Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected].

If you’ve been enduring the fireworks attending the contest for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat — likely to continue even though both nominees, Susan Collins and Graham Platner, have essentially been chosen — then the race in the 2nd Congressional District will seem a quiet and polite affair.

Former Gov. Paul LePage will represent the Republicans with a second comeback try, after losing to present Gov. Janet Mills in 2022, but the Democratic primary is wide open, with four candidates competing. For me, one stands out — Matt Dunlap, who deserves credit for opening the seat in the first place.

In an interview, Dunlap said that in 2018, Jared Golden was “the right guy. A former Marine, in legislative leadership, a moderate. The Republicans couldn’t touch him.” Golden defeated two-term Republican Bruce Poliquin, and won reelection three times. Eight years later, things had shifted.

By the summer of 2025, Dunlap was hearing from Democrats discontented by Golden’s “erratic voting record,”  his apparent inability to criticize President Trump, and even more his absence from ordinary political events, from forums to parades. Golden “went dark. They couldn’t reach the guy.”

It was after a Bangor Indivisible meeting that Dunlap began thinking about running himself. Golden had been repeatedly invited, and someone finally decided to call Dunlap instead. He found that “people were hungry for leadership, someone who would take a stand” against a president who at times made Maine a target for his ire.

Early on, Dunlap received unsolicited support from long-time Penobscot County Commissioner Peter Baldacci, whose brother John served two terms as governor and represented the 2nd District from 1995-2003 — and whose youngest brother Joe joined the race in January.

Dunlap has run many times, serving four terms in the Legislature, 14 years as secretary of state and four years as auditor. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2012 after Olympia Snowe stepped down, and says “After Angus King entered the race, I should have folded.”

Dunlap wasn’t eager to run again, but said someone needed to who was more in the mold  of John Baldacci and his Democratic successor, Mike Michaud, moderates who were known for quiet deliberation but nonetheless willing to oppose policies, and presidents, they disagreed with.

Along the way, Dunlap went to seek Michaud’s counsel and came away with his endorsement. He got a frostier reception from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which told him to stay out to avoid a “divisive” primary against Golden.

Dunlap announced in October, and a month later, the day after the election, Golden withdrew. Earlier he’d been widely expected to run for governor or, if Susan Collins had stepped down, for Senate. As with Platner, the challenger forced out the favorite.

The DCCC was still opposed to Dunlap, but failed to endorse a candidate until May, when it picked Baldacci. As with Chuck Schumer’s early support for Janet Mills in the Senate, it seems unlikely to change much in the 2nd District. Observed Dunlap of the national Democrats, “These are the people who fumbled the ball. They’re why we’re in the minority in Congress.”

Dunlap takes strongly progressive positions, though with less drama than Platner. He has solid union support, and has spent a lot of time listening to working families who see the federal government as “stacking the deck” against them. “We have a $7.25 minimum wage, crushing student loan debt. There’s a rage that they’ve been denied the American Dream.”

Dunlap supports the Medicare for All legislation; Baldacci does not. He’s a believer that improving public services to rural areas can pay big dividends, such as Amtrak service to Bangor and light rail to northern Maine. “It takes eight hours to drive from Madawaska to Boston,” he said. “You do the math.”

The Northern Border Commission, an initiative Michaud sponsored and enacted, was a positive step, involving the rural areas of New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine and offering grant programs, and — even more important — coordinating federal and state efforts, a relationship Dunlap said is in dismal condition.

Dunlap disagrees with Democrats who think that after Trump departs, things can return to normal. He said, “After what the Republican Congress has done, and the Supreme Court, we can’t go back to the way it was because it doesn’t exist.” In “post-Trump America,” he sees engagement by working people as the key to changing, and re-creating, the system.

It hasn’t been all struggle. “I’ve been a candidate for different offices 17 times,” Dunlap said, “and this is the first time people have come up to me, over and over, and said, ‘Thank you for running.’ It’s that important to them.”