Jared Golden bucks fellow Democrats while fighting the system

LEWISTON — “What is going on with Jared Golden?” asked the title of one of the progressive Maine People’s Alliance weekly podcasts this month, shortly after the 2nd District representative became the only Democratic member of Congress to vote against his party’s popular $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill.

The question has been asked a lot in political circles in the aftermath of Golden’s March 10 vote, which was quickly followed by a vote opposing the Democrats’ effort to close gun background check loopholes (a position shared by only one of his House colleagues) and preceded by lonely nay votes on the George Floyd police reform act, the December 2019 impeachment charge against President Donald Trump that he obstructed congressional investigators, and the reappointment of Nancy Pelosi as House speaker.

“We do have this whole Maine tradition of liking people who seem to be independent-minded, but there are limits to that,” says Amy Fried, who chairs the political science department at the University of Maine. “We’re in a more polarized, partisan era.”

Golden, who in 2018 became the first person in 102 years to unseat an incumbent representing Maine’s 2nd District, has emerged as something of a maverick in his 27 months on the job, generating anxiety among progressives eager to change the country’s course and leave the Trump era in its wake. Democrats may like his ability to win in Trump country – he outperformed Joe Biden by the widest margin of any victorious Democratic House member in November’s election – but wonder why Golden has broken with his colleagues on some of his party’s top priorities even as he champions other progressive causes.

Not a few Republicans see him as a Democratic analog to Olympia Snowe, who once held Golden’s seat, or Sen. Susan Collins, both of whom have occasionally broken with their party leadership. “I think it’s rather refreshing to see somebody on either side of the issue willing to weigh the issue and come to their own conclusion about what the right thing is,” says Mike Thibodeau of Winterport, a two-term state Senate president who sought the Republican nomination for governor in 2018. “I disagree with Jared probably 85 percent of the time, but that’s better than 100 percent.”

But how does Golden decide what to support and oppose? Does he triangulate his positions to keep viable in a district that went for Trump by 7 points last November, or are there deeper principles at work?

In a wide-ranging two-hour interview at his Lewiston home, Golden answered questions about his political philosophy, its effectiveness for his constituents, and what it says about bipartisan-minded centrism in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

In 2018, Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden became the first person in 102 years to unseat an incumbent representing Maine’s 2nd District. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer Buy this Photo