Retiring Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) may no longer have to defend a swing seat, but he’s leaving Washington with a warning: Constant campaigns in competitive seats take a toll.Maine’s 2nd Congressional District is one of the reddest seats held by a Democrat, as President Donald Trump won the district by 9 points in 2024 over former Vice President Kamala Harris. Yet Golden held the seat for four terms.
“I also think that these districts, the truly competitive ones, they’ll wear anyone down,” Golden told the Washington Examiner.
“I think the job deserves people who have the bandwidth to give it 110% and over time, if you talk to someone like myself or Don Bacon, I think they’ll tell you, it’s pretty hard to deny that it gets a little harder and harder to give all of yourself to it. And eventually everyone comes to a point where they have to ask themselves, ‘Can I keep giving it everything that it deserves? Or is it time to let someone else step up and try and bring it?’” Golden continued.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who holds a Democratic-leaning district, expressed a similar sentiment to the Washington Examiner last year after he announced his retirement.
“I just wasn’t sure I was going to have the intensity for a sixth run,” Bacon said.
