The final days of any election are nerve-wracking ones for politicians and their aides. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent hammering home issues to the voters, more than 200,000 people already cast their votes as of Friday and there is little left to do but wait.
Each of the big-name candidates spent their weekends exhorting the last-minute canvassers doing last-minute door-knocking to try to lock down remaining votes. Republicans focused heavily on the swing city of Lewiston, where dozens of volunteers hit the pavement on a warm weekend.
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Before they left an office building, former Gov. Paul LePage told them the ground game is what “it’s all about” in his race with Gov. Janet Mills, while U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin of Maine’s 2nd District advised volunteers on how to speak with a subset of voters about his Democratic opponent in a ranked-choice race that also includes independent Tiffany Bond.
“If you hear, Jared Golden’s not that bad,’ are you kidding me?” Poliquin said before launching into a common refrain. “Jared Golden voted 87 percent of the time with Joe Biden.”
Golden held no public events on the last few days of the campaign. We found him gathered with a few supporters at a sports bar in Farmington watching the New England Patriots game, responding to Poliquin’s argument by likening the Republican to a wind-up toy and saying you “pull the cord in his back and he’s going to say one of three things.”
“I believe enough of my constituents are aware of the way that I’ve done the job: independent and without concern for whatever [politically] impacted me or may not have,” the second-term representative said.
Mills was the most active in public over the weekend, stumping in Bangor on Saturday by saying Maine “cannot go back to the instability and infighting and name-calling that stands in the way” of solving problems.
In Biddeford on Sunday, she stood outside a brewery where we asked her about a recent Washington Post-ABC poll that found voters trusted Republicans far more than Democrats on handling the economy. Mills declined to say if Democrats had a message problem, pivoting to her record.
“I’ve managed budgets, balanced every budget and I’ve got bipartisan support for free community college, free meals in public schools, inflation relief, $850 checks,” she said. “Those things help the economy.”