Sarah Longwell and Alex Seitz-Wald: The Maine Thing

Hello, everyone and welcome to the Boardwork podcast.

“I'm Sarah Lungel sitting in for 10,000 or once again.”

Guy never works. We've got a great Thursday show for you. And just as a reminder, there's no show tomorrow. So to bring you into this podcast long weekend, we're going to do what everyone loves to do in the summer time.

We're going to go to Maine. Our Sherpa for Maine is Alex Sight's walled formerly of NBC News. Now the deputy editor of the mid-coast villager, a local newspaper in Camden, Maine. A guy I have been glued to through all of the Maine issues over the last few months.

Thank you for joining us, Alex, from what looks like a cabin in Maine. Hey, Sarah, thanks so much for having me. And this is indeed my cabin office, a shed of one's own, where I can escape the family to work. A shed of one's own, I like that.

I'm super excited that you're here. Because for all of the attention that Maine has gotten,

“suddenly the eye of Sauron has moved on.”

Everybody's looking at Michigan now. That's the new hot race. But I am dying to talk about as the race resets in Troy. Jackson gets in, you know, what we think Maine's going to look like. But before we do that, the other reason I really wanted to have you on is,

you know, I am a big fan of people who build do things or who make choices in this new environment to try to get it the real stuff. So I've got, I've got mad respect for what you did. Did you move to Maine? I know to care for your mom and you joined the villager last year.

Everybody dreams about moving to a cabin in Maine. Right? And actually, I don't know if you know this, but it's actually, it's a popular dream among the lesbian community. There's like a whole, there are many skits about lesbians where everybody's just like

why I want to open a coffee shop in Maine. But like you really did it.

The thing that everybody always says they want to do, but never do.

You left DC, the whole rat race started at a local media company. Why do you do that and what's it been like? It's been very different and wonderful. So as you said, you know, it's 10 years at NBC News 15 and DC live their son's college met my wife there at a press conference on Capitol Hill, also a recovering

political journalist. My mom got sick in 2021 and I was going back and forth. It was COVID. So I was working from home anyway. We decided to move up thinking you would be, you know, maybe temporary, but just loved

it, love the community, love the pace of life and how a real it felt being outside of the beltway. And then this local paper started up and I have our new issue, which is a political leave focus and we're quite proud of this headline.

I have to say I laughed out loud, you know, a little fun is always good.

But the kind of place that can do a fun headline with a beautiful photograph. It's elevated. It's smart. It's has a sense of humor and it's personal in a way that covering national politics can't be.

I would go around the country and be one of 50 reporters, 100 reporters at a political event, trying to write some slightly different take from the guy next to me and here I go and cover something and it's the only, I'm the only reporter there. And if I don't report on it, or if my colleagues don't report on it, there's no record of it.

The community doesn't know about it. We hear about things where accountable, we're, you know, when the power goes out, it goes out for us, when the internet goes out, it goes out for us. We have a cafe under our newsroom that's owned by the same guy, helps diversify revenue. We also use it to connect with the community.

So every Friday, I just post up in the cafe or when my colleagues and it's just kind of open office hours, anybody can come and pitch a story or complain about a headline. Whatever. It's great. And it feels like the way journalism is meant to be practiced and it's most, you know,

fundamental level. And that used to be how every journalist started would be at your local paper. And then, you know, maybe you would get to DC one day, but that pipeline has just been obliterated by the decline of local news. So I'm kind of going backwards and doing it took a 50% pay cut to do it, but absolutely

love it. And highly recommend to any disaffected DC New York journalists out there, go to your home paper, go somewhere to a small town and work for the local paper. You know, I'm from Central Pennsylvania and it's a big political state. There's a lot going on there.

It's an enormous swing state. And I often think, oh, do I go back to Pennsylvania and then I say no. I mean, this is the thing, not everybody's from Maine, bro. A lot of us might go back if we were, we were all from, from sort of, are you

“in on the coast like coastal Maine or is it in the where is it?”

Yeah, I'm on, I mean, mid coast Maine, which it's true. It is one of the best places in the world.

fantasizing about this place that we were just discussing. I mean, it's just the natural beauty, of course, but also the people that are to tracks, especially during COVID, the big influx of, you know, really smart, interesting, creative, younger families, like my own who want to raise their kids in a different place.

And I totally hear you, it's a, it's a really hard job to make. And I don't think I would have done it. I mean, I probably know I wouldn't have done it. If it were not for the forcing factor of my mom and this, you know, personal necessity, so it was really a personal move first and then a

professional move second, but I'm so glad that it didn't work out that way. Yeah. If I was alone in this world, I could see myself potentially going back.

But, you know, there's always other people to consider.

It's hard to get somebody who met you in DC, Mary, due to say, yeah, sure, I'll go back to your small home town in the middle of cornfields.

“So here's the thing that ties together kind of the Senate race in Maine and”

you running a paper. So there's this mythology about people in Maine that they're hyper skeptical of outsiders. They don't like being told what to do by people from far away. I think I could see this with the platinum stuff where the national spotlight

being on them was very annoying to them. It probably dug some people in, is that real? Is it real that people in Maine are kind of wary of outsiders coming in and telling them how to do their politics? It's very real.

And I mean, I think there's, that's true in any place. But especially here, if there's a term in Maine, you're either from a way or you're from Maine and it's just baked into the geography of their families here that can trace their lineage back 13 generations to the same piece of land. And it's because of the history of this place, it's a kind of a backwater.

It's not on the way to anywhere else. It just sticks up into Canada basically.

It's never had a booming economy.

So it never attracted, you know, a huge influx of migrants. So you get either people who have lived here forever and their families of your forever or people who have come here intentionally because they want to be here and they want to be a part of that place. And it's quirky and weird in a million different ways that people in Maine often

feel like the rest of the world doesn't understand, you know, people come for the summer. They see the coast.

“They see like a sliver of the state and that I think leads the outside world to”

feel like they understand Maine better than they do because a lot of people have been to Maine, you know, more than they may be been to Kansas City or Central Pennsylvania or whatnot, but understanding you get as a tourist is very different from the understanding you get living here. And yes, that was a huge part of Graham Platner's success, especially after

in 2020 when Democrats kind of came in and picked Sarah Gideon, the former say, how speaker to be the Democratic nominee. She raised twice as much money as Susan Collins had difficulty really connecting and still ended up losing by nine percentage points. So this time around when it felt like Chuck Schumer DC Democrats were saying it has

to be Janet Mills given that hangover, the backlash was especially strong. Hey, everybody, I'm about to head south for the vacation and I'm getting a little worried about how hot it's going to be down there. It's bad enough here in DC. Honestly, it's off here in DC, but I can't imagine how bad it's going to be in

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“There's the way you were talking, right?”

When you did your old job and you were at NBC, you were a reporter that parachutes into places. You're trying to get a feel for it, just so you can add color and granularity to whatever story you're doing. And so you get that kind of view. And then there's what I do where I do these focus groups where I pull lots of different people

and for Maine and we talk to them and we get a sense of how they're thinking about things. Because she said Janet Mills and one of the funny things about doing focus groups in Maine was, the voters liked Janet Mills. They all liked her.

They did not want to vote for her.

They did not want her to run for a Senate, but they liked her just fine. And so like, I feel like I got that flavor. But then there's what you're doing now, which is a whole different thing. Because even when you do focus groups, even when you parachute in, you can get more information than just like national political observers who look at everything

through the sort of a national lens, I see this happening right now, a little bit in Michigan, where I feel like the way that the national folks kind of look at Hayley Stevens doesn't quite match how people on the ground feel about Hayley Stevens. Not everybody, but like she does have lots of people there who find her very authentic. To Michigan, the way that people in Maine, when I talked to them in focus groups, found

“Graham Platner to be quite authentic to Maine, but what is it about like living there in it?”

What kind of flavor do you get that's different from what any of us, even who are trying are best from a way to understand things, what do you feel like you understand about what's happening right now in the politics in Maine that we can't understand? It's so much deeper and richer of an understanding that this whole experience has made me question a lot of my own reporting that I did when I was the one parachuting into a state and you know,

doing my best and I'm not at all of the kind of person who leaves mainstream media and thinks they're all or tries to sell the idea that they're all phony lying corrupt people at all. I think these are smart people doing the best they can, but you can only do so much when you spend, you know, a few days in a place and talk to people. And we all know that we are not the most reliable narrators of our own thoughts and feelings. And you know, so the poll gets you one

level deep, a focus group gets you another level deep, but I think living and breathing this

“place gives you an even deeper level where you can understand things that maybe people won't”

vocalize or wouldn't even be conscious to vocalize, but you can kind of pick up those those little threads. And it also feels so different. I mean, my part of Maine is different from another part of Maine. And it's not just maybe a question of my coverage, but like what we can no period, you know, not to get to like philosophical here, but personally going to the 2016 election, all the polls, all the data, everything looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win. And it was

such a bug poll that not only she lost, but this whole apparatus of understanding the world failed. And since then for me and living here, it's been like an experience of accepting the humility that we can't know everything all the time and just doing your best at any moment to try to understand by gathering as much facts and data as possible. This sense making of the world, I started doing focus groups after 2016 because I was so convinced that I understood nothing. Like I was like,

I didn't, how is this possible? And what was crazy was when I did start doing focus groups with Trump voters and I was somebody who was, you know, lifelong Republican and I was in all these Republican circles and everybody hated Trump. Everyone I knew hated Trump. Everyone Republican, I knew hated Trump. They were all voting for Hillary Clinton even if they weren't sort of saying so out loud because they were, this is terrible. I'm like, well, just deal with Hillary Clinton and then

get back to normal. The second I started doing focus groups with voters, I was like, oh my gosh,

the extent to which people feel like they know him, the extent to which people in the Republican party really hate the Republican party and feel really disappointed by the Republican party. But even doing focus groups, I can feel the limitations because people sort of, they are also can be unreliable narrators. First of all, when they're like explaining it to you from the outside, but the thing that I know I couldn't get my hands around with Graham Platner and I guess

I'll use this to transition us into the Senate race conversation. I wrote a piece after doing a couple of focus groups about how the voters really described Graham Platner's authentically main. And this, this question of authenticity is very much at the center of our politics right now. It's sort of a hangover from the analysis of Donald Trump versus Kamala Harris. People did not find her authentic. They didn't feel like they knew her, whatever, so like this authenticity

has become the coin of the political realm. And when they plucked Graham Platner from obscurity, it was like, okay, we can, we can sort of sell this guy as authentically main and the voters

had had done bad things, or was he like a similar form of authentic? Like he was almost created to be authentic, but actually he had actually gone to a prep school and his mom's restaurant bought his oysters. And he was a story that they were trying to tell that's just like any other

“campaign that wasn't the true thing. Am I hitting it? Do you tease that apart?”

Absolutely. And a lot of his supporters, all of his supporters, or most of them, did continue to view him as authentic throughout that. And class politics are really complicated here, especially on the coast. And you have a lot of people have called it like intentional downward mobility

where the first generation, like his grandfather was a famous architect, comes in summers,

and then the second generation moves here full-time, but retains professional identity, his dad was a lawyer, and then the third generation goes full-towny. And as long as you're working with your hands, it kind of doesn't matter. You can be accepted. You can be coded as from main and not from away. So I don't think that necessarily counted against him as much as it seemed like from the outside, but it did start to wear away at the patience and chip away at

the idea that he was exactly who he claimed to be, which, of course, he wasn't. And to create that

“sense of authenticity, I think it has to be something of a simulator, right? Because it's all,”

no, most people are not going to meet him and spend time with him personally. So it's going to

be mediated through Instagram videos and speeches and social media videos. And like the guy who's replacing him now, Troy Jackson is an authentically working class manor from the interior of the state, which is far poorer or more conservative, fifth generation logger, like he's not from a fancy family, but he couldn't connect in that same way. He couldn't deliver that message in the same way. I think because he didn't have the experience of moving through the circles, the way Grand

Platner did. Platner, because of his family, because he went to GW, because he bartended at the tune in on Capitol Hill, he could speak to reporters and donors and thought leaders and sell them. And a lot of people on the coast here are college educated, sophisticated urban expats. And it just went over perfectly with them. They loved it in a way that they struggled to connect with Troy Jackson. So I think to be authentic in politics, you do need a little bit of that,

“I don't want to say phonyness, but you need to, you know, it needs to be packaged, just like a”

pop star or a movie star, or because you're almost a content creator at this point, but it still means to have that core, which he was revealed to not really have. This segment is sponsored by The New York Times. Obviously, The New York Times is one of our most prominent national news outlets, and today we've leaned on some of their coverage of the main Senate race. Last year, they also did outstanding coverage of my guest local newspaper,

the mid coast villager, and how he and all of his colleagues are reviving local news in their corner of Maine. I think what my conversation with Alex sideswalled underscored is the complementary symbiotic relationship between national journalists who sort of parachuted into these far falling parts of the country, but may have a more holistic beat, and we need local journalists like those on the mid coast to our deeply deeply embedded in local communities.

Whether you're in search of a national or a more local focus, we need fact-based reporting by deeply knowledgeable ink-stained reporters, which is why, as I follow Maine this year, I'm relying on outlets like the New York Times and like the mid coast villager. And now commenters like us here at the bulwark can decide what we think. Wherever you seek it out, whether it's nationally, locally, support fact-based reporting.

Moving forward from the platinum of it all, we'll probably talk about it a little bit more. The Democrats presentively have a new candidate, Troy Jackson, for U.S. Senate against Susan Collins, and he was the state Senate president. Do you know him? Have you like calling with him spend time with him? A bit, yeah. He not as much as I should have, frankly, because he was sort of a non-content. He was running for governor in a very crowded

Democratic primary, and he was sort of a non-contender for most of the race. He came in third.

Came in third, and probably would have done worse if platinum had not kind of turned his whole campaign over to supporting Jackson after platinum secured the Senate nomination. But the first time I met both of them was a year ago on a farm in Belmont, this little town, where it was

to Senate run a few days before this event. So he still showed up. He was catering the event.

“He's in the back there with an apron, and then he gets kind of pulled on stage. And he's like,”

"Oh, this is Troy Jackson's event. I don't want to overshadow it." And then just delivers this fully-formed stump speech, you know, that the Grant Planner that we would all come to know. And everyone came to see Troy Jackson, but they left talking about Grant Planner. And that was just such a, to me, like, a perfect distillation of even though Jackson has the real authentic working-class biography that absolutely Trump's plateners credentials, he couldn't sell it in the way that

Planner could. That's really interesting. So just to be clear for the listeners, if you guys haven't been following this super closely, he's not the nominee yet. He has to be officially nominated

at a convention, but that's this weekend. But he's secured, like, 90 percent of the delegates

right out of the gate. And so, you know, it was a week or two ago where we saw kind of everybody jumping in. Now they're all jumping back out. You know, you've got your sort of neuro-of-shah, who read for governor, Shenabellos, Dan Clemen, Jordan Wood, all of these kind of main poll names that people know. Troy Jackson obliterates them and gets locks up all these delegates. Why do you think he was just, like, far in a way, the obvious choice for Democrats in the

state after Planner dropped out? Yeah. And this was a crazy unprecedented process. They had 21 days to replace Planner ahead of a legal deadline. And it's been, it was even shorter than that, because he dropped out July 10th officially and Jackson essentially locked it up by, like, the 17th. So, in a week, essentially, is this thing where they each county elects delegates to a state convention

that's on Saturday. And we thought this was going to be, you know, finally a brokerage

“convention, but no, it got all sewn up before then. Two reasons that I think Jackson just totally”

dominated this process. And it was dependent on the process. Number one was he's the kind of natural heir apparent to Platner, you know, Platner still despite being now disgrace. He won 72% of the primary vote a month ago. So, his message was still popular. And if you want the message and the movement of Graham Platner minus the man of Graham Platner, Troy Jackson is the obvious next guy. They're both endorsed by Bernie Sanders. They campaigned together. They were very closely aligned.

And the other is that Jackson knows how to play the inside game in a way that I don't think Graham Platner ever did. He was a state senate president. As he mentioned, he spent years in the labor movement. He was Bernie Sanders political director in 2016. And he had the backing of the entire labor movement in Maine for this latest run. So, all of Platner's volunteers moved over to Jackson pretty quickly. And all the organizing might of the unions moved over to him. And that's

what this came down to is about recruiting delegates, recruiting voters, and then getting a slate together and keeping your people together. So, it's much more like a whip operation than in election.

“And I think he proved his chops there in just absolutely running circles around the other candidates.”

I've been kind of at my team to be like, I need a new focus group in Maine because I really want to know with Platner out and Jackson in because there was this like quick transfer and Jackson seen like as the era parent, but also is like less charismatic than Platner, but also has less baggage. What would you say the vibe is like now among all those people who were like heart and soul for Platner are they still feeling like great. We got Jackson or did they feel

deflated or did they feel excited to have a new lease on life? And then in that answer, was Graham Platner going to win like his trade Jackson and upgrade or is it a downgrade? Is kind of what I'm getting at? Yeah, both great questions. I think people are still feeling like they have whip lash and there's little cuckoo birds spinning around their head as they're trying to make sense of all this because people really did fall for Graham Platner hard. Like offline

people, you know, another difference of being here versus reading the coverage. Like the consultants were kind of the main characters, the national faction were kind of the main characters and a lot of the national coverage. And here, Platner was the main character and people really fell for him. So there's definitely some sense of betrayal and disappointment. People are taking it personally and there's a lot of like, okay, I guess it's a Troy Jackson guy. He seems fine. I'll figure it out.

But they're not bought into him nearly the same emotional commitment that they had to

main is a blue state. It is not elected at Democratic or Republican president since 1988,

but Susan Collins keeps winning by being a aberration, being Susan Collins, not the Republican

“from Maine. So the more this progresses to the mean of just like D versus R, I think that's a better”

for Democrats and certainly all the prognostic haters see Democrats chances of improving with Platner off the ticket. I do think he had become pretty radioactive. It wasn't until that last political report. The one that forced him to drop out, the accusation of rape. And then, you know, Patience was already wearing thin doubts were already creeping in and then that just support evaporated instantly. So I don't think he could have won at that point.

So is that true? I really want to know this. I just, you're saying that when that broke, because support sort of evaporated on Twitter and online and people who had been going full Platner kind of suddenly went dark online. Yeah. And, you know, people who were starting to

do may occult those in your watching, you know, Bernie finally bails and the Pauls bill. But I really

wanted to know when that was happening were people in Maine like screw these guys for bailing on him or were they also out to? It was the bailout of people at the national level or reflection of what was happening on the ground in Maine from actual voters. There was a, you know, ramp of Platner diehards who wanted him to stay in and were, I saw a lot of Platner yard signs that were still left up, you know, intentionally and texting with people. There was an organizing effort

to try to keep him in. And what they were really afraid of was that the quote unquote establishment would swoop in and put somebody else as the nominee who they were not happy with like a Janet Mills and that just didn't happen. As soon as the field started to emerge that it was 100% progressive candidates, they all supported abolishing ice, they all supported Medicare for all.

“That eased a lot of the concern. But I think among most Democrats that I spoke to, it really was”

the straw that broke the camel back. I mean, it's the kind of, you know, once bitten twice shy,

they were bought in, they believed him. And, but a big part of it was the way he handled that first

round of scandals, the reddit posts that the Nazi tattoo, where he was vulnerable and conciliatory and self-reflective in a way that you so rarely see in politics and people found that so refreshing and honest. But you can only do that once, really, you know, as for forgiveness. And then by the time, the, the later stuff came out, he, it was the classic, you know, denial, flame shifting, it's the media, it's my political opponents. And that's where people started to get off the,

the bandwagon. Okay. Thank you. I've been really dying for an explanation about how it went down. Because I had this part of me that was like, was everybody in actual Maine still kind of on board

“with it? But it just became impossible because in his final goodbye, he was basically like,”

we could be in this and still win. It's just these national people pulling the plugs. So I can't keep this campaign going, but it doesn't sound like that's really true. It sounds like people were on the ground, we're out on him. And they're sort of like, Troy Jackson, fine. We'll take him and, you know, the University of New Hampshire poll last, they're just doing the head-to-head's proactively. They had Jackson Leading Collins, 49 to 46. Not hugely. And I guess the one thing

I've seen about Jackson, because now the Collins campaign I presume had lots of ammunition on platter and was prepared to continue to really hammer a bunch of his sort of scandal stuff. What do they have on Troy Jackson? Is he a pretty clean guy? The one thing I've seen is that he threw a water bottle. And I can't tell if he threw it at someone or but that this seems to be the one story that they have, like he aggressively yelled at somebody. See, that looks like he threw it on

the ground. Yeah, he got heated and thrown on the gun. I mean, the even Jackson supporters will say that every day. Well, yeah, so I guess don't run for a Senate for Maymen or I don't know. We'll see, even his supporters will say, yeah, he's not a great communicator. He's not charismatic. And he's kind of a tough hang. Like he's, you know, irritable. He's got a temper. You fit it right in with a lot of people on Capitol Hill in that way. I'm moderated for him with the Democratic

Gubernatorial candidates and he happened to be sitting right next to me. And he just made no effort to like hide his exasperated size when, you know, somebody else was giving an answer. He didn't like or I took a question from the audience even though we were slightly over time. So he's just that

level in Maine, but there's nothing like running for a top tier U.S. Senate seat except maybe running

for president. So I'm sure we will learn more things about his past. One thing that will definitely get attention right away is he started his political career as a pro-life anti-gay marriage Republican then became an independent then a Democrat but was still pro-life anti-gay marriage voted, you know, took votes on that in the state legislature. He's since had a big, you know, coming around and has perfect ratings from Planned Parenthood and LGBT groups endorsed by

Bernie and every progressive group under the sun and he's talked about that evolution, you know, Catholic boy, kind of of that mold of Democrats that doesn't really exist anymore like old school

Joe Biden or Bob Casey. So I'm sure there'll be an effort to kind of cleave progressive support

“from him from that, but I think he's going to have the left pretty well locked in given the”

Platner experience, given labor movements, given all the national progressive voices and just this overwhelming sense like, okay, we have to just get over this in beatsies and Collins and that should theoretically free him up to focus on the voters who really matter who are the people who will vote for Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and then vote for Susan Collins at the next step down and those are your more moderate coastal, largely educated, you know, middle-aged and

older women who that's not his standard fair he's from like, the North Mainwoods way up against the Canadian border, you know, it looks more like Appalachia than coastal New England, but I think he will be given the leash to really focus on those voters who really matter. Okay, let's watch a clip because I want people just to get a glimpse of the cut of his jab or listen to the cut of his jab if you're doing the podcast thing. So let's just watch

Troy Jackson from this weekend. They said that a bunch of lawyers could not take on the big land or exploit them, but we did and they said a guy from Allie Gas could not rise to the main Senate and I did and now they're going to say that a grassroots campaign powered by working people could not defeat Susan Collins, but you know what? They're wrong. They're wrong.

“Power does not give working people anything as a business of a target. Sometimes you have to make”

the people in charge so uncomfortable that they can't ignore you anymore. We're not from the left, we're not from the right, we're from the bottom and we're rising and I know what happens when working people decide that they've had enough. When we do we stand up, we lock arms, we fight back, and then we win. What's going to be Susan Collins and send a working class fighter from the north woods of Maine to the United States Senate? Yeah, you could see it's sort of like

be minus. It's like not, it's not powerful, but the thing that went with an ad like that for people who are just listening, when you when you're watching it, they're cutting to people's reactions and people's reactions are kind of like I was told to sit here with a sign. It lacks a kind of

enthusiasm or electricity that for some reason Graham Platner did have. But here's the thing,

I say that, but that's a lot of the function of an ad and how it was cut. Graham Platner for all of his, I've got the the go-t and and I'm ruggedly handsome and I look really good in a henley and I work with my hands and I'm sorry, oyster farmer, all of this, it wasn't even performative, because it was realish, but like the performative work in class five wasn't working with working

“class voters. This is the thing that really jumped out in the race and I think as Democrats are”

thinking about how they attract back working class voters, you know, they kind of go and pluck a guy like Graham Platner and say, this guy's going to appeal to those that group of people, and yet he didn't. It was still the college educated, more coastal folks that were gravitating to him. Do you think that Troy Jackson with his even like being less polished, you can even as you hear him talk, you can hear that this is not a guy who he's not nervous exactly, but he feels a

little out of his element as he's talking. Do you feel like maybe that actually does a better job with working class voters or our Democrats brand with working class voters just so tarnished that no matter how working class the actual person, no matter how much from a north, you know, the northern, what we're seeing from Arustuk, Arustuk. Arustuk County also known as the county because it's so massive, it takes up, you know, a huge portion of the northern

it does, do you think he could do better with working class voters? Great question, and he's

got an accent, which is, you know, if you have an accent these days, especially in New England, you're going to be more working class. That's a, that's an academy in accent, which is different from a Boston accent. It's its own thing with French influences. People would ask me when Platner was running, is he actually appealing to working class voters? And I was like, I don't know, but he's definitely appealing to Democrats who think they need to do a better job of appealing to working

class voters. I don't know that we can ask anyone candidate to counter these trends of education, polarization, and class polarization that are so big and bigger than just in the US. I mean, this is happening in Europe and Australia and other parts of the world too. So I, I wouldn't really expect Jackson to, you know, meaningfully change a couple decades of political trends, but margins matter, and you know, you pull up that poll number 4649. I think this is going to be a

close race to the very end. And a way that Jared Golden, who represents that part of the state and is now leaving, but has been a huge electoral over performer for Democrats, Trump plus 10 district, the way that he's been able to win and keep winning is by going into little towns like Aligash, where Trojaxon is from, and these towns in the great north end was and not win them, but cut his margin by, you know, set of losing 70, 30 or 80, 20 loses 60, 40, and then you

run up the score in the bigger cities and on the coast. And I think Jackson can definitely do

“some of that just by his affect his cultural competency, if you want to use a back kind of word,”

and of where he's from, like no Democrat has one statewide in Maine without being from the second congressional district. That's the the bigger, more rural, poor interior district. But it covers 92% of the state by land area, and he is from that district, Sarah Gideon, who ran in 2020, unless she's from Freeport, which is the first district, it's right as I port limits

where the LB and headquarters is. So she was never going to cut her margin in those places and

Jackson might be able to. Just speaking of Sarah Gideon really quickly, I think there's a lot of people wondering about the polling in Maine, just because Sarah Gideon pulled ahead of Susan Collins oftentimes by like a decent margin and then got crushed. I don't think there was a single poll that had her behind. I think every single poll had Sarah Gideon ahead into election day. Yeah, and like she didn't just lose, she kind of, she got crushed. At a time when Biden won the state, how should we

feel about the polling in Maine right now? It's a great question, and you know, Paul's just have said, they've adjusted methodology. That was the height of COVID, so that was doing all kinds of things

“with response rates and messing things up. So I think we can expect the polling will to be”

better, but I still take it all with a grain of salt and you know, look more at and maybe not

the specific digit, but the kind of margin of error banned. And I've always thought this race

no matter who they do as a janimals or grandpa and a traject and this is going to be a neck and neck bitter thought race to the very end. And there's a lot of Susan Collins voters. There's a guy I know calls them the silent Susan voters who are maybe Democrats or independence, but they like Susan Collins, they respect Susan Collins. They're not going to put a yard sign out necessarily. They're not going to post about her on Facebook, but in the privacy of the voting booth, they will vote for her.

And that's really hard to capture in a poll or in journalism or anything else. And it's also how she operates. She's got a great speaker either. She doesn't hold big rallies, but I constantly am hearing from people who were like, oh, I was just emailing with Susan. I just got the phone with Susan. She's a workaholic texting emailing people to a clock in the morning. And that's the

“thing that is often missed, but saves her at the end of the day. So I think we just have to have that”

humility and understanding where we're not going to know what happens until election night. Let's talk about Susan Collins. I want to get into this particular phenomenon because I do wonder if something has changed between 2020 and 2026. In terms of Susan Collins's level of loyalty. And when we were doing the focus groups in Maine, we talked to a bunch of people who had voted for Biden and then it voted for Susan Collins and asked how they were feeling about her now. And we've got

some clips of that that we'd like to play. She brings a lot of money into Maine. So that's important. She's supposed to be more bipartisan, but as a recent, she just kind of votes whatever way

sending our money overseas is definitely not going to help us. Previously, she'd done good. I

“guess the money just kind of got to or finally, and then can control it now.”

I voted for her ever since, you know, I was 18 and allowed to vote because back in the 90, my mother went out, walked from MS. And she got denied her disability. She physically could not walk. So she ended up getting a letter from our family and she helped my mom get that. So from that woman on, I was only like five or six years old when this happened. Like she was like my loyal love lady, the whole way for us. Yeah, this lady's awesome, you know. So, but then like that

cabin often happened. I'm like, wait a minute, like, where are your values, lady? Like, you know, like the majority here, what we believe here in Maine, like, what are you doing? So there's sort of more where that came from. But, you know, otherwise, this would be an episode of the Focus Group podcast. We heard a lot of similar stories. People who have voted for Susan Collins in the past had nice things to say about her who this time were out. And do you feel like

the vibes have changed for her from 2020 to 2026? Or does she still maintain a lot of those

“that loyalty from people? I think the really important thing to understand is that her ceiling was so”

high that she can lose a lot of support from that and still win. So every cycle, it looks like,

oh, this is finally the time that she's going to lose because I've heard very similar to

her. And it's, you talk to voters who say I'm fine. I'm done with her. But, you know, in 2008, when Barack Obama was winning Indiana and nearly one Montana, Democrats were getting a super majority in the Senate, she won 60% of the vote against a sitting congressman who, you know, had no issues, nothing in his past. So her margins have come down and maybe this will just be the year that partisanship catches up with her regardless of who's on the other side of the ticket.

But she does have this deep enduring support like that woman, you played who, who she helped. There are a ton of people who feel like they have been personally helped by Susan Collins. Her constituent services are famous. I've been told many times that could be of an issue.

You go to her office first of the members of Congress. Every little town has a

bridge or historical society or a library that she helped fund. She's very smart in the projects that she supports. They're kind of universally appreciated. She's the chair of the Appropriations Committee. So it's a lot of money. And she has these deep relationships where people feel a lot of gratitude. Like I was just talking to somebody who said, as an example, their mother, hardcore, progressive, Democrat, hates that Susan Collins vote if her cabin on blames her for row. But she's on the

board of the local library and Collins really helped them get the new roof that they needed. So she's going to vote for her again in November. That's the kind of thing I do think national politics kind of misses. Like she is there. And she's been around for such a long time that that Appropriations Committee stuff is real. I mean, the extent to which this is really true of Alaska too. Whenever I talk to voters in Alaska around Macouski, they can just tell you

everything that she has done for the native community, for the fishermen community, like they know where she's got brought money. And even when they're kind of like blah on her, they're like, yeah, but she gets us this stuff and they know it. So I guess Susan Collins do people have a genuine fear of losing sort of the gravy train of Susan Collins because she's a swing vote in the Senate. And so even right now, Murkowski is leveraging, I'm going to even sure if it's on the save act or

blanch or something. But you know, money starts pouring into Alaska because you got to get Murkowski on board to get it done. Are people really hyper aware of that there and reluctant to shut that off? I think they're generally aware. I don't know if they, you know, they follow the machinations of it. But it came up even in the Democratic primary when Janet Mills said she was only going to serve

one term. Platner was hitting her for saying, well, that's you're never going to accrue

seniority and bring money back to the state, the way Susan Collins said, I, I will, you know, that was the progressive message and that did resonate with folks. You know, the small towns,

“we have direct democracy. You have to turn out every year to approve your taxes. People really care”

about their taxes. They pay attention and they realize that a new fire truck or a new bridge or whatever is going to be a huge expense for a town with a, you know, a tiny budget. And so when this money falls out of the sky, they absolutely take notice of that. And that's all of her ads are about the money that she brings back, highlighting this project or that project. And Democrats don't

but think about what she means for the country as a whole. And, you know, it's great that she's bringing that money back, but control the Senate means Trump has free reign. He can support more Supreme Court justices to roll back things you don't like. So it's kind of have to ask voters to hold two things in their minds at once. And I heard a lot of criticism of the late stage partner campaign for going after her personally about her stock trades and her husband.

“And I think that wasn't really resonating when you have to kind of accept that what she has done”

his real, but still make the case why you should vote against her. Yeah. And I mean, to issue cross pressure right now, just thinking about the national environment, she's having to answer for funding ice after ice is shooting of Guerrero last week. And also on the ice thing, there was, you know, she told, called Mark Way Mollon, it was like pause this, we paused it and then Trump, like reversed that pause immediately on the blanch nomination, she's going to be a key consideration there,

did she get cross pressured in moments like this in a big way when some of these national issues kind of focus on Maine constantly? She's constantly cross pressured. And that is where Susan Collins lives. And it's, it's crazy to me that she has walked this tight rope as long as she has. It seems like okay, there's, there's no way that anybody can survive this because the her party has moved further and further away from her at the same time that the Democratic Party has moved

further to left and dislikes her more. The guy that Republicans dominate for governor is a, you know, totally Trumpy maga far right guy who's going to get crushed, but that's who they chose. And he looks nothing like Susan Collins. So she needs those voters to turn out for her. She can't

“alienate, you know, the maga base too much because that's that's how she needs them to win,”

but at the same time she needs to not be scary to independent voters. But if there's anybody who can do that, I mean, it seems impossible to me, but if anybody can do that, it's Susan Collins because she has done it for years and years and she's, every time it seems like she's finally better match at the cabinet about how she can wiggle her way out of this one, she figures out another way too. Maybe her luck is run out. It has to at some point, but I wouldn't bet it

against Susan Collins if I were putting money on this, which I never will.

But what about the ice thing, like right now? Like how is it impacting, do people on the ground are they? Because actually, the bull work has paid a lot of attention to the more recent ice shootings, but it has not really broken through the way Alex Pretty and Renee Good did. I think in part because these were, I don't know, these are brown people. Those were white people who are American citizens, the people that were shot were not citizens, so I guess that's part of the

other thing. I do think it has a lot to do with the fact that that was caught on tape, like the shootings in both those cases were caught on tape and people were in the streets about it in a way that has not happened in these other cases. I'm not seeing a lot of

“images come out about what's happening in Maine, but what is happening on the ground because of it?”

I do think that it's a big deal, and it's exactly what Susan Collins does not need and does not want to be talking about. There was a crackdown in January and Maine around the same time

as the Minnesota one, and Collins quite publicly squashed that. I mean, basically said to the

White House, you know, call this off. You're screwing up my reelection campaign and they did, and then she seemed to have purchased again when she called them Mark Lane Mallon to then vacate their stops and he complied, but then Trump overruled her. So she doesn't want to talk about ice. She doesn't want to talk about Trump. She doesn't want to talk about national politics, at all. She wants to talk about Maine and what she has done, and anytime she's forced to talk

about this stuff, it really hurts her. And I do think the overall tide has shifted against ice here, but the Republican, who I mentioned when the earlier ice crackdown, he was doing videos saying, "Welcome, ice." We're so excited to have you here. You know, come get the some alleys

and enlist and basically the conservative media outlet, the main wire was was doing embeds with

ice people. They're really celebrating it. And that tone is totally shifted. There's this little town friendship right in my neck of the woods. It's, it's, it's not the redist town on the main coast. It's one of the redist towns because the coast is generally pretty liberal. Fishing community the only store in town had recently been bought by an Indian immigrant, and he was arrested by ice a few weeks ago. And there's this huge outpouring of support. Titians got circulated at

petitions going to get them released. And they're saying he's a vital part of our community.

He's part of the fabric of our town. So when a town like friendship is rallying against

“an ice arrest and when a killing of ice is is genuinely rattling people, I think that's just”

another really tough thing for for Collins. Well, you know, that's a heartwarming story about Bubba. Sometimes people get frustrated because they're like, didn't these people know what they was going to happen when they did this? This was the kind of thing that it meant to deport, you know,

millions and millions of immigrants, but it still is always nice when somebody like Bubba shows

up and says that's enough. And by the way, Bubba is the new chair of the select board who replaced the former chair of the select board, who is also named Bubba. Great. All right. Well, Alex Citeswald, thank you so much for joining us. Everybody go check out the mid coast villager at midcoastvillager.com. And if you're

“ever in Camden, Maine, you should swing by you guys have a cafe that goes with it. This is my dream.”

Okay. You wanted to save a local newspaper. I would like to save movie theaters, and I want

it to be like a movie theater bookstore coffee shop. Like I'm obsessed with this idea. Maybe I'll move to Maine too with you. But the fact that you've done this, I love it. And I love that you seem so happy and fulfilled by all of it. It's a lovely thing. I think that the decimation of local media is one of the reasons why both national politics and national political watchers are

“much less informed about how things are received, really at the local level. I think it's”

enabling polarization. I think it's nationalizing our politics in a way that's really toxic. And so I just want to say good on you, man. Way to go. This is awesome what you're doing. Thanks so much, Sharon. I really appreciate the chance to preach the gospel of local news because I absolutely do believe it. All right. Thanks everyone. Again, no show tomorrow. We'll be back on Monday, but go subscribe on YouTube, subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Become a bulwark plus

member at the bulwark.com. So you can chop it up in the comments because I'll tell you what, we do not read the comments unless you are a bulwark subscriber. So if you're just shouting at us on YouTube and you're not subscribing, we don't read it. See you guys next week. How would it go to me? The board podcast is brought to you. Thanks to the work of Lead Producer Katie Cooper, Associate Producer Ansley Skipper, and with video editing by Katie Lutz,

and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.