LEWISTON, Maine (AP) — Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate known for defying party orthodoxy, was defending his seat in Congress against Austin Theriault, a stock car driver and Republican state lawmaker, but the tight race was still too early to call Thursday.

The matchup between Golden and Theriault is one of a handful of pivotal races with a chance to influence control of the U.S. House of Representatives during a competitive election year. It played out in the largest congressional district by area on the East Coast, a largely rural part of Maine where former President Donald Trump has proven very popular with voters.

Thursday afternoon, Golden and Theriault were in a tight race with some of the vote yet to be counted. Theriault requested a recount Thursday, although the final tallies were not yet finished.

Golden is a former Marine in his third term representing the 2nd Congressional District, which is typically described as a swing district. The district covers a vast part of Maine that includes a handful of small cities but is perhaps best known as the home of traditional northern New England industries such as lobster fishing and logging.

During the campaign, Golden touted his ability to work with members of either political party along with his advocacy on behalf of the lobster industry, which is the lifeblood of the region’s economy. He declared himself the winner of the race Wednesday, though it has not been called by The Associated Press.

“Anyone who has observed this race knows that this was my toughest election yet. Across the country, no Democrat has withstood stronger headwinds from the top of the ticket, the pundits and the organized opposition,” Golden said, wearing a flannel shirt and blue jeans at a news conference in Lewiston.

Theriault, who was first elected to the Maine House of Representatives in 2022, spent much of the campaign portraying Golden as too liberal for the district. Although Theriault had the backing of Trump, he also attempted to portray himself as a potential uniter during a divided time in Washington.

Theriault said Wednesday that he was “well within the margin” where a recount was possible “and every vote should be counted.” Thursday, he made that request formal.

Maine has no mandatory recounts even in close elections. But the state does allow candidates to request a recount. The state does not require a deposit for a recount if the margin of victory is 1% or less for statewide or multicounty races.

“We must work together to ensure the Mainers’ voices are heard and the final result reflects the will of the people,” said Theriault campaign manager Shawn Roderick.

Golden “has trust and faith in the process of determining the victor, and is ready for a recount if one is necessary,” said Mario Moretto, a spokesperson for the congressman.

It was also possible neither candidate would crack 50% of the total vote, and that would necessitate a ranked choice count. There was no third-party candidate on the ballot, but write-in candidates were still possible, and some voters used that option.

Golden was first elected to Congress in 2018, when he needed the ranked choice voting count to defeat Republican incumbent Rep Bruce Poliquin.

Golden has held onto his seat despite Trump dominating the district in recent presidential elections. Maine is one of two states to apportion electoral votes by congressional district — Nebraska is the other — and Trump has won his sole New England electoral vote in Maine’s 2nd District three times.

In the 1st Congressional District, Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree won her ninth term against Republican challenger Ron Russell and independent Ethan Alcorn.

President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign that he wants to roll back a number of policies championed by his soon-to-be predecessor in the White House.

Ahead of the election, the Biden White House tried to “Trump-proof” some of its key priorities. Here’s a look at three of them.

Protecting the civil service

Trump has long railed against what he calls the “deep state” — opposition to his plans from within the civil service.

In the final weeks of his first term, Trump issued an executive order creating a new class of federal workers known as Schedule F who would be exempt from the United States’ traditional merit-based civil service program. The Biden administration saw this as a blatant attempt to politicize and dismantle the traditional nonpartisan federal workforce.

President Biden rescinded that executive order in his first week on the job. The Office of Personnel Management — the government’s human resources department — issued a final rule in April to further solidify job protections and make it more difficult to overhaul the federal workforce for ideological reasons.

Then-OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said the new rule would help “ensure that people are hired and fired based on merit and that they can carry out their duties based on their expertise and not political loyalty.”

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An OPM official speaking on the condition of anonymity ahead of the November election told NPR that they believe the current regulation is “extremely strong” and that any effort to repeal it would have to go through multiple steps.

Once a rule is on the books, it can’t just be changed via executive order, so the new Trump administration would have to propose a new rule — a long and somewhat tedious regulatory process that could take months or even years.

“They would have to put it out for public comment, and they then would have to issue a final rule that survived judicial scrutiny, because it would almost certainly be challenged,” said Howard Shelanski, who was the head of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration.

“I actually think it would take a fair bit of luck for a Trump administration to actually rescind the rule and get that affirmed by a court within the one presidential term he would have,” said Shelanski. “But it’s certainly possible.”

Climate measures in the Inflation Reduction Act

Trump has threatened to gut the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate legislation passed by Democrats in 2022 that contains the largest federal clean energy investment in U.S. history.

The law includes more than $300 billion in spending to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and spur investments in clean energy. As part of that package, it offers tax breaks for consumers and subsidies for manufacturing.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has already talked about trying to rescind elements of the law.

Particularly vulnerable are tax credits for people who want to purchase electric vehicles and incentives to build electric-charging infrastructure.

“Trump has a weird obsession with those two policies,” said Josh Freed, senior vice president of climate and energy at the left-leaning think tank Third Way.

“And there’s an enormous tax bill that will be negotiated in 2025 that would give a Trump administration a pathway to do just that,” Freed said in an interview.

But the Biden administration believes that the Inflation Reduction Act has spurred investments in manufacturing projects in a large number of Republican congressional districts — and influential private companies have already built the tax credits into their business plans. That could make rollbacks politically unpopular, a senior administration official told NPR, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly ahead of the election.

A group of House Republicans underscored these points in a letter to Johnson, the House speaker, a few months ago. “Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” they wrote.

Military and economic support for Ukraine

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the White House quickly came to Ukraine’s aid. Biden repeatedly said that U.S. support for Ukraine would not waver.

Congress approved more than $112 billion in support for Ukraine during that year. But when that money ran out, Biden had to fight for months to get another $61 billion package across the finish line as Republicans balked.

Trump, who has long campaigned on the idea of American isolationism, has criticized the scale of this financial support. He has not explicitly said he would cut off all aid, but he has called for an end to the war and has suggested that there would be changes when he takes office.

Over the last several months, knowing the election would create uncertainty about support for Ukraine, the Biden White House took a series of steps.

This summer, NATO took on a larger role in coordinating military support and training for Ukraine — an effort that previously had largely been spearheaded by the United States. Then, in September, Biden announced that he would ensure all remaining funds for Ukraine would be allocated by the end of his term, leaving no money for the next president’s discretion. And a month later, the G7 announced a new plan to provide additional support for Ukraine — a $50 billion loan. The United States plans to provide $20 billion of that total, getting the money out the door beginning in December, ahead of Inauguration Day.

The loan would be paid back with interest earned on frozen Russian sovereign assets. “In other words,” Biden said in a statement, “Ukraine can receive the assistance it needs now, without burdening taxpayers.”

The situation on the battlefield might also look different by the time Trump takes the oath of office, said Elizabeth Hoffman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“A big question in my mind is: Will the Biden administration, before they leave, authorize any kind of deeper strikes into Russia? That could really make a difference, too,” Hoffman said.

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America was a divided nation going into the election and may be more divided coming out.

Donald Trump never claimed to be a “uniter,” and his stunning win means that new political battle lines are already forming.

Despite that one clear result, a lot remains uncertain, a result of the preference of western states to vote by mail, culminating in California’s new law sending ballots to every registered voter.

Those systems mean it may be weeks before it’s determined who controls the U.S. House of Representatives, where a handful of close races could make Hakeem Jeffries a Democratic speaker or leave the job in the hands of Mike Johnson, who has held it just a year after his Republican predecessor, Kevin McCarthy, was deposed by own caucus.

Will the second Trump administration resemble the “trifecta” he held from 2017-19, or the end of his first term, when Democrats retook the House majority and the GOP legislative agenda ground to a halt?

A similar situation could be emerging in Maine, where Democrats have retained control of the state Senate with at least 19 seats, but the House is, as of this writing, a tossup.

In the Senate, Democrats started from a strong position, with 22 seats in the 35-member chamber. They appear to have lost two: District 1 in northern Aroostook County that was held by term-limited Senate President Troy Jackson and the Waterville-area District 16, where Scott Cyrway, though facing a strong challenge from Nathaniel White, looks set to return to the Senate after one term in the House.

Other tight contests include Augusta-area District 15, where two House veterans, Democrat Raegan Larochelle and Republican Dick Bradstreet, faced off. And in District 8, Mike Tipping, a first-term Democrat, held a narrow election-night lead.

For those frustrated by the lack of early results, Maine’s informal system of reporting is responsible. In many small towns, election officials go home after counting ballots, under no obligation to field inquiries until the next day.

The House may take awhile to sort out. A handful of incumbents lost seats but, as usual, it was in open races where most potential changes occurred. We may even have to wait for recounts.

If Republicans do prevail, it would mark a major shift. Since Democrat John Martin was elected speaker in 1974, Democrats have had a House majority the entire half century except for one term, 2010-2012, when Republican Gov. Paul LePage swept in a short-lived majority.

So, it was ironic that Martin, attempting a comeback for what would have been his 28th legislative term — by far a record — lost his bid to return one more time.

Taking the speaker’s gavel could be the free-wheeling Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor, current Republican Leader, a lobsterman who survived the sinking of his boat while pulling traps in the teeth of a hurricane.

Or it could be one of two Democrats: Kristen Cloutier of Lewiston, now assistant majority leader, or Ryan Fecteau of Biddeford, attempting a comeback after serving as speaker from 2020-2022. There are others in the race, though their chances seem slim.

The overarching presence for the Legislature will continue to be Gov. Janet Mills, entering her last two years, who has dominated the Democratic caucus and won’t likely give much ground even to a Republican speaker.

Nationally, Trump will be the only president to serve non-consecutive terms besides Democrat Grover Cleveland, who was elected in 1884, lost in 1888, and won again in 1892, taking the popular vote all three times — not a feat Trump can claim.

The late 19th and early 21st centuries seem vastly different, but there are echoes. Like the present, the post-Reconstruction period was fiercely competitive, with wild swings in control of Congress and one-term presidencies more the rule than the exception.

Cleveland’s second term was not a success; over almost before it started. The Panic of 1893, a severe recession, began even before he took office.

He’d initially been elected in 1884 as a “man of integrity,” contrasting sharply with Republican James G. Blaine, “the continental liar from the State of Maine” — a charge that stuck.

Trump will not carry Cleveland’s reputation into office, but he will have a Senate likely to confirm his appointees and a compliant Supreme Court that’s already conveyed a near-total, extra-constitutional grant of immunity from any lingering criminal charges.

Still, the convulsions of the pandemic, and wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, were worldwide shocks few anticipated — and that’s just the last four years.

All we can be sure of is that the next four years are likely again to defy our expectations.

Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, columnist and reporter for 40 years. He is the author of four books, most recently a biography of U.S. Chief Justice Melville Fuller, and welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net.

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