മെയിൻ കാടുകളിലൂടെ ഒരു രാഷ്ട്രീയ യാത്ര: അമേരിക്കൻ സെനറ്റ് തിരഞ്ഞെടുപ്പിന്റെ നേർക്കാഴ്ച

On a bright morning in late September, there is little sign of the political storm that has rolled in and settled over Maine. Driving south on East Ridge Road towards the village of Harmony in Somerset County, the sky is a deep, cloudless blue and the air is tinged with a crisp chill that presages the changing season. The area's famous foliage is just starting to change colour, with bright red spots appearing in the mass of green along the roadside.

I turn left at the Harmony gas station, where Maga paraphernalia is sold alongside chainsaw parts, and follow a road which takes me into the forest. At a clearing in the trees I find the house of Kathryn Thompson, a gravel-voiced 79-year-old. She is with her friend Mary Stuart, a former primary school teacher in Somerset County who lives in the nearby village of Canaan. Both arrived here in the 1970s as part of the back-to-the-land movement that saw groups of young Americans leave cities in search of a simpler life, subsistence farming in rural communities.

"We ended up here because the land was cheap," says Thompson, laughing, as we sip coffee on the deck. She tells me how she and her husband built their home, which I later discover still has no indoor plumbing. For $9,500 they bought 70 acres. "The locals said we got ripped off," she says.

The two women saw Somerset County as a chance to change their lives. When they got there they found a farming community in decline. Once thriving farmland had, in much of the area, gradually been taken over by forest. "The old-timers were delighted we were here," Thompson says. "They were happy that there were younger people coming back and farming, because, you know, their kids didn't want that life."

Logging was a mainstay of the county's economy and there were jobs in sawmills and leather factories on the nearby Kennebec River. Still, the women were struck by the poverty in the area. "You would hear the old-timers say, 'You know, the Depression came and we didn't know the difference'," says Thompson. Stuart nods: "The one thing I really noticed was that so many women had missing teeth. And the men often had a full set of dentures."

Over time, the area would change politically too. In the 1970s and '80s, Somerset County leaned "more Democratic", according to Thompson. The mill workers belonged to unions that were Democrat-supporting back then. But things changed when the mills closed in the 2000s, and "it really shifted with Trump". He has won the county in each of the past three presidential elections, while narrowly losing the state overall.

On a previous visit last autumn, however, there were signs that a populist Democrat could be changing minds again in Somerset County. Cycling along East Ridge Road, I was struck by the roadside signs supporting Graham Platner, a charismatic oyster farmer campaigning to become the Democratic candidate for Senate in the forthcoming midterm elections. Then, this July, his campaign blew up spectacularly after he was accused of sexual assault. (Platner denies the allegations.)

With the deadline for the party to choose a candidate just weeks away, Troy Jackson, a former logger from a long line of loggers, and a longtime representative in the state legislature, was hastily chosen to replace Platner. Jackson goes up against the Republican incumbent Susan Collins, a five-term senator who has maintained support by positioning herself as a moderate in a state evenly split between "red" and "blue" counties. The Republicans' thin majority in the Senate could be lost if the Democrats take at least four seats without losing any they already hold. Before his downfall, it appeared that Platner could have won over Republican voters in places like Somerset County. But could Jackson reach them too?

I ask Thompson and Stuart what they make of the situation. Neither is a fan of the president but, they tell me, they don't know much about Jackson either.

To find out more, I head to his home county of Aroostook, a 17,280 sq km expanse with just 66,600 inhabitants, which includes Jackson's home settlement of Allagash. To get there, I drive north on the interstate through 140 miles of forest. Township names are often numbered designations, such as T9-RS, denoting little or no human habitation.

I turn off just before the town of Houlton, near the Canadian border, and head to Wood Prairie Family Farm to meet Jim Gerritsen, a 71-year-old seed potato farmer who has lived in the area for 50 years. He hands me a catalogue of the potatoes he grows as we sit at a table outside, the air cooler than further south. "We're usually a week or so ahead on leaves changing up here," he tells me.

Aroostook, like other parts of rural Maine, is "Trump country", Gerritsen tells me, which he blames partly on the national Democrats for "not knowing how to run a party" and doing "a terrible job of communicating". But he thinks Jackson, who represented the district for several years, can cut through. An articulate and outspoken advocate of organic farming, Gerritsen has worked with Jackson to draw up Maine's organic food standards and described him as "courageous". "He's always sacrificing himself for the common good, and if there could be a better litmus test in politics, I don't know what it is," he says.

Gerritsen also knows the Collins family, who are from the area and run the local "building supply monopoly", as he calls it. "There's nothing more working class in the state of Maine than a logger," Gerritsen says. "Susan Collins is from the other end of the spectrum... There's this idea that she's a moderate . . . but she's a moderate that votes 96 per cent of the time with Trump."

Like many other small businesses, Wood Prairie Family Farm is being hit by high fuel costs, which Gerritsen blames squarely on the White House. Even on a family farm that is not highly mechanised "there are things that need to be done, and whether diesel is $3 a gallon, $6 a gallon, or $10 a gallon, you've got to do it. You've just got to take that on the chin," he says. He is hopeful that Jackson's strategy, as he sees it -- "putting yourself behind working people and their interests" -- is a winning one.

In Somerset County I meet a logger who disagrees. The fact that Jackson is a fellow logger is "kind of irrelevant", says Kyle Morrison. "I just don't agree with most of the Democrats' policies."

Morrison is a softly spoken 41-year-old Harmony native who works in the family business and spends most days in the forest. His grandparents were Democrats, like many older people in the area, but he is a Republican. There are pros and cons with Trump, he says, but "the biggest pro was that he made me pay attention". Morrison admits the price of diesel, which has soared to record highs since the president launched the war on Iran in February, has made life harder. "I support Trump, but I'm not a big fan of the war going on," he says. "It's taking a pretty good chunk of the profits."

We're sitting in his airy kitchen on a Saturday morning, as Dexter, his black labrador, lies patiently nearby. Morrison drops the dog at Kathryn Thompson's house early each morning before heading into the forest to work. The two are family friends and he usually loads logs into her wood stove as the labrador trots into the house. "We look after each other around here," Thompson tells me later. But they've had to steer clear of politics lately. They've argued "many times", Morrison says. "I don't think it's healthy for our relationship to talk politics."

Brad Farrin is also taking a step back from politics. He's about to retire as Somerset County's state senator and return to his home in the village of Norridgewock, where he has a full-time job working for a construction equipment supplier and can spend more time with his children and grandchildren.

We're chatting in the handsome State House in Augusta, Maine's capital. Farrin, a former national guardsman, has done a 12-year stint here, also serving in the state assembly. "When I first started serving down here, I felt there was a lot more common ground," he tells me. "People still were willing to serve, to try to do good for the constituents, and good for the state of Maine. Some of my dearest friends and relationships I built down here have been on the other side of the aisle." Now, he says, the spirit of compromise seems to "really have diminished". Farrin, a Republican, says he is as frustrated with the far right as the far left.

He hopes the strong sense of community in Somerset County and the state as a whole will keep at bay the partisan divides that have riven much of the country. "It doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat or a Republican or an independent, that sense of community that you don't get in a lot of the bigger places, I think is really important."

Farrin believes Susan Collins, whom he considers a friend, will win a sixth term because she "truly loves the state of Maine". Platner's rise was "more a testimony to the Trump factor than the Susan factor", he adds. Having worked with Jackson at close quarters, Farrin blames him and the Democrats for higher labour and energy costs in the state. "I hope common sense prevails in the midterms," he says.

Two hours east of the Somerset County woods is the pretty coastal town of Blue Hill. I pass through its picturesque main street, with its clapboard shops and restaurants, before reaching the home of Nina Milliken, the district's Democratic representative in the state assembly. It's mid-afternoon and we sit on her deck in the sunshine.

Milliken tells me that Hancock County, where her district sits, straddles rural and urban areas, which has given her an insight into Maine's political divisions. "Sometimes policy arguments seem partisan, but what they are is urban-rural," she says.

Milliken knows Jackson well and believes that he can also appeal to voters. "Troy didn't inherit [Platner's] platform; he's had that platform this entire time," she says. "He's a phenomenal legislator. He's not as charismatic as Graham but he's got the same message."

She believes moderate Democrats, many of whom have supported Collins in past elections, will desert her this year. She also worries that the resources being poured into Collins' campaign could tip the race: nearly 100 billionaires and their spouses had already donated to her re-election campaign, according to The Maine Monitor, a local news site, in June.

Back in Somerset County I drive through the small hamlet of Athens to meet John Alsop, the county commissioner for the towns of Skowhegan and Cornville, through which East Ridge Road runs. Commissioners are non-partisan and they mostly decide budgets, he tells me as we sit on his porch, looking out over fields and trees. "It's kind of a management job; it's not really political."

A retired lawyer, he has lived here for nearly 50 years, serving as an assistant district attorney and a probate judge, as well as working in private practice. Alsop doesn't think the area has changed that much over the years. "It's always been a pretty conservative place . . . of what are now described as 'Rinos' [Republicans in Name Only] but used to be old-fashioned centre Republicans" - although "some people on the right have become more vocal than they're accustomed to being", he says, smiling.

He thinks Platner was "the right man or person at the right time to express what a lot of people are feeling". Collins will be hard to beat now that Platner is out, he says.

As November draws closer, the campaigning in Maine has become fierce and polls show a close Senate race. But there is little sign of Jackson's message reaching crucial voters in Somerset County. A Jackson town hall meeting scheduled for Skowhegan in the final week of September was moved to the Democratic stronghold of Portland in the south of the state.

Before I leave Maine I drive along East Ridge Road one more time, to meet another logger at his cabin near the village of Solon. More of the trees are starting to reveal their autumn colours, but this time there are few political signs on the verge.

Peter Pfeifer is a Maine native who left for university then returned and settled in the woods, where he has lived for nearly 50 years. His cabin is off-grid, with solar panels and a wood stove, but it contains a well-stocked library and he's a keen observer of local politics. "Graham Platner was like a prairie fire," Pfeifer tells me. "We're all very disappointed." He also believes that while the Democratic Party's chances of taking the Senate will be helped if Jackson can rekindle some of that excitement in rural Maine, it could come down to the candidate whose name is not on the ballot.

"It'll be a vote about Trump," says Pfeifer. "Either for or against."

Siona Jenkins is the FT's US political news editor

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