Steve Armenia’s mugshot has been posted in a local Facebook group dozens of times over the past two years.
The photo was taken after Armenia was charged with battery of a police officer in Florida in 2019, which he pled guilty to. It was now being spread in Clifton, a Penobscot County town of less than a thousand residents, because he was running for a seat on the Select Board.
He entered the race “to make the town better” after a previously failed bid in 2024, this time for a one-year term that would fill the vacated seat of a former selectman who resigned because of resident backlash to board decisions. But pictures of Armenia and his family were being published online with captions that called him “Steve ‘the criminal’ Armenia” for reasons that he said he never understood.
“What have I done in that town for those people not to like me?” Armenia asked in an interview with the Bangor Daily News. “If they let me know, I can apologize and make it better.”
In small towns across Maine, people set up Facebook groups to advertise farmer markets, to reunite lost pets with their owners and to ask about that loud noise. They’ve also created polarizing environments that have contributed to a shortage of qualified candidates for local offices, more contentious town meetings and votes, and general division among residents.
But what’s happened in Clifton over the past year shows how these online rifts can snowball in real life and bring a town’s governance to the edge of complete dysfunction. The vitriol has driven public officials out of office, required police to be called on residents during Select Board meetings, and, most recently, forced the Maine Supreme Judicial Court to decide the outcome of an election that came down to two forgotten absentee ballots.
Clifton is an overlooked small Maine community. Located 20 minutes east of Bangor on Route 9, the town of 877 residents gets its name from the cliff face of Chick Hill, a 1,100-foot mountain that is arguably the town’s biggest attraction. With just one general store, the town is typically an area people drive through, not to.
It became the epicenter of an election controversy in March, when two unopened absentee ballots had the potential to overturn a vote that saw Cynthia Grant defeat Armenia 114-113. Maine’s high court ultimately ruled in July to count the ballots, which flipped the vote to 115-114 in Armenia’s favor.
But the town division shown in that razor-thin margin started years before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s involvement, fueled through a pair of local Facebook groups.
Jeff Roberts runs the newest group, Clifton Maine Truth, which the 65-year-old started in 2023 after being kicked out of the other for negative posts about town officials.
Roberts said he created the page so people could “say anything as long as it’s not lying,” but his account has become a sort of gossip mill for the small town.
His page has, “to a degree,” added to the divisiveness of the town and has led to eight harassment orders being put against him, Roberts said. Expletive-riddled posts that belittle town officials and their family members are common on the page.
The posts aren’t personal and are mostly just Roberts “getting out what’s in my mind” with the goal of electing officials who care about the town, Roberts said.
Armenia, a former Marine and Customs and Border Protection employee who has been arrested multiple times, said issues with his candidacy should’ve been discussed in person instead of being posted on Facebook. A copy of the deed to his house and pictures of his girlfriend and his son, along with direct messages to both, were also published.
Roberts and Armenia have not had an actual conversation or in-person meeting, both said. Previous interactions have ended with calls to police, and both men were ordered to leave a town meeting for arguing. While being kicked out, Armenia told Roberts to “meet me outside,” but Roberts said he waited until Armenia left to go outside.
Contentious postings spread beyond just Roberts and Armenia. Most recently, Clifton’s Planning Board chair, Bruce Jellison, resigned in part because of how residents have talked about him online.
“Recent events make this in the best interest of Clifton as this public outpouring of hate affects town business,” he said when announcing his resignation on social media.
Posts Jellison made were being taken out of context and used against him, he said. One resident, who he said he was previously friends with, had a “demonic” look when talking about what he had posted on Facebook at a Planning Board meeting, he said.
Select Board member John Williams is also a common target. Williams, who resigned as chair of the Select Board last week when Armenia called for new board officers, said social media has created echo chambers where people can reaffirm their ideas instead of listening to the other side. The issue isn’t only seen in Clifton, he said.
“At this point, social media seems to create more toxicity, drama and division between people in small towns versus allowing us to focus on getting basic things accomplished and focusing on what we have in common,” Williams said.
Meanwhile, little is moving forward in Clifton. The town clerk was fired in July, Select Board members are meeting behind each other’s backs, and the town has more than $2 million in debt. At town meetings, residents physically divide themselves into groups based on which officials they support publicly online.
It’s unclear how much the online discussions affect the average Clifton resident outside of government services. Select Board meetings typically pull in fewer than a dozen people, and two residents the BDN spoke with at the Clifton General Store said they knew about people being against one another on social media but personally avoided it.
Similar issues have plagued Maine’s small towns for years, though not necessarily to the same degree as it has Clifton. Many have seen a rotating cast of officials, with some even having to temporarily shutter town offices over a lack of qualified candidates blamed in part on the rise of divisive politics being shared on social media.
In Milford, a small town east of Old Town, residents separated into opposing groups ahead of a vote on the town’s 2025 school budget and defended their stances online. They shared their own math for how much could be cut from the budget to ensure the superintendent got paid less. That division forced three lengthy votes before a budget was passed.
Roberts, Armenia and other Clifton residents recognize that the town needs to come together. Both Roberts and Armenia said they are willing to change their behavior online.
Despite voting to overhaul the select board chair and vice chair during his first meeting, Armenia said he wants to work with his fellow Select Board members to improve the town’s finances until the end of his term in March.
Roberts, meanwhile, admitted that calling people names will not unite the town. His page should be where people can share thoughts without pushing others down, Roberts said.
If a change to the town’s division is to be made, the pages don’t have to be shut down, they just need to be “part of the solution instead of part of the problem,” Armenia said.
“Post something nice once in a while,” he said.