LEWISTON — There isn’t another congressional Democrat in the country who has managed to win more races in Trump territory than U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Lewiston.

Though Republican Donald Trump has cruised to easy wins in Maine’s hardscrabble 2nd Congressional District three times in a row – brushing aside Hillary Clinton in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024 — Golden has succeeded in holding a district eyed hungrily by the GOP.

It’s a startling enough outcome that Politico proclaimed that Golden is “on the cusp of becoming a power broker” akin to retiring U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who has touted Golden as the person he calls “to get some sanity back” on Capitol Hill.

This year, in one of the costliest races in the land, Golden “just barely threaded the needle” to squirm past Republican Austin Theriault to claim the seat in a fourth straight election cycle, as Karl Trautman, a political science instructor at Central Maine Community College, put it.

For Golden, the narrow win is a confirmation of a strategy he announced last summer in a speech that most clearly laid out his view of politics.

“We can be proud progressive conservatives, defying the laws of physics in D.C. politics and forming a covenant with the true American majority,” he told a gathering in the nation’s capital called WelcomeFest.

“Our success will depend on two things: First is our commitment to place-based politics, which transcends partisanship and defeats extremism. Second is by rejecting the unnatural left-right political spectrum that stokes division and polarization,” Golden said.

Putting those principles into practice, though, is tough in the supercharged political environment in which both Golden and Trump operate.

After all, the two men were both successful in Maine’s 2nd District with wildly different approaches on the campaign trail.

Trump is an outsized personality, bombastic and sometimes crude, always craving attention and demanding loyalty.

Golden is, well, nothing like that.

Put Trump in a crowded room and he will grab the spotlight and start talking. Do the same with Golden and he might just stand in a corner, watching quietly and listening carefully, barely noticeable in a flannel shirt.

Yet despite his stylistic and policy differences from Trump, Golden’s approach worked. He won over enough Trump voters to keep his job.

The root of Golden’s victory “is the same as the secret to success of many elected officials over the years: he understands his constituents and his district,” University of Maine professor Mark Brewer said.

“He read the room,” Trautman said.

Brewer, who teaches political science, said Golden “strongly advocates for his constituents’ interests and positions on the issues that really matter to them, and he has earned their trust.”

“While this may seem like a simple formula, it is difficult to successfully pull off,” especially in such a closely-divided district, Brewer said.

But, he said, Golden has shown “a willingness to act in a bipartisan manner and has developed a record and a persona that set himself (apart) from the stereotypical national Democrat.”

“Nothing delivers a message quite like winning does,” Mario Moretto, Golden’s communications director, said.

ROOTED IN COMMUNITY

Golden’s ancestors lived in Lewiston, a place he described as “an industrial town that for generations was dominated by textile mills and shoe factories but lost those jobs to globalization.”

As a result, his father’s family moved to Winthrop. By the time Golden was born 42 years ago, his parents ran a small golf course in Leeds, which Golden remembered as “a dairy farm town back then but today the cows are mostly gone.”

As a child, he said, “I couldn’t tell you which of the farmers in town were Republicans or Democrats, or whether my parents’ customers voted Red or Blue.”

“In fact, most of them weren’t either,” Golden told WelcomeFest. He pointed out that when he was 10 “a guy with big ears named Ross Perot won the town I grew up in” and almost won the 2nd District, too.

Perot, a presidential contender for the Reform Party who warned about exploding federal spending and deficits, “made a lot of good points,” Golden added.

In any case, Golden said, “what bound everyone together when I was growing up in Leeds wasn’t a political identity. It was the hours and years working together, and spending time together. The time spent in diner booths, church pews, on stumps around a fire and school gymnasium bleachers. What connected us was the place, the people, and the way of life. It was our culture — our local culture.”

For Golden, any successful politics must be rooted in that same sense of community.

“I have always run as a Democrat,” the lawmaker said. “I believe in the power and necessity of unions, in equality and civil rights.”

“But I won a lot of votes from Republicans and independents, too, and from Democrats who no longer feel much in common with the Democratic Party,” Golden observed.

“I believe they vote for me because they know I’m one of them. I’m from where they’re from. I live like them, talk like them. Always have.”

A ‘PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE’

Golden insists he is not a liberal, not a conservative and, perhaps most telling, not a moderate.

He said the “constant narrative telling us the political spectrum” is a form of shorthand he believes “is far more harmful than illuminating.”

“The political spectrum does not exist in nature,” Golden said. “There’s nothing real and tangible” about it “because it’s a construct of the human mind, and it is in constant flux, constant change, and it means different things place to place, country to country, and era to era.”

Golden said the incessant effort to divide politics into right and left merely encourages polarization and rhetoric that “gets hotter and hotter” to the point where it feels like there’s an existential split.

As a result, he said, it turns people “with whom you had good faith disagreements into sworn enemies” and can splinter lifelong friendships, even families.

But, Golden said, “left-right politics ignore the complexities of actual voters.”

“Each of us has progressive and conservative impulses alike,” the lawmaker said. “These are not in tension — and building a political system that puts them in opposition to each other is a recipe for disaster.”

His own answer is to call his politics “progressive conservatism,” a way to span the divide or split the difference.

Golden offered an example of his progressive conservatism: “I have told voters for years that I believe we should raise taxes on the wealthy to help cut the deficit. When I discuss this with voters, most of them agree” it’s a sound, mainstream policy.

But a partisan political system “doesn’t know what to do with a proposal like this,” Golden said.

“Progressives who normally favor raising taxes on the rich would reject it, convinced that any concern with the deficit is a dog whistle for cuts to social insurance programs for the poor,” he said.

Conservatives, on the other hand, “would oppose it because their devotion to fiscal responsibility ends at raising taxes on the wealthy even to balance the budget and save the nation from fiscal ruin.”

‘PROGRESSIVE ECONOMICS, CULTURAL CONSERVATISM’

Golden said his position, distilled to a phrase, is “progressive economics, cultural conservatism.”

The progressive economics piece is straightforward, to Golden: “Tax the rich to cut the deficit. Pro-business and antitrust. Corporate welfare is bad, direct payments to families are good. Financialization of the economy is sometimes bad, protective tariffs are sometimes good.”

But “cultural conservatism” is a little tougher to grasp.

“What I am referring to is a political fault line I believe most Democrats don’t even know exists,” Golden said.

He pointed out as examples, “the backlash among my constituents to climate change policies, like electric vehicle mandates and higher energy prices,” student debt, concerns about crime and worries about immigration across “an unsecured southern border.”

Golden said some Democrats say they “aren’t real issues” and people shouldn’t be so concerned about them. But, he said, that’s the wrong approach.

“Populist energy comes from the vast majority of Americans who don’t fit neatly on the political spectrum,” he said, and “is expressed in alternating waves of rage, disgust and despair toward the centers of power in Washington and Wall Street.”

Golden said, “Populism is the public’s disdain of an elite consensus that seems stacked in favor of the powerful and wealthy — regardless of party or ideology — at the expense of everyone else — regardless of party or ideology.”

“It’s rage at trade policies championed by Democrats and Republicans alike that shipped jobs or entire industries overseas, putting our trade sheets in deficit in service of CEO and shareholder profits,” he said, and “disgust with politicians who leverage their public service to land seven-figure lobbying jobs within days of losing an election.”

“It is despair that even after dutifully voting in every election they are told is the most important one of their lives, they are still facing the same challenges in their day-to-day lives,” Golden added.

“Populism will always be a force aimed at the powerful. Our job isn’t to harness populism. It’s to feel it, and to use our power as elected officials to chip away at the consensus that so many Americans feel is rigged against them,” Golden said.

Rejecting partisanship and recognizing the “anger and frustration” that voters feel can overcome polarization, he said.

“That’s the promise of progressive conservatism,” Golden said.

OTHER FACTORS IN GOLDEN’S SUCCESS

James Melcher, a professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, said Golden benefits from the longstanding willingness of independent-minded Mainers to split their votes.

He said the big wins racked up in 2008 by both Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama and Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who each led their opponent by double digits, are a solid example of a pattern that helped Golden as well.

Melcher said Golden this year “went out of his way to be much more critical” of President Joe Biden during the campaign than he was toward Trump, a man he once voted to impeach.

Melcher also pointed out that Theriault, the GOP candidate Golden defeated, wasn’t well-known heading into the race. That allowed negative advertising to define him for many voters.

That Golden is a veteran who served in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is also “a real plus” in a district with many veterans, Melcher said.

In addition, he said, it’s possible some voters backed Trump because they were hesitant to vote for a woman for the nation’s top job, a bias that would not have kept them from casting a ballot for Golden.

Trautman said Golden opted to vote with the Republicans on a good many symbolic measures that stood little chance of becoming law, the kind of political skirmishes meant to provide ammunition on the campaign trail.

Golden figured that liberals wouldn’t like his decisions on some of those types of bills, Trautman said, but ultimately would vote for him anyway because they dislike the GOP candidate even more.

It worked, Trautman said.

“The proof is in the pudding. He got over the line,” he said.

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