interactions as well as advertising and debates.

“In the end, Maine people generally go with the person that aligns with their overall values. At some point, whoever Austin is and whoever Soboleski is is going to come through. I think the big thing is, who more aligns with humans in the second district, is it Mike or is it Austin? My gut is that it’s Austin,” he said. “He represents hope, the future.”

The mudslinging may seem like a new development in Maine Republican politics, the consultant said, but these kind of attacks were commonplace in the 2010 free-for-all for the GOP gubernatorial primary, in which seven Republican candidates were looking to destroy each other by any means.

“There was a lot of stuff being slung back and forth,” he said. “But Paul LePage just rung true with Maine voters. Paul seemed like the real deal, and people just glommed on to him.”

A similar dynamic played out in 2018 during the three-way gubernatorial primary between former Androscoggin Senator Garrett Mason, LePage DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew, and businessman Shawn Moody.

The consultant, like others interviewed for this story, said the money factor is significant.

“Everybody says money doesn’t matter. If you’re on Channel 2, 5, 7, and 8 in the last two weeks of a campaign, you’re picking up a lot of people,” he said, noting that many voters only tune into a race in the last few weeks of campaigning.

“If this is a campaign that spends its money on TV in the final two weeks, that’s a huge advantage,” he said. “If it’s a campaign that pisses away money and has no money in the bank because it bought t-shirts, then you’ve got a problem.”

“The money in the end matters. Maine has an older population. The morning news and six o’clock news matter,” he said. “They’re watching it.”

A third GOP consultant with ties to Maine disputed the polling showing Golden as vulnerable in this cycle, theorizing that his military service and ties to the Lewiston area had carved out a swathe of loyal voters who might otherwise lean toward Republican candidates.

“I think [viable CD-2 Republican candidates] have to have serious military experience in your background, I think that that is absolutely critical or something equivalent to that. It has to be equivalent or stronger than Jared Golden, and more than likely stronger because he kind of already owns that bucket,” he said.

“You got a guy with Jared Golden who has who’s played that card really effectively and built his his bio around it,” he said.

Regardless of how the candidates’ criticisms of each other play in a primary election, the consultant said, all of it will provide useful ammunition to the Golden campaign over the summer and into the fall — and Golden won’t ever have to use the material himself thanks to Internet-based innovations in microtargeting with digital advertising.

A negative advertisement hitting Soboleski for hiring exotic dancers, for example, could be targeted at more conservative independent voters in CD-2 while obscuring who is behind it. A Golden-aligned group could target, say, readers of the Maine Wire with ads appearing to criticize a candidate from a right-leaning perspective, while intending to push voters to Golden’s corner.

“You won’t even know that they’re doing it,” one consultant said. “They’ll reach out to 12,000, 15,000 people, very effectively, without anybody even knowing they’re doing it.”

“And the same thing for Austin,” he said.

“Don’t think the liberals won’t twist his voting record around.”

IS GOLDEN VULNERABLE?

Regardless of what the Cook Political Report or pollsters say, Golden will enter the general election with massive warchest, having endured no similarly bruising primary. He closed out 2023 with $1.4 million cash on hand and no debt. As an incumbent Democrat, he could easily raise another $3M-$4M. Given his seat on the House Armed Services Committee, lobbyists will be eager to donate. Not to mention the ideological money that will flow if CD-2 remains perceived as a competitive race that could determine who controls the House of Representatives. Golden already counts among his donors multiple members of the Soros family. Plus, the Democratic committees that will spend money in Maine are flush with cash compared to their Republican counterparts.

But unlike previous years, Golden must overcome some lightning-rod national issues. Specifically, he face problems due to unprecedented levels of illegal immigration and the national unpopularity of the Democratic Party’s standard bearer, President Joe Biden. Then there’s Golden’s reactionary flip-flop on so-called “assault weapons” following the Oct. 25 mass shooting in Lewiston. Golden, who himself owns one of the firearms he now wants to ban, represents a district that has more guns than voters. Although there was no explicit connection mentioned, the Cook Political Report’s decision to move CD-2 into the “Democrat Toss Up” column of their congressional analysis came within weeks of Golden’s reversal.

Golden has diligently tried to distance himself from Biden’s toxic brand, especially on student loan cancellation, open borders, and domestic federal spending. He’s introduced his own legislation to close the open border, but those efforts have gone nowhere. Following Biden’s absurd press conference last week, Golden seemed to acknowledge that the Commander-in-Chief is non compis mentis, but he also played a game of whataboutism in questioning whether Trump was also too old for the job.

“Being president is difficult, and I have concerns about the demands of the office on anyone at the stage of life that President Biden and former President Trump are in,” Golden said.

On issues after issue, Golden has resisted the neurotic wokism that dominates the progressive fringes of his party (see, e.g. Rep. Chellie Pingree) while trying, often unsuccessfully, to avoid the ire of young left-wing activists. At the same time, he’s backed much of the old-school tax-and-spend liberalism characterized Biden’s major spending bills, while using key votes to project a fiscally responsible image. But, as with milquetoast statements to media, the distinction between voting for the ridiculously-named “Inflation Reduction Act” but against bizarrely-alliterative “Build Back Better” might be lost on voters.

Ultimately, the outcome of the CD2 general election may have more to do with twists and turns of the presidential election.

If Biden’s actually the Democratic candidate in November, that picture of Golden palling around with POTUS on Marine One will be worth more than a thousand words.

Plus, you never know what that vaunted Theriault opposition research team may discover if they focus their investigative talents on Golden, and how he’s spent his time in Washington, DC.