President Donald Trump has endorsed former Gov. Paul LePage’s bid for Congress in 2026.
The Republican who served two terms in the Blaine House has become the prohibitive favorite to win the 2nd Congressional District seat next year after Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, who announced in November that he would no longer seek reelection in 2026.
LePage’s political career has been intertwined with Trump’s since the president effectively took over the Republican Party in 2016. The then-governor was one of the first statewide officials to endorse Trump during those primaries, famously referencing his bombastic style by saying he “was Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular.”
“Paul LePage will be a tremendous Congressman for the amazing people of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, just as he was as your Governor!” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social, a screenshot that LePage shared on his social media Thursday evening showed.
Two politically tied Democrats — State Auditor Matt Dunlap of Old Town and former political operative Jordan Wood of the 1st District town of Bristol — are running for the 2nd District. State Sen. Joe Baldacci of Bangor could join them in the new year. LePage has only nominal primary opposition in James Clark, a political newcomer from East Machias.
LePage chaired Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign in Maine but edged away from the former president when he unsuccessfully ran again for governor two years later, declining to say at one point whether he endorsed Trump’s 2024 return bid.
After that race, LePage told an interviewer that Trump was “wrong” for his false insistence that he beat Joe Biden in the 2020 election and that he cost Republicans in 2022. But earlier this year, LePage baselessly claimed there was illegal voting in his loss that year to Gov. Janet Mills.
During this campaign, he has embraced Trump while running in a district that voted three times for the president, declaring that one of his top priorities would be to “stop the woke insanity” and block transgender athletes from competing in sports aligned with their gender identity.
“I’m not a great athlete, but I will tell you, when I was a teenager, there were very few gals that I couldn’t take down,” LePage said at a November town hall in Lincoln. “And that’s just biological.”
LePage, who filed to run in May and moved back from Florida to an Augusta apartment, initially looked set for a 2026 matchup with Golden. But Golden cited a number of pressures, including political threats against his family, as factors in his decision not to seek reelection in 2026.
BDN Editor Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.