Fur better or fur worse, the Democrat state rep and congressional hopeful looking to skin incumbent Chellie Pingree alive was featured out of the gate in a photo wearing a pelt.
A fur pelt.
Or at the very least a parka with authentic – or even faux – fur trimming around the hood.
State Rep. Tiffany Roberts’ mugshot in The Maine Wire announcing her 2026 bid to challenge the progressive First District eight-term congresswoman showed her flashing what is clearly designed to look like a fur accessory.
Fur shur.
It could be her third rail for liberal PETA Democrats. They don’t dig fur. And they’re into symbols as much as they are virtue-signaling.
So what was the South Berwick (District 149) lawmaker doing with a fur pelt or hooded-fur parka around her neck?
Certainly she couldn’t have thought it would further her nascent political bid.
More to the point, how did Roberts – the Maine House Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee chairwoman no less – ever allow anyone to take a picture of her wearing that furry-looking thang? Or just wear it to begin with?
Does Nazi tattoo ring a bell?
Graham Platner, the Democrat who is challenging five-term Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, never expected his hidden (by a shirt) soldier-days breast Nazi-like tattoo to become public.
The fur pelt could become Roberts’ fursion of the Nazi tattoo.
It might give Chellie something to hang her hat on as she tries to defend the seat in which she has languished for 15 years.
Just as long as it’s not a Davy Crockett coontail hat.
Maybe Chellie’s sarcastic campaign slogan can be “I’m fur you, the people.”
Roberts, 45, in the Legislature since 2019 and having been the prime sponsor of 23 bills, is certainly no stranger to the plight of wildlife, having also served on the Joint Standing Committee on Agriculture Conservation and Forestry.
In launching her campaign against the Minnesota-born Pingree, Roberts said she and her fellow Mainers are “tired of being talked at. Tired of promises that sound good but don’t change anything back home.”
Roberts started announcement her speech focusing on “small business owners, union members, educators, first responders, veterans” – clearly those who make up the majority of the First District’s core liberal alchemy and the very ones she’ll need to get under 70-year-old Chellie’s pelt.
Her website calls Roberts “a new kind of leader for Maine” where “hope is stronger than fear.”
Or, maybe better for her campaign motto, “Where Hope Is Stronger Than Fur.”
Democrat Robert Kennedy Sr., who practiced fast-pitch politics in the 1960s – when liberalism came into its own post-WWII with his brother’s ascension to the presidency – had a well-known phrase for candidates facing potential controversy. “If you have a problem, hang a lantern on it.”
“Where Hope Is Framed by Fur” might be the lantern that a pelted state rep needs to illuminate if she has any hopes of besting long-term Chellie.
