The Notebook: What You Told Me About Maine

I asked, and you answered.

On Monday, I wrote that I was heading to Maine to report on the tight-as-a-tick Senate race between Susan Collins and Troy Jackson.

But my reporting target is not primarily the horse race—though we’ll cover the candidates. It's what Mainers are actually living with, what they’re looking to say and accomplish with their votes next month.

So I asked you to tell me where to go and who to see. The replies started coming within twenty minutes. They haven't stopped.

Some of you live there. Some of you left and still miss it. Some of you have been going to the same cottage since your grandfather built it with his neighbors in the 1950s. What you sent was a fascinating map of a state that is often covered in stereotypes.

Here's what I'm hearing from you.

Ellen wrote from Portland, and she got straight to the main point. Yes, the state is rural and coastal. But it is also urban, she told me.

Portland, Lewiston, Bangor, Augusta—these are real cities with real city issues: homelessness, addiction, people sleeping outside, and the distress that comes with all of it. Tourists arrive and are shocked. As Ellen put it, apparently Maine is supposed to be Disney World with Lobsters.

She also pointed to what people there are actually dealing with: