{"id":14114,"date":"2025-10-06T14:16:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T14:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rep-jared-golden-gets-a-primary-from-the-left\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T14:16:38","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T14:16:38","slug":"rep-jared-golden-gets-a-primary-from-the-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/rep-jared-golden-gets-a-primary-from-the-left\/","title":{"rendered":"Rep. Jared Golden gets a primary from the left"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Maine Rep. Jared Golden \u2014 a moderate Democrat who won a district Donald Trump carried by 9 points in 2024 \u2014 has drawn a primary challenger from his left, complicating his path to reelection in a seat Republicans are eager to flip next year.<\/p>\n<p>State auditor Matt Dunlap <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kZQq-U4bn24\" target=\"_blank\">announced his campaign on Monday<\/a>, after months of speculation that saw Golden\u2019s campaign leak polling that showed Dunlap trailing Republican former Gov. Paul LePage <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/newsletters\/weekly-score\/2025\/08\/04\/goldens-potential-primary-problem-00490991\" target=\"_blank\">by 10 points in a general election matchup<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But Dunlap was undeterred. He says Golden is not doing enough for the district and has sided with Republicans too often, citing Golden\u2019s recent vote to keep the government open.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI mean how many times has Jared Golden been one of the only Democrats to vote with Republicans on these key issues?\u201d Dunlap said in an interview ahead of his campaign launch.<\/p>\n<p>Dunlap dismissed questions about his viability, saying \u201cthe only poll that matters is the election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Golden says he is the only viable candidate to defeat LePage, and his allies are already highlighting Dunlap\u2019s long record as a state representative.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf Matt Dunlap thinks this district will choose him over Paul LePage, he\u2019s got another thing coming,\u201d Golden said in a statement. \u201cA 30-year party crony like Matt Dunlap won\u2019t cut it \u2014 the last time Matt held elected office he was a pro-life Democrat at a time when that unfortunately wasn\u2019t unusual. Watching Dunlap try to recreate himself as a progressive would be amusing if it were not so cynical.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Republicans immediately cheered Dunlap\u2019s run. National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson Maureen O\u2019Toole said his \u201centrance into this race proves what we&#8217;ve been saying all along \u2026 Golden has got to go.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maine Rep. Jared Golden \u2014 a moderate Democrat who won a district Donald Trump carried by 9 points in 2024 \u2014 has drawn a primary challenger from his left, complicating his path to reelection in a seat Republicans are eager to flip next year. State auditor Matt Dunlap announced his campaign on Monday, after months [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}