“As Maine goes, so goes the nation” is an old adage that describes the nearly one-hundred-year streak of Maine politics as the bellwether of presidential elections. Between 1820 and 1958, elections were held in September so farmers from one of the most rural states in the country could participate between summer crop and fall potato harvest seasons. These elections predicted whether Democrats or Republicans would win the November presidential election for 75 percent of elections held between 1820 and 1932.

These days, the phrase is repeated as a hopeful mantra for a new kind of politics. Mainers are embracing the progressive-populist oyster farmer–veteran Graham Platner in his bid to unseat five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins, organizing to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of our communities, and blocking entertainment giant Live Nation from corporatizing our downtown music scene. Mainers now have an opening to be a political beacon for a Left that has largely forgotten the power and importance of the rural working class.

When leftist streamer and political commentator Hasan Piker said, “Let a thousand Zohrans bloom all around the country,” you’d be forgiven for not thinking that might include a fifty-seven-year-old logger from Maine running for governor — much less one from Allagash, a town of 237 up on the Canadian border in a county that voted three times for Donald Trump by double-digit margins.