3 things we learned in debates between Jared Golden and Austin Theriault

By Michael Shepherd, Bangor Daily News Staff

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and state Rep. Austin Theriault ended a busy six-day stretch on Wednesday with a third and final debate in the race for Maine’s 2nd District.

The stakes are high in one of the country’s biggest elections. Golden is in his third term as one of five House Democrats running in a district won by former President Donald Trump in 2020. Theriault, a Trump-endorsed Republican, and led the first public poll of the race last month.

In a break from past years, the 2nd District saw two candidates trying hard to appeal to the median voter. We saw both candidates struggle with certain issues, including ones that are framing this year’s campaign. Theriault had to fill in a thin record with specifics.

Here are three things we learned watching the candidates over the last week.

There was a major tone shift compared with previous years.

Golden, a 42-year-old Marine veteran, won his last two elections largely because he won over a sliver of Republicans. In 2022, former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin tried to win them back by borrowing Trump’s “America First” slogan and tying himself to former Gov. Paul LePage. 

It didn’t work. Poliquin was a former investment manager in his 60s, while Theriault cuts a different profile as a 30-year-old former NASCAR driver. He followed Poliquin as the aggressor in debates, pushing his campaign’s message that Golden’s stances are “flip-flops” and needling the congressman for not saying whether he would vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

But unlike Poliquin, Theriault was often playing to the middle. In last week’s debate hosted by CBS News 13 and the Bangor Daily News, he ruled out supporting a national abortion ban and fleshed out a somewhat vague stance on Social Security and Medicare by saying he opposed retirement age increases routinely proposed by national Republicans.

One of Theriault’s slogans is that he would bring “more balance and less extremism” to Washington. Golden seemed to take a dim view of that, nodding implicitly to a record that includes him being the House Democrat who voted most against President Joe Biden last year.

“If you like the original band, so to speak, why pay to see the cover?” the congressman responded during his closing statement on Monday.

Golden looked uncomfortable at times on guns.

Nearly a year after 18 people were killed in a Lewiston mass shooting, gun policy is framing this election. Golden reversed himself a day after the shooting to support a ban on so-called assault weapons, turning gun-rights groups that once rated him highly toward Theriault this year.

Golden has spoken candidly about that change of heart. He still has a nuanced set of positions on guns, which was underscored when he came out against a gun reform package from Gov. Janet Mills that included mandated background checks on advertised sales. Republicans have instructed allies to focus on Golden’s change and not all of those specifics.

Yet Golden showed a little bit of discomfort on the issue. The congressman rebutted Theriault in their second debate by saying he never supported a gun registry, even though Golden has been clear for months that he supports a permitting system for those who own assault-style rifles.

He got to a clearer answer on Monday, saying owners of these guns should be held to a higher standard. Theriault retorted quickly to link Golden with Biden and Harris.

“They want to do the same thing with these types of arms,” he said.

Theriault beat expectations but pushed small solutions to big problems.

It was unclear what Theriault would bring to debates as a first-term lawmaker who is new to politics. After the debate, one well-known Republican texted a reporter to say the candidate outperformed their expectations and came across as likable.

That is the first bar for a challenger to clear. But it was also clear that he was avoiding being pinned down on thorny issues. That led him to put forward some small solutions to big fiscal problems. One example was Social Security, the program he says he does not want to cut but is expected to be insolvent by 2035.

Golden’s chief solution is a popular Democratic one. He wants to end a cap on wages subject to Social Security taxes, and he said in the final two debates that Theriault’s pledge to not raise taxes would hamper any ultimate bipartisan solution. Theriault responded by rejecting both new taxes and spending cuts, arguing that higher workforce participation could save the program.

A similar case was knocked down in 2019 by a conservative economist who noted that while this would be good for the program, it would not save it entirely. Higher life expectancies that are expected in the next 40 years would also push future outlays up.

On the debate stage, Theriault does not have to reckon with all of these tradeoffs. In Congress, he would. That’s one of the differences between being the incumbent and the challenger.