Scared Out of Public Service

By Noah Rothman

Friday, November 07, 2025

 

Democrat Jared Golden was a Marine before he was elected to Maine’s House of Representatives in 2014. In 2018, voters in Maine’s second district sent Golden to Congress. There, he served three full terms and, in 2025, embarked on his fourth in a district Donald Trump won in 2020 and 2024. That record is a testament to the representative’s genuine cross-partisan appeal.

 

That appeal has also made Golden an object of contempt among the progressive activist class. This year, Golden drew a left-wing primary challenger and, this week, he announced that he would not seek a fifth term in office. Golden declined to contest the challenge to his seat, not because he feared that he would not retain the support of Democratic voters. Rather, according to him, he is leaving the political arena in fear for his and his family’s lives.

 

“I have grown tired of the increasing incivility and plain nastiness that are now common from some elements of our American community,” Golden wrote in an op-ed for the Bangor Daily News, “behavior that, too often, our political leaders exhibit themselves.” In addition, “Recent incidents of political violence have made me reassess the frequent threats against me and my family,” he added:

 

These have made me reconsider the experiences of my own family, including all of us sitting in a hotel room on Thanksgiving last year after yet another threat against our home. There have been enough of those over the years to demand my attention.

 

“I don’t fear losing,” the representative closed. “What has become apparent to me is that I now dread the prospect of winning.” Indeed, what would he gain from such a victory? The opportunity to serve ineffectually in a broken institution? Contribute to its dysfunction by “taking hostages” in the same way he believes Republicans have, accomplishing nothing but the radicalization of voters across the political spectrum? And for his troubles, he and his family will enjoy the privilege of living in constant fear for their safety.

 

Those who might be tempted to accuse Golden of scratching out a face-saving narrative that allows him to slink away from the political stage with his head held high should take stock not just of the threat environment but the changing nature of those threats. Increasingly, the threats public officials receive come not just from their opponents on the other side of the political divide but from their own agitated political allies.

 

“They hate us,” one senior House Democrat said of a colleague’s tearful reflections on a vicious town hall in late spring populated by Democratic activists. “They hate us.” The inspiration for the backlash to which that lawmaker was privy stemmed from the party’s failure to endorse the emotive spectacle progressive members of Congress made of themselves when they interrupted Donald Trump’s State of the Union address. “Another thing I got was: ‘Democrats are too nice,’” the unnamed Democrat added. “‘Nice and civility doesn’t work. Are you prepared for violence?’”

 

Indeed, as Axios reporter Andrew Solender observed in July, the “growing anger among their base that has, in some cases, morphed into a disregard for American institutions, political traditions and even the rule of law.” Democratic rank and file want “blood” to “grab the attention of the press and the public” — a bacchanal evocative of the “Roman coliseum” in which Democratic lawmakers must “be willing to get shot” for the cause.

 

The threats are increasing, and many of them are not baseless. The arrest of would-be assassins with actionable plans to practice violence has become discomfortingly common. Members are duly alarmed, and the best of them will prioritize their family’s security over their own political ambitions. What will that leave us? What kind of figure would not make that choice? What will be the complexion of our political class when those who are willing to serve are so desperate for power and influence, even perhaps notoriety, that they’d put the important things in life in the balance?

 

The rational are concluding that public service just isn’t worth it. The irrational will fill the gaps they leave when they disappear from the political scene.