Louis Sigel, a Kennebec County Democrat has submitted paperwork with the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) to challenge incumbent Congressman Jared Golden (ME-CD2) for the Democratic Party nomination, a filing on Monday shows.
The Gardiner-based “Legal with Sigal” committee is listed as registering party.
Sigel is a former secretary of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee and ran unsuccessfully for a state senate seat in 2014. He studied Chinese at Harvard, is originally from Elmira, NY, and has been a party activist at the county level for many years.
Earlier this year, Sigal was seen at an anti-Trump protest in Augusta wearing an ACLU t-shirt and a button urging the U.S. government to move America’s embassy in Israel back to Tel Aviv (from Jerusalem, where the Trump administration established it in 2019).
Rep. Golden, who was first elected in 2018, has angered party loyalists in the past for crossing partisan lines on multiple occasions. One of his first votes in his caucus in Congress was against the speakership of Nancy Pelosi. More recently, his support for Trump tariffs has sparked the ire of Democrat purists.
Next November, Golden will face former Maine Republican Governor Paul LePage, who has declared his candidacy for the GOP nomination and is unlikely to encounter serious competition before next June’s primary. Current State Auditor Matt Dunlap has also floated the idea challenging Golden for the Democrat nod, but as of yet has filed no paperwork.
