The Notebook: Let's Go To Maine!

Tine to hit the road again.

Time for another America in Person report from one of the battleground states, now that we’re in the home stretch of the midterm elections.

First was Iowa— and Iowa taught me something. The best part of that trip wasn’t the politicians we interviewed—though I was grateful for the time they gave us.

It was sitting in a barber shop in Des Moines. Talking with a young couple at a farmers’ market. Hearing the owner of a Mexican restaurant in Marshalltown. Listening to farmers and cattle ranchers and small-business owners and people at the State Fair tell us what was happening in their lives and their communities. What issues—national and local—mattered most. How much faith they still had in our democracy.

If you missed that report, here it is:

So: Maine.

Longtime Republican Senator Susan Collins is seeking a sixth term in the US Senate. Her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, is a fifth-generation logger from way up north in Aroostook County and a former president of the Maine Senate.

And the race is really close. One new poll has Collins ahead; another has Jackson ahead; others basically call it a tie.

It’s a great story, and not only because of the horse race. “Who’s going to win?” is just the first question, and it’s not even really the question that gets me out the door.

What are Mainers telling us?

That’s what I want to hear.

Maine fascinates me politically. It’s independent-minded, rural and coastal, old and changing.

Susan Collins has survived for decades by building a constituency that crosses party lines. Is that kind of politics still possible in America?

Troy Jackson offers something very different—a working-class, labor populism rooted in the northern part of the state. What does that tell us about where the Democratic Party is going?

And underneath the politics are the things people actually live with: healthcare, housing, fishing and forestry, jobs, an aging population, the enormous differences between southern Maine and the north.

That’s where you come in. If you live in Maine—or know Maine—hit Reply. Tell me where we should go and, especially, whom we should meet. I’m looking for the lobster boat, the mill, the diner, the union hall, the church, the small business, the family kitchen.

People with something to say who almost never get asked.

One other thing before we go below decks: Last week, in Door County, Wisconsin, something I’ve worked on privately for years suddenly became very public. My play, The Baghdad Gentlemen’s Club, received a staged reading before an audience of about 150 people at the Door Kinetic Arts Festival.

It was quite a night.

More about that—and about the Maine trip—for Members of Real Patriotism.