Meeting last Wednesday afternoon, members of this editorial board sat back to assess the increasingly lively field of Democratic candidates in the 2026 Maine race for the U.S. Senate.

The growing number of confirmed hopefuls, we agreed, was an encouraging development — eight names and counting, with a few more interesting possibilities still on the sidelines, Gov. Janet Mills among them.

Our conversation, however, turned to the tone and tenor of the — admittedly early-days — campaigning. People were angrier than usual, we observed, “fired up.”

Together, we lamented the tendency of political challengers to focus on attacking the incumbent; we were roundly critical of negative framing as a means of getting ahead, noting how much easier it is, generally, to condemn rather than to propose, easier to criticize and villainize rather than make a robust case for one’s own ideas and argue one’s own merits. We said we’d like detailed proposals and new ideas instead.

A few hours later, an email from Mills would land in each of our inboxes, ordering state and national flags lowered to half-staff in response to the horrifying assassination, on a college campus in Utah, of 31-year-old conservative activist and pundit Charlie Kirk.

The news threw our desire for positive campaigning in Maine into sharp relief. Nobody who follows U.S. political discourse today is unfamiliar with how degraded and uncivil it has become, how often it trades in personal attacks, threats and, on the worst days, violence. That awareness does not make a day like last Wednesday any easier to process.

A prompt letter to the editor from a Portland resident took some exception to Kirk’s political positions before concluding, simply and correctly: “With that said, Kirk did not deserve to die for his beliefs — his beliefs — just like I don’t deserve to die for mine.”

It is not unreasonable, at times like these, to feel pronounced discomfort at the trend of demonizing political rivals, however common it has become.

It’s no coincidence that our editorial board had a conversation about sniping and scolding on the day Charlie Kirk was killed. What we found ourselves wishing aloud for is possibly best described as what University of Massachusetts Lowell scholar Arie Perliger, in an interview after the fatal shooting, called “a real competition of ideas.”

Perliger, who studies political violence and assassinations, urged people to try to “think about how the U.S. can restructure part of the political process to ensure that there is a real competition of ideas, to incentivize a constructive, productive approach that will legitimize those who are willing to engage in constructive policymaking.”

The specter of rage and disillusionment nationally is, oftentimes, overwhelming. That makes it all the more meaningful when private individuals profess an interest in the public good, when they decide to enter a vitriolic political arena and commit to difficult work.

Increasingly, those individuals have an additional cross to bear. Not only must they conceive of and articulate their aims with a view to prevailing at the polls, they must do it while taking exaggerating care not to incite, not to inflame.

The alternative? Perliger of UMass Lowell did not mince his words.

“Political assassinations come in waves,” he said. “We see that not only in the United States but other countries. I’ve looked at political assassinations in many democracies, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create a process of escalation that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern. That this process creates legitimization and acceptance, that it provides the sense that this is an acceptable form of political action.”

It isn’t remotely acceptable, and the process of escalation must be arrested. No matter who we are, or what we believe, we’d all do well to begin that effort now.