
In late September 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson called US Senator Edmund Muskie to check Maine’s political climate.
In a typical year, the news would have been grim for the party. Democratic presidential candidates had won the state only once in more than 100 years. Before Muskie, Maine had not re-elected a member of its party to the Senate since before the Civil War.
Things were different that fall, and Muskie and Johnson found it hard to believe. State polls showed Johnson leading Sen. Barry Goldwater, his Republican opponent, by nearly 50 points.
“I haven’t found anyone who is unhappy with me at this point except my opponent,” Muskie said, referring to U.S. Rep. Clifford McIntire, a Republican from Aroostook County.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Johnson thought.
Maine is a famously countercyclical political state. In 1936, he joined Vermont in rejecting Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s bid for re-election. During the 1974 midterm elections marked by Watergate-related backlash against Richard Nixon, young Republican David Emery unseated a Democratic congressman.
Two decades later, the “Republican Revolution” gave that party control of Congress, but Democrat John Baldacci flipped Maine’s 2nd District. After divide the state with Joe Biden Four years ago, Susan Collins is the only U.S. senator to win the state since 2012, when the opposition party’s presidential candidate won the state.
Yet sometimes the national environment can overwhelm local politics, as 1964 demonstrated. Sixty years later, we are witnessing a similar phenomenon with the chaotic race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Muskie attributed the Democratic margins to Maine voters’ lack of confidence in an “irresponsible” Goldwater. It was understandable. Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act. His speech to the convention was widely criticized for celebrate extremism. He was rider on the use of nuclear weapons. The result was an electorate that Johnson believed “would know who they should be afraid of without us telling them.”
Johnson cruised to a 37-point victory in Maine. Muskie won almost as much. Future Democratic Sen. William Hathaway easily won McIntire’s House seat, and future Democratic Gov. Ken Curtis came close to unseating a Republican congressman by just 203 votes.
Trump is much more popular than Goldwater. But much like his 1964 counterpart, his polarizing nature made the entire election, at least in part, a referendum on his fitness to hold office.
Sen. Angus King remains Maine’s most popular federal officeholder, but a August survey has shown favor among Republicans. CNalysis, which tracks state legislative elections, has predict a result reflecting attitudes toward Trump, as if Maine were two states. Caught in the middle of this highest-profile contest in Maine, U.S. Rep. Jared Golden – one of the few Democrats to represent a region carried by Trump – risks defeat in the 2nd constituency.
A generation ago, there were dozens of people like Golden in Congress: talented politicians whose centrist voting record insulated them from local distrust of their national party. There are only a handful left. Politics is dominated by reflexive partisans.
Whatever the outcome of the presidential election, Trump will no longer be present at the polls. Will the national environment he fostered continue to affect state policy? We can look back to 1964.
No Democratic presidential candidate has ever approached Johnson’s margin in Maine. Republicans won the state in five consecutive elections between 1972 and 1988. Yet Maine never returned to the solid Republican state it had previously been. Democrats have won every presidential election since 1992.
Some changes in the Trump era appear permanent. It’s hard to imagine a Democrat other than Golden winning the 2nd District anytime soon. It seems unlikely that a Democratic-leaning state would support a Republican senator for much longer, even if it enjoys Collins’ reputation for independence.
As politics becomes more nationalized, elections like those in 1964 and 2024 may become the norm. If this is the case, states like Maine will lose their political distinctiveness.