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In July 2019, freshman U.S. Rep. Jared Golden needed President Donald Trump’s attention. So he dispatched his spokesperson to do it the best way he knew how.
It was a tweet at 7:25 a.m., when aides had heard Trump was likely to be scrolling his own feed. He asked the president to intervene in a yearslong dispute over lobstering limits meant to protect endangered whales. Golden’s office paired it with a letter to the White House.
“We heard crickets,” the Democrat from Maine’s 2nd District said in a Wednesday interview.
Maine’s congressional delegation finally won a pause on the rules in 2022. On Tuesday, Golden’s bill to extend it passed the House of Representatives with Trump’s support, something that he touts as a product of a more refined approach, years of advocacy from the fishery, and huge assists from members of the other party, including a one-time rival.
Getting there also meant angering his own party. Golden was one of just two Democrats to vote for the Republican rule that teed up Tuesday’s vote. After Golden’s November announcement that he would not seek a fifth term, Republicans no longer had to worry that helping him would hand a win to a Democrat they were trying to beat in a swing district.
Golden blames that for sinking his first attempt at this fight in 2019. Weeks before the tweet, he tried a floor amendment delaying a NOAA risk-assessment tool pending peer review. He expected Republicans to rally behind it. Leaders instead opposed the bill. It got just 84 votes.
“That’s when I realized the other party actually will try to deny someone that they’re trying to beat in a tough reelection a victory, even if it might be in alignment with their own party’s policy views,” Golden said.
This year, Golden loaded up for a run at the bill that passed Tuesday. He engineered a move to the House committee overseeing fisheries. He attached a provision to a larger bill that stalled due to complex fishery politics in Alaska. Golden introduced his own bill in April. After months of agency outreach, he got the White House to promise in May that Trump would sign it.
That was enough to get House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Arkansas, to schedule a committee vote. Then it came off the calendar about 24 hours later. Committee staff told Golden that a top Democrat had objected to fast-tracking it without floor debate, and GOP leadership was reluctant to spend scarce floor time on a Democrat’s bill.
The congressman’s team needed a workaround. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-New York, agreed to reintroduce it in June as his own bill, with Golden as lead co-sponsor. The two had teamed up before, most notably when Lawler helped him force a vote on a bill that would restore collective bargaining rights for federal employees after Trump stripped them.
“Jared Golden made a strong case for the lobster industry in his own district, and he was right,” Lawler, who is in a battleground race in November, said in a Wednesday statement on the pause. “Democratic leadership still would not make it a priority. So we did.”
Floor time stayed uncertain heading into the August recess. Golden wanted quick action, both to give the bill “a runway” in the Senate and to head off the criticism of 2022’s pause that it skipped hearings and votes entirely. But that didn’t happen before recess.
Golden said he got in touch with former Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican who launched a run against him last year. LePage texted that he’d reached out to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana. Johnson visited Maine to stump and fundraise with LePage last month. About 48 hours after that, Republican staff told Golden’s office a floor vote was coming.
LePage’s team described a monthslong effort that lines up with Golden’s account: repeated conversations with Republican leaders beginning around the time Lawler and Golden introduced the bill in June, mounting worry that the recess would stall it and advisers tracking the bill until they got their own word that a vote was coming.
“When I was made aware of the bill and the need to gain more support to get it across the finish line, I was proud to step up and urge Republican leaders to get this to a vote,” LePage said in a statement Tuesday night.
On the floor Tuesday, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-California, the top committee Democrat, said the bill amounted to a 13-year “gutting” of federal protections for the species. The Conservation Law Foundation went further Wednesday, warning that delaying new rules for fewer than 400 surviving right whales would “condemn many whales to preventable and painful deaths.”
But the bill is universally supported in Maine’s lobster-loving politics. State Auditor Matt Dunlap, the Democrat now facing LePage for Golden’s seat, said he supported the pause. Golden said he didn’t know how much of a difference LePage’s outreach made but appreciated it. He also credited regional industry groups with winning some of the bill’s 10 Democratic votes.
Golden is now watching U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King search for a path through the Senate, perhaps as part of a year-end package. Collins, a Republican in a heated 2026 race, said on social media that she looks forward to passing the measure in the upper chamber.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, suggested Tuesday that leaders could weigh consequences for Golden and the other Democrat who voted with him, Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, over the rule vote, including the possibility of losing committee assignments.
“I personally don’t care,” Golden said. “I’m not going to get too caught up in it.”