A few years back, a man who was then a state representative shared with me a frustration he had about someone. He told me he had wanted to impeach former Governor Paul LePage and had called together a group of colleagues to strategize on the matter. One of those other reps, he said, then went and snitched to the attorney general at the time, who proceeded to throw cold water on the plot.
The then-attorney general was Janet T. Mills, and the snitch was Jared Golden.
As history went on to demonstrate, impeaching a chief executive just to score political points can not only be a strategic error, it can also backfire. So ironically enough, Golden did a service not only to the man who was until a couple weeks ago planning to take his seat on Congress, but to the people of Maine as well.
In a column last week, the Central Maine Newspapers’ Douglas Rooks told Second District Congressman Jared Golden (D) not to “let the door hit him on the way out.” Rooks’ piece chastised Golden for a lack of grace in dissing on both LePage and potential Democrat nominee Matt Dunlap in his cri de coeur announcing he would not seek a fifth term. But as a de facto spokesperson for the Democrat establishment, it was Rooks who was demonstrated the very thing of which he accused Golden.
Golden’s exit leaves a hole in Maine’s body politic, and however much one might have criticized him in office there exists a solid chance one will rue his absence once’s he gone.
As a CIA case officer once told me in what was meant to be flattery, a man distinguishes himself by his enemies. Golden had a legion of enemies who will now have to pivot to hating on someone else. For Republicans other than Bruce Poliquin, it was hard not to have a grudging respect for Golden. After all, his first vote in Congress was against Nancy Pelosi as speaker.
Was he calculating? Sure, but look up the word politician in a dictionary and you’ll quickly be reminded that fits the description. But did he represent his district? Yes too, and for that he paid a heavy price in friendly fire.
Golden’s fellow former Marine Graham Platner is now learning that when the Democrat establishment wants to undercut you, they don’t play.
Rather like the old Soviet politburo, they keep well-stocked dossiers of compromising information on their own members. Case in point, within twenty-four hours of former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam telling the truth about partial birth abortion in 2019, photos of him in black-face suddenly and mysteriously emerged in the media.
In the case of Golden, the establishment became so frustrated with his unwillingness to drink the TDS kool-aid that they launched a credible primary opponent in an effort to bend him over the barrel. And when Golden had enough and threw in the towel, the revolution is prepared to eat its own by throwing Dunlap under the bus.
Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. Except this is the Maine Democrat Party, led by a man named Charlie “Ding-a-ling” Dingman, so instead the saying is adapted to “open the barn door and let the clown car roll out.”
Failed Senate candidate Jordan Wood, a recent Capitol Hill staffer feverishly eager to get back to the swamp, shifted his focus to the Second District to which he may have some vague connection from his boyhood but which he can’t see from his $3 million Round Pound home. Then there is trailing gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson, whose true primary residence is a matter of some legal dispute. And finally, drum roll please…
…State Senator Joe Baldacci, who now finally has the chance to show he’s as much of a man as his brother John. What a dizzying array of options.
Whatever one might say about Baldacci, who has recently tried to seize the Bangor Mall, or “Johnny Cash from the Allagash” Jackson, at least they have connections to the district. The same cannot be said for Wood, whose candidacy has been a caricature of everything that’s wrong with politics from the very start.
Poor Matt Dunlap is about to learn how his party plans to reward him for trying to tell the truth about the murky Maine state budget. He’s about to get a taste of the medicine Golden’s been dished up for all these years.
Rooks was right when he said Jared Golden had become a “man without a party.” Except he meant that as a bad thing. Given how grotesque the extremes of both political parties can be, not only in Maine but also across the nation, it’s actually a compliment.
