Maine State Auditor Matt Dunlap on Monday launched a primary challenge against moderate Democratic Rep. Jared Golden in a race that could directly affect the party’s hopes of winning a House majority next year.
The showdown in Maine’s right-leaning 2nd Congressional District will likely draw national attention as a referendum on whether Democrats’ rank-and-file voters will continue to back candidates who break from the party on some key votes — or if they will take an electoral risk on a candidate they think better represents their values.
Dunlap’s announcement ends months of speculation about whether he’ll take on the incumbent. In an interview, he told NOTUS that he planned to make Golden’s willingness to side with Republicans a centerpiece of his campaign.
“What I’ve heard from folks is they think we can do better. They’re unhappy with our current situation,” Dunlap said. “You know, Jared Golden, people feel like he’s been bad for us. He has developed a consistency of voting with the Republican caucus on very important issues that affect real Mainers.”
Dunlap cited Golden’s vote last month on a Republican-backed government funding bill as the most recent example of him harmfully breaking from the party, criticizing the congressman for not doing more to stem rising health insurance costs. Democratic leadership in Congress has withheld support from the government funding bill because it does not address soaring health insurance costs, leading to an ongoing shutdown of the federal government.
The winner of the primary will likely face former Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage in the general election.
The district voted for President Donald Trump by 9 points in 2024 and is widely considered one of the GOP’s best pickup opportunities next year. Golden, a three-term incumbent and former co-chair of the party’s moderate Blue Dog Coalition, won reelection by fewer than 3,000 votes in 2024, significantly overperforming the top of the party’s presidential ticket.
The district’s Republican lean has made national Democrats concerned that if Golden loses the primary, the party will lose the seat in the general election. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House Democrats’ campaign arm, has warned both Dunlap and Maine Democratic leadership that if Golden isn’t the nominee, it could jeopardize national investment in the race and endanger the party’s chances of winning the majority, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Golden’s campaign released an internal poll over the summer showing the congressman leading LePage by a single point in a hypothetical matchup; the same survey shows Dunlap trailing by 10 points. (Another internal survey from a Republican super PAC found Golden trailing the former governor by five points.)
In a statement, Golden blasted Dunlap’s candidacy, saying the state auditor was a longtime political insider, would lose to LePage, and is trying to hide his own conservative voting record.
“A 30-year party crony like Matt Dunlap won’t cut it,” Golden said. “The last time Matt held elected office he was a pro-life Democrat at a time when that unfortunately wasn’t unusual. Watching Dunlap try to recreate himself as a progressive would be amusing if it were not so cynical.”
Dunlap rejected criticism that he would make for a lesser general election candidate than Golden, saying that the congressman’s declining support among Democratic voters is itself a hindrance in a general election.
He said any suggestion from national Democrats that they won’t invest in the district if he’s the nominee is an “empty threat.”
“If I win the primary, are they going to risk me losing an election because I didn’t run one more TV ad?” he said. “I don’t think so. I don’t think so. So it doesn’t scare me.”
The state auditor said DCCC Chair Suzan Delbene tried to talk him out of running when he first expressed public interest in a bid. And he declined to say whether, if elected, he would support Hakeem Jeffries as the House Democratic leader, saying he would need more information before making a decision like that.
“I don’t think Democratic leadership has really draped itself in glory in this cycle,” he said. “I think people have been waiting for them to to stand up, and I think people have been disappointed by Democratic leadership.”
Incumbents are traditionally difficult to defeat in primaries, in part because they are usually better known and funded than their opponents. The congressman will have the support of Democratic leaders in Washington and last week preemptively rolled out a slate of endorsements from local party officials.
But Dunlap is relatively well-known among Democrats in the state. He first won election to the state House in the 1990s before serving twice as Maine’s secretary of state and, since 2022, as state auditor. (Both statewide positions are chosen by Maine’s legislature instead of a statewide vote.)
And activists in Maine say that their frustration with Golden has been building for years. In 2020, he declined to endorse Democratic nominee for Senate Sara Gideon in her race against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Golden’s critics also cite an op-ed he wrote last year, in which he dismissed concerns that Trump was a threat to democracy, and a vote in April in which he supported a GOP-backed bill that would require potential voters to prove they’re American citizens before casting a ballot.
Some of them also say their concerns are broader than what they perceive as Golden’s passivity toward the Trump administration, saying the incumbent has been unwilling to even talk with many of them about his votes.
“There’s a sense among some in the Democratic Party that Golden is dismissive of concerns and unwilling to listen,” said Amy Fried, professor emerita of political science at the University of Maine.
Dunlap, in fact, told NOTUS during an interview in July that he started to consider running for Congress in part after a personal interaction with Golden. The two had written each other a series of messages this spring debating the merits of the Republican-backed SAVE Act, which the congressman had supported, and Dunlap said he thought Golden’s responses were unnecessarily combative.
Golden’s campaign released a poll earlier this year showing him leading Dunlap by 34 points in a potential primary. In interviews, many of the congressman’s allies said they thought he was easily the party’s strongest possible nominee and reiterated concerns that Dunlap would lose in a general election.
But many of them also defended Golden’s record, saying his populist economic agenda resonated with a broad swath of the Democratic voters.
“If you followed him at all, you know he has an independent mind,” said Cynthia Phinney, president of Maine AFL-CIO. “But he’s a person who has definitely hung through and put his neck on the line to do things for workers. And he has done so a lot of times.”
The Maine AFL-CIO endorsed Golden when he first ran for Congress in 2018, when he faced a competitive Democratic primary in the 2nd District.