Just a day after Republican candidate for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District Austin Theriault announced that he would be participating in a stock car race to fundraise for the victims and survivors of the Oct. 25 mass shootings in Lewiston, an opportunistic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden pledged to donate $50,000 from his campaign fund to the same cause.
On the evening of Oct. 25, 2023, 40-year-old Army Reservist Robert Card opened fire at Just-In-Time Recreation and Schemengees Bar and Grille in Lewiston, killing 18 people and wounding more than a dozen others.
Since the mass murder spree roiled Maine, several efforts have been made to raise charitable contributions to help the for the community affected by the tragic shooting, including the surviving family members of the people who lost their lives.
[RELATED: Independent Commission Investigating Lewiston Shooting Releases Final Report…]
Theriault, a former NASCAR driver and freshman Republican state representative from Fort Kent, announced on Sunday that he would be getting behind the wheel for a “comeback” stock car race during the Pro All-Star Series (PASS) 400 Weekend at Oxford Plains Speedway this October to fundraise for the families.
“As we approach the first anniversary of the Lewiston tragedy, I want to do something to honor the victims, survivors, and surrounding communities,” Theriault said in a statement. “I’m dedicating the race weekend to #LewistonStrong and raising funds to support the community’s rebuilding efforts.”
Theriault set a goal of raising about $50,000 to give to the survivors of the Lewiston shootings and the families of the deceased victims.
On Monday morning, the campaign account for incumbent 2nd District Democrat Jared Golden put out a statement on X announcing that Golden would be donating $50,000 towards the same fundraiser as Theriault, but from his campaign funds.
“This is a cause we all can support. So I am directing my campaign to fully fund his $50k goal. If he donated from his own cash on hand, that’s $100,000 for the victims and their families,” Golden’s campaign wrote, appearing to challenge Theriault to do the same and donate from his campaign war chest.
Golden did not stop there — he further challenged every candidate for federal office in Maine to join him in donating their campaign funds to the victims of the Lewiston mass shooting.
“It’s certainly a better use of the money than another campaign ad,” Golden’s campaign account quipped.
Ever since the Oct. 25 shootings in his hometown, Golden has tried to adopt public messaging around the mass shooting and triangulate his political positions with a view to his re-election campaign.
Following the October shootings, Golden declared that he had been mistaken to oppose a ban on so-called “assault rifles,” a major policy reversal that has been criticized heavily by his Republican opponent.
[RELATED: Golden, Pingree Steered $500,000 from “Inflation Reduction Act” to Democratic Activists…]
In a press conference at the time, Golden said that he had opposed previous efforts to ban “deadly weapons of war like the assault rifle used to carry out this crime” because of a “false confidence that our community was above this.”
The kind of rifles Golden now wants to prohibit are wildly popular in Maine’s Second Congressional District, where firearms quite likely outnumber registered voters, a fact that his caused his reversal on gun control to emerge as a flashpoint in the campaign.
In previous election victories, Golden has secured victory by winning over a sizable margin of Trump voters in a district that voted in both 2016 and 2020 in favor of the former Republican president.
To win re-election this year, Golden will once again need to convince roughly 20 percent of Trump’s supporters to vote for him rather than Theriault, who received Trump’s endorsement earlier this year.
Golden was careful not to alienate Trump voters when he predicted in a July op-ed that the former president would win the election this November and that “democracy will be just fine,” though he has so far refused to say who he himself supports for president.
Despite his new sanguinity over the consequences of a second term for Trump, Golden voted in favor of both attempts to impeach the former president. Had those impeachment efforts succeeded in obtaining a conviction in the U.S. Senate, a vote to bar Trump from holding office in the future would also likely have prevailed shortly after.
In his op-ed, Golden did not reconcile his apparent belief in 2019 and 2020 that Trump had committed impeachment-worthy high crimes and misdemeanors with his new, more level-headed assessment.
The public chest-thumping over the fundraiser stands in stark contrast to the low-key event held by Maine’s former Republican Gov. Paul LePage. Earlier this year, LePage quietly raised nearly $500,000 for the families of the Lewiston shooting victims and posted once about it on Facebook after the fundraiser.
Monies from insider trading no doubt.
It was campaign money? If so , Golden is a phony and should be called out on such. Politicians usually do not spend any if their own money, just OPM.
Golden would never win without RCV