AUGUSTA, Maine — Mainers’ reactions to Monday’s showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump drew reactions ranging from the serious to the surreal to the incredulous.
In Fort Kent, Steff Gagne said, “At this point I’m hearing what seems to be more precise answers and solutions from Clinton than the broad-based responses from Trump.”
In Bangor, Main Tavern barkeep Rick Hanscom wished for the impossible: a president who “could take Trump’s ideas and use Hillary’s approach.”
One of Hanscom’s customers, Rob Jones of Brewer, yelled at the television: “I’m not voting!”
Some 100 million people were expected to watch Monday’s debate and some tiny sliver of them were Mainers at watch parties, at taverns and in their living rooms. The Bangor Daily News dispatched reporters from Portland to the St. John Valley to record Mainers’ responses and report them in real time.
At the University of Maine in Orono, more than 200 students and staff packed a debate watch party. Rye Powell, a University of Maine junior wearing a House of Cards T-shirt, has been an active member of the UMaine College Republicans, but this year he’s defecting and plans on voting for Clinton.
“I’ve got my ‘Bruce Poliquin’ sticker and right underneath a ‘Republicans for Clinton’ sticker,” he said.
He said Trump’s “flippancy with dictators” such as Vladimir Putin of Russia is concerning, and could lead to major problems for the U.S.
“My problem with Donald Trump is that he has short-term goals” and could be taken advantage of by more forward-thinking world leaders.
“We need steady, balanced, calm leadership,” Powell said.
Up north, Denise Duperre of Madawaska was disappointed with Clinton’s response about inner-city violence: “What’s the plan, lady?” she said to Clinton through her television. “Stricter gun laws? People kill people, how do you deal with the mental health crisis this country is experiencing?”
Donald Levesque, a resident of Edmundston, New Brunswick, said Trump was hurting his cause.
“Trump is being quite rude,” he said. “I’m not sure if this a good tactic.”
That sentiment mirrored responses by many Mainers, who seemed to grow frustrated with the insults tossed by each candidate and the generally negative tenor of the debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.
At a Portland debate watch party hosted by the Bangor Daily News, Gerald Walker of Portland said debating Trump is “like debating Scrooge McDuck, for God’s sakes.”
“I don’t know how anyone looks at this guy and says, ‘Hey, that’s a credible leader.’”
Others lamented what could have been.
“Sadly I’m not feeling the ‘Bern’ at this debate,” said George Dumond of Fort Kent. “I truly feel the American people would be feeling better about the upcoming election if [Senator Bernie Sanders] were in the running.”
The debate comes as polling suggests more clearly that Maine’s role in the presidential election could make history. Recent polling has shown Trump leading Clinton by at least 10 percentage points in the northern 2nd Congressional District. However, Clinton leads in the southern and coastal 1st Congressional District, as well as statewide. If that holds, the Democrat would win three of the state’s four Electoral College votes.
At Carolina Sports & Spirits in Bangor, the debate was on two of the nine televisions but the title track from Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61” was the only thing patrons could hear. Clinton and Trump were not intelligible.
The bartender had an idea. Both candidates, she said, are lousy, so we as a nation should try another tactic: For president, she said, we should run macaroni and cheese.
“Who,” she asked, “doesn’t like macaroni and cheese?”
BDN writers Don Eno, Nick Sambides Jr., Nick McCrea, Michael Shepherd, Nok-Noi Ricker and Christopher Cousins contributed to this report.