Around New England

Former LePage Press Secretary Leads Maine Second Congressional District Republican Primary

June 23, 2020

Which Republican will take on U.S. Representative Jared Golden in Maine’s Second Congressional District in November?

A poll shows Adrienne Bennett, the former press secretary for former Maine Governor Paul LePage, in the lead with 28 percent support. LePage, also a Republican, was considered by many the most conservative governor in America before he left office in 2019 after being term-limited out.

Eric Brakey, a former Maine state senator, who was the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate in 2018, is polling second with 22 percent support. And Dale Crafts, a member of the Maine House of Representatives from 2008 to 2016, is polling third with 20 percent support.

The survey was performed by We Ask America.

The poll surveyed 400 people in the district and has a margin of error of 4.9 points.

Maine’s Second Congressional District figures to be competitive in November. President Donald Trump won it in 2016, which earned him one of Maine’s four votes in the Electoral College.

The incumbent, Golden, a Democrat, is serving his first term in Congress. In November 2018, the Republican incumbent at the time, Bruce Poliquin, got a plurality of votes in a four-way race. But he didn’t get an outright majority, and that years was the first time Maine implemented ranked-choice voting, which counts lower-choice selections of voters in cases where no candidate gets a majority of votes.

After eliminating the bottom two independent candidates and distributing their voters’ second-choice selections (or, possibly, third-choice selections), state election officials declared Golden the winner.

Ranked choice voting makes a competitive three-way race like the Republican primary hard to predict, since whoever gets the nomination may have to rely on second-choice selections to get it.

The 2020 Maine primary is set for Tuesday, July 14.