David M. Shribman: Keep an eye on Maine

The Old Dirigo State. The Lumber State. Down East. The Switzerland of America. The Polar Star State. The Pine Tree State. Vacationland.

But in recent weeks, an even more appropriate nickname has emerged for Maine: Ground Zero.

This sprawling land mass of 35,385 square miles, home to a mere 1.4 million people, is emerging as perhaps the most vital battleground in the struggle for the future of American politics.

Its citizens — about as many as in San Antonio alone — are seven weeks from a major test of the future of mail voting. A year from now, one of the most controversial and endangered lawmakers on Capitol Hill will likely face her sternest challenge yet. The state is a veritable litmus test of the future of American politics.

That's because Maine, with a robust maverick streak, nonetheless is possessed of many of the elements of the politics that themselves are being tested in the Donald Trump era.

One of its congressional districts is safely Democratic; the other teeters on the edge of being a swing state itself. In the past three-quarters of a century, Maine has had six Democratic governors and five Republican governors. It has an independent tradition, having twice elected an Independent to the governor's mansion in Augusta and sent one Independent to the Senate in Washington.

And because of Maine's unusual electoral system, the state's second congressional district, itself bigger than West Virginia, three times has delivered a single electoral vote to Donald Trump while the state sent three electoral votes to the Democratic presidential nominee. That district is held precariously by Jared Golden, who sometimes seems more a critic of the Democratic Party than a part of it.

In the state's vital Senate race — perhaps the contest attracting the most national attention, one that will be a magnet for out-of-state financial contributions — the incumbent, Republican Susan Collins, is pilloried both for being too much a stooge of Trump and too little loyal to Trump.

Collins sometimes plays the role of swing vote in the Senate — she didn't vote for Trump in 2016 and this spring joined Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in opposing the Trump tariffs on Canada — but often sides with other Republicans on Trump priorities. She supported Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for secretary of Health and Human Services but opposed Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. She voted once to acquit Trump after he was impeached and once to convict him.

The question of whether Collins is a waning moon is not something new under the sun, which each morning touches the United States first in Maine — sometimes, depending on the season, in West Quoddy Head, sometimes on Acadia National Park's Mount Cadillac.

Already, challengers to Collins, who has been in office for three decades, have come forward.

The last Collins challenger, state House Speaker Sara Gideon, was an insider with impeccable political credentials. Two of the latest are outsiders with the progressive profiles that thrust Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the House over an established congressional figure and delivered the New York Democratic mayoral nomination to state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo this summer.

But the appearance of such unconventional figures as Collins' opponents — one an oysterman, the other a brewery owner — is occurring in a state that had a Democratic governor for only nine of its 98 years beginning in 1857, with Maine becoming a truly two-party state only in 1954 with the election of Gov. Edmund Muskie, later an establishment Washington Democrat and secretary of state.

"Even without a lot of name recognition, either of those two could do well," said James Melcher, a University of Maine, Farmington, political scientist. "Whoever the Democratic candidate is will attract loads of money to battle the money Collins will have. Both parties consider this race critical, and out-of-state money is going to fly into here."

The brewmaster, Dan Kleban, co-founder of the Maine Beer Co., is running on his business's motto, "Do What's Right." Sen. Bernie Sanders, himself on the left edge of American officeholders, appeared in Portland the other day when the oyster farmer, Graham Platner, told 6,500 people, "We do not live in a system that is broken, we live in a system that is functioning exactly as it is intended," which is to say that it is in thrall to established power and the rich.

The state's Democratic establishment is waiting on whether Maine's popular governor, Janet Mills, will take up the challenge of sending Collins into retirement. She's in no hurry to decide. Her age (she's 77 years old) may be a disadvantage, but Collins turns 73 herself this winter.

The other day, a group of Democrats gathered in this seaside town to organize an offensive to defeat a November ballot question that would satisfy a key Trump priority, the curtailment if not the elimination of mail ballots, which Trump says is a major cause of "massive fraud all over the place." Some 40% of votes in this largely rural state are by mail.

The referendum would eliminate two days of absentee voting, ban absentee-ballot requests by telephone or by family members, and end the state's provision permitting seniors and the disabled to remain on the absentee-ballot rolls indefinitely. It also would eliminate the state's practice of providing prepaid envelopes for ballots, limit the number of drop boxes, and stiffen identification requirements for mail ballots.

Trump is contemplating an executive order banning postal voting. "We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting," he said last month, falsely, on his Truth Social platform. Nearly three dozen countries permit postal voting, according to a 2024 study by The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. The United States has had postal voting since the Civil War era.

A Brennan Center for Justice study found that mail voting fraud was "exceptionally rare" and said that if it does occur, various security checks "enable election officials to prevent ineligible ballots from being counted and enable law enforcement to hold bad actors accountable." Today, all states permit some form of postal voting, with 28 states permitting all citizens to vote by mail.

For decades after 1840, there was some truth to the maxim "As Maine goes, so goes the nation." The echoes of that phrase may yet ring true again.

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David M. Shribman is the former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.