Trump, Biden wage big battle over one electoral vote
BANGOR, Maine — Maine is getting an outsized share of Trump love these days.
The president visited a remote town of 1,500 in June. His son and daughterin-law, Eric and Lara Trump, have stumped in the state. A lobsterman from tiny Swan’s Island spoke at the Republican National Convention in August.
And the president is showering federal largesse on the state’s pandemic- and tariff-battered fisheries.
“He is very, very concerned on the plight of our fishermen,” former Maine Gov. Paul LePage told a recent rally along Saco Bay with Eric Trump. “He is intent on helping.”
Trump may care about the fishermen, but he’s also mining a nugget of political gold in the country’s far northeast corner: one single electoral vote.
That’s also drawn the attention of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
“Maine’s hard-working lobstermen and women are hurting under (Trump’s) watch,” Biden tweeted. His wife, Jill Biden, will visit the state Friday for a campaign stop.
In a quirk of the presidential selection process, Maine is one of only two states — Nebraska is the other — that awards one of its Electoral College votes to the winner of each congressional district, instead of handing them out winnertake-all statewide.
This year, Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, the vast rural region north of Augusta, is up for grabs. Trump won it in 2016 by 10 percentage points even as he lost the rest of the state by a wide margin.
Another tiny electoral battleground is in Omaha. Trump won Nebraska by 25 percentage points in 2016 but just barely won in Omaha’s congressional district to pick up the one vote at stake there.
The Biden campaign sees that as a strong pickup opportunity. It started advertising in the Omaha market last week. Jill Biden and Doug Emhoff, spouse of vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, are slated to campaign there on Saturday.
Trump surrogates are also focused on Omaha, including the president’s eldest son, Don Jr., who is scheduled next Monday to make his second appearance this month.
The battle for these two off-the-beaten-path districts illustrates how both campaigns are girding for an election outcome so close it could all come down to a single electoral vote in Omaha or rural Maine.
“The expectation is that every electoral vote is going to matter,” said Ryan Hamilton, spokesman for the Nebraska Republican Party.
These two mini-battlegrounds are emblematic of the two parties’ broader national challenges: Trump is struggling, even in red states, in urban and suburban regions such as Omaha. Democrats are the underdogs in rural areas across the country.
Here in Maine, which touts itself as “Vacationland,” the contest has gotten intense and ugly.
A boat docked recently on an island near Bar Harbor flew a pennant that read: “Trump 2020. F--your feelings.” The fisherman who spoke at the GOP convention said one person threatened to boycott lobster from Swan’s Island to protest his supporting Trump.
Some lobstermen backing Biden say they don’t want to go public because they fear harassment. In Hampden, several Trump supporters complained to local police that someone had defaced their yard signs and left feces in their mailboxes.
The fight for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District seems personal to Trump. Its rural, predominantly white, blue-collar population, coupled with Mainers’ reputation for feisty independence, make this prime Trump country.
“You treated me very nicely in the last election,” he said when he traveled to the central Maine town of Guilford in June. “I needed the one point. Now I’d like to win the whole state.”
But the state overall leans Democratic. And GOP Sen. Susan Collins is in the toughest reelection fight of her 24-year career.
She’s a key figure in the partisan debate over when and how to fill the Supreme Court vacancy following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday.
On Saturday, Collins — who is wooing swing voters she lost after backing Trump’s last high court nominee, Brett M. Kavanaugh — rejected the president’s call for the Senate to vote on a nominee of his choice.
Instead, Collins said the vacancy should be filled by the winner of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
Polls show Biden leading in Maine by double-digit margins. Even in the moreRepublican 2nd District, surveys show a very close race.
Biden generally has been doing better than Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ 2016 nominee, among white and older voters, and Maine is one of the whitest, oldest states in the country.
Trump supporters say the polls understate the president’s strength and an enthusiasm gap between his supporters and Biden’s.
“There’s definitely a silent majority in certain pockets, like in Bangor,” said Joshua Hiatt, a high school teacher who volunteered at a GOP campaign office on a crisp, sunny Saturday in Bangor. “But you go out through all of rural Maine and it’s Trump, Trump, Trump everywhere.”