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Attack Ads Flying in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District

Voters in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District are likely feeling a sense of deja vu this election season. In a redux of the same race two years ago, former Democratic state lawmaker Emily Cain is challenging former state treasurer Bruce Poliquin, who beat her in 2014 after winning 45 percent of the vote in a three-way race.

Campaign ads for both candidates seem to be trying to convince voters that neither is who they appear to be.

Poliquin has been in office for two years, but he continues to be haunted by statements attributed to him 16 years ago. In an ad paid for by Cain, Poliquin is depicted as being anti-camping in a region of the state that thrives on outdoor activities.

“Bruce Poliquin looked at a campground and said, ‘Those are not my kind of people.’ That makes you wonder who are his kind of people. Well he doesn’t know anything about the people up north, the campers, the hunters,” says Josh Kinson of Plymouth in a Cain-approved ad that sends the message that Poliquin does not embrace the same outdoors values of many 2nd District voters.

But saying that Poliquin doesn’t belong in the woods is pretty tame when compared to the Democrats’ political action committee ad that suggests that the congressman doesn’t even belong in the state.

“We do things differently in Maine, work hard and expect only what we’ve earned, but Congressman Poliquin came from Wall Street and has some different ideas,” says the narrator.

In defense of Poliquin, the National Republican Congressional Committee quickly developed its own ad that characterized Cain as a Hillary Clinton clone who helped out a country that promotes acts of terror.

“Like Hillary Clinton, Emily Cain supports the nuclear deal with Iran. Cain says, ‘We need to make sure we uphold the deal,’ even though Iran is a longtime sponsor of terrorism,” the narrator says.

“My campaign is all about the people that I meet every day. This is about how the story of my family, meeting the ups and downs of the economy,” Cain says.

Cain says her campaign is focused on helping Mainers overcome everyday life challenges. Contrary to the image of a Washington insider like Clinton, Cain says she’s a typical Mainer and that voters need to examine their choices for 2nd District and the records of each candidate.

“This is about the comparison of records of who actually has a record of getting things done and working across the aisle, whether it was with House and Senate Republicans and even Gov. LePage to balance budgets, lower taxes and do important things like growing our economy and breaking the cycle of domestic violence,” Cain says.

For his part, Poliquin rarely acknowledges that he even has an opponent, and routinely avoids taking questions from the media. But he had this to say about Cain’s camper ad.

“This is the silly season, my grandparents are from central Maine, my mom and dad were born and raised in central Maine, I was born and raised in central Maine,” Poliquin says. “I understand the values of hardworking families and it’s honesty, integrity and hard work and accepting everybody, and I’m French-Canadian Catholic and we hug everybody. No, this is the silly season and I’m just focusing on my work for the people that I represent.”

The dynamics in the race are attracting national attention.

Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, recently focused on the efforts by each candidate to depict each other as out-of-touch with voters. The camper ad had its roots in a 16-year-old business dispute that Poliquin had with a camping area that adjoined his Popham Beach Club. The paper noted that Cain’s ads continue to inform Mainers that she is “one of us” even though she’s from out-of-state.

Amy Fried, a political science professor at the University of Maine, says the negative messaging is hardly unusual in today’s politics.

“It really is rather typical for a candidate to want to create a kind of brand for the candidate and the candidate’s opponent, and one of the elements of that brand is whether you’re like the average person whether you’re one of us,” she says.

Although Fried says it was difficult to say whether the ads are effective, a new poll undertaken this month by the Portland Press Herald-Maine Sunday Telegram indicated that Poliquin was leading Cain by 10 points.