‘Increasing Incivility and Plain Nastiness’: Democratic Congressman in Deep-Red Maine District Unexpectedly Abandons Re-Election Bid

A House Democrat representing a deep-red district in Maine says he will abandon his campaign for re-election just months after announcing he would seek a fifth term in 2026. Congressman Jared Golden, who was once seen as the Democrats’ best chance to win the state’s U.S. Senate race next year, says politics has worn thin on him.Mr. Golden flipped a red seat blue in the 2018 midterm election, and has represented the district ever since. He won re-election last year on the same day President Trump won his district by nearly ten points. “I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community — behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves,” Mr. Golden wrote in an opinion piece for the Bangor Daily News. He announced in May that he would run again in 2026, though he says the government shutdown and the well-being of his family have been weighing on him. Mr. Golden also cited political violence as a reason to step aside. “Up to now, my daughters have been insulated from the worst of it by their youth. But as my oldest daughter reaches school age, the threats, the intolerance and hate that often dominate political culture, and my long absences, will be more keenly felt,” he explained. “As a father, I have to consider whether the good I can achieve outweighs everything my family endures as a result.”Mr. Golden noted that his family had to spend Thanksgiving Day in a hotel room last year because of a bomb threat made against him. He criticized his own party for forcing the United States to reach a “grim” milestone — the longest government shutdown in American history. Mr. Golden, who voted for the Republicans’ clean funding extension in September, says the “unnecessary, harmful shutdown and the nonstop, hyperbolic accusations and recriminations by both sides reveal just how broken Congress has become.”In his announcement, he laments the fact that the Republican Party has been taken over by successive “waves of extremists.” Mr. Golden says he wishes the GOP were more like his fellow Mainers, Senator Olympia Snowe or Defense Secretary Bill Cohen. He says he sees his fellow Democrats becoming more like the Tea Party and the MAGA movement. “We’re allowing the most extreme, pugilistic elements of our party to call the shots,” Mr. Golden writes. “Just look again at the shutdown. For as long as I can remember, we have opposed shutting down the government over policy disputes.”“We criticized Republicans for taking hostages this way. But this year, reeling from the losses of the last election, too many Democrats have given into demands that we use the same no-holds barred, obstructionary tactics as the GOP,” Mr. Golden argues. After his time as a Marine, a state lawmaker, and now a member of Congress, Mr. Golden — at the age of 43 — says he wants a new generation of leaders to take over. He specifically argues that it should be someone of his generation or younger to take his seat next, whether Democrat or a Republican. In his retirement announcement, Mr. Golden calls out the Democratic candidate for his seat, state auditor Matt Dunlap, who was challenging him in the primary, and the leading Republican candidate, Paul LePage, who served as Maine’s governor for eight years. Mr. Golden says both men are “a far cry from being standard bearers of the generations that will inherit the legacy of today’s Congress.” Mr. Dunlap is 60 and Mr. LePage is 77. “I don’t fear losing. What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning,” Mr. Golden wrote. “Simply put, what I could accomplish in this increasingly unproductive Congress pales in comparison to what I could do in that time as a husband, a father and a son,” he concluded.

‘Increasing Incivility and Plain Nastiness’: Democratic Congressman in Deep-Red Maine District Unexpectedly Abandons Re-Election Bid

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