Republican House Speaker John Boehner will be heading to Maine next week to campaign with Bruce Poliquin, Matt Hudson, Poliquin’s campaign manager, said Wednesday. Poliquin is in a close race for the 2nd Congressional District seat against Emily Cain, a state senator from Orono.
The AP first reported this development, saying Boehner will host a closed-door fundraiser on Sept. 25. Hudson would not confirm what Boehner would be doing here, just that he was coming up to support Poliquin.
This will be the first high profile politician to fundraise for either of the candidates, who are vying for the seat that Mike Michaud is leaving open as he makes his run for governor. Polls predict that the election will be close and UMaine political scientist Mark Brewer has said that, as one of relatively few close elections this year, it will attract outside money “unlike anything we’ve ever seen before.”
Boehner has drawn the ire of the far right in Maine in the past. In 2013, 12 members of the GOP resigned from the party, citing Boehner’s decision to remove the most fiscal conservatives from leadership positions in Congress as part of their reasoning.