Around New England

Maine Democratic Congressman In A Bind Over Trump Impeachment

December 17, 2019

While just about every U.S. House of Representatives member from New England is a foregone-conclusion pro-impeachment vote this week, a first-term congressman from Maine is under extraordinary pressure.

U.S. Representative Jared Golden, a Democrat, lost the 2018 congressional race to the Republican incumbent according to vote-counting procedures used in the vast majority of the country, since the Republican got more votes than he did. But Maine now has ranked-choice voting, and since no candidate got a majority of votes, the second-choice selections of voters who voted for two left-of-center fringe candidates put Golden over the top in subsequent re-figuring.

President Donald Trump carried Maine’s Second Congressional District, which Golden now represents, in the 2016 presidential election, by 10 points, 51 to 41.

In other words, Golden is a minority-supported congressman in a district where the president won a majority by a comfortable margin.

Liberal Democrats are putting pressure on Golden to vote for impeachment. Some observers say that if Golden votes against impeachment it could help U.S. Senator Susan Collins, a generally left-of-center Republican who most observers expect will vote against removing Trump from office after the expected trial in the Senate.

Collins is running for re-election to a fifth term in November 2020. She is fiercely opposed by liberals for voting to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, among other things.

Golden is in a pickle, because a vote for impeachment might imperil his re-election chances in the largely rural district that covers central and northern Maine, but a vote against impeachment will enrage anti-Trump Democrats and left-of-center activists who make up much of the party’s base.

Golden had not announced a position on impeachment as of late Monday, December 16. The impeachment vote in the U.S. House is scheduled for Wednesday, December 18.