LEILA FADEL, HOST:
I've been crisscrossing Maine for the last several days, talking to voters about the issues that will shape their decisions this midterm. That election is exactly four weeks away. So our show will be traveling through pivotal states every Tuesday - states that will decide the country's balance of power. Today, I kick that off right here, a really important place for the Democrats. They'll have a hard time winning back the Senate without winning the seat Republican Susan Collins has held for nearly 30 years. To get a sense of their odds, I hit the road...
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FADEL: ...Traveling some 700 miles, talking to voters along the way.
OK, we just pulled into Jackman, Maine, 17 miles from the Canada border. A lot of support for Susan Collins here, based on the signs in the front yards.
It's a town of just about 700 people, but the town plays a huge role in an important industry - logging. Right off Main Street, past a church, we pull into Jamie Shelley's (ph) front lot.
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JAMIE SHELLEY: Hi. Nice to meet you all.
FADEL: So nice to meet you. I'm Leila.
Shelley's worked in the logging industry for more than 30 years. He says business was actually growing for a long time, but a lot has changed for him in recent years.
SHELLEY: Five years ago, we had six to eight people directly employed, plus subs and trucks. Now, there's me, my stepson and a few sub trucks in the winter.
This is my equipment shop here.
FADEL: He walks us into his dark, cavernous garage, wood pellets stacked high.
SHELLEY: I'm burning wood pellets for the winter to keep the place warm.
FADEL: Why?
SHELLEY: Because heating oil's too expensive.
FADEL: The U.S. war with Iran has sent crude oil prices soaring. And now the cost of heating oil in Maine has hit a record high. Half the population depends on it to stay warm. But Shelley's troubles don't end there.
SHELLEY: If you want to get in that truck, I'm going to give you guys a quick five-minute tour.
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FADEL: We pile into his truck and he drives us through his town, where life is intertwined with life across the border in Canada.
SHELLEY: I have friends on the other side of the border. I have trucked wood on the other side of the border. I got grandparents buried on the other side of the border.
FADEL: Business owners like Shelley and towns like Jackman are stuck in the middle of the escalating U.S.-Canada trade war. To show us how, he weaves down a windy dirt road.
Can I just ask what this is?
SHELLEY: Aha. We are here.
FADEL: Oh. This is your worksite?
SHELLEY: You're about to find out.
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FADEL: We open the doors to the fresh, woody scent of cedar. There are thousands of logs piled high on either side of a muddy clearing, where a client's cabin will soon be built. To do this work of cutting trees and clearing land, Shelley relies on heavy, expensive machinery.
SHELLEY: That piece right there is around 650,000...
FADEL: Yeah.
SHELLEY: ...To buy that new.
FADEL: This?
SHELLEY: That machine over there is, like, 750. And right now that one's about a half million.
FADEL: OK.
SHELLEY: So...
FADEL: That's expensive.
SHELLEY: You want them payments?
FADEL: (Laughter) No.
Maintaining those machines nowadays could set him back tens of thousands of dollars more than they did last year. Trump levied new 50% tariffs on car and machine parts from Canada.
SHELLEY: I need a new set of tracks on that machine right there. Them tracks have wore out. What do you think they cost, the parts you see - them shiny parts?
FADEL: I don't know.
SHELLEY: Forty for aftermarket, made overseas. A tire's $4,000. An engine for one of these machines is 30- to 40,000.
FADEL: So aside from this job, Shelley's machines are parked. He can't take the risk of a breakdown. He worries about what could happen if the trade war further escalates.
SHELLEY: If it gets to the point where they ain't buying, where stuff ain't crossing, there's not enough capacity here to do the job in Maine. So we need them to saw our lumber, or we need to scale back drastically. And small towns like this are going to fold up without the lumber industry.
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FADEL: On the drive back to his garage, Shelley shares that even though the Democratic candidate, Troy Jackson, is a fifth-generation logger, he plans to stick by the Republican incumbent.
SHELLEY: Susan Collins - she's a pretty middle-road person, and she gets ripped by her own people and the other side. If you're getting ripped by everybody, you might be trying.
FADEL: He likes her. And all the economic angst of the moment isn't enough for Shelley to abandon Collins, even though for years as a logger in this remote part of Maine, he's felt abandoned.
SHELLEY: We also feel underrepresented. How many people you see after you come over that mountain?
FADEL: Not many.
SHELLEY: How many stoplights?
FADEL: Not many.
SHELLEY: Did you stop at Walmart? You probably didn't, did you?
Ten and two. Keep your hands on the wheel.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Sorry, bud (ph).
SHELLEY: (Laughter).
FADEL: Underrepresented, forgotten - those are feelings we hear again and again on our road trip across Maine through big cities and tiny towns. In every place, those sentiments are shaping how people are thinking about the election. From Michael Knight (ph), a dairy farm owner and lumberman on the outskirts of Portland, an independent who leans conservative...
MICHAEL KNIGHT: It's better sometimes to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don't.
FADEL: ...To Mitchell Grass (ph), a potato farmer in rural Mars Hill who believed in President Trump's promises but feels let down...
MITCHELL GRASS: Our country is in a really bad spot right now.
FADEL: ...To Rosemary Lavway, a baker at a Presque Isle farmers market who keeps her politics to herself because it's bad for business...
ROSEMARY LAVWAY: I don't think there's anybody that's going to change anything, really.
FADEL: Things feel bad. People feel stuck. Many are just trying to get by. And Dixie Shaw is focused on that.
Hi.
We find her in the back of Catholic Charities' food bank and thrift store in Monticello in northern Maine, dumping clothes into a baler.
DIXIE SHAW: OK. Ooh. Lord, have mercy.
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FADEL: She compresses the items into packs so they can sell the clothes by the ton and use the cash for food.
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FADEL: She used to run this place. She retired. And then two months ago, at 73, she came back.
SHAW: I came back to work full-time because I love to work. But I also need to work. My electric bill is so high, it doesn't even make sense to me. It's higher than my mortgage payment.
FADEL: Really?
SHAW: Yes. It's higher than my mortgage payment. In fact, I didn't even turn my furnace on till about two weeks ago. I just suck it up, baby, because you don't want to turn that thermostat on 'cause that's going to be in addition to the electric bill. Don't - I didn't turn my dryer on all year. I had the Amish build me a clothesline. I can get, like, five loads on that puppy.
FADEL: Right. And is there somebody that you think will make life better?
SHAW: I sure hope so.
FADEL: Who is that?
SHAW: I'm not going to talk about it...
FADEL: Yeah. That's fine.
SHAW: ...Because I'll get beat up. I think in this climate, it's not safe to be on either side...
FADEL: Would you...
SHAW: ...'Cause somebody's going to hate on you.
FADEL: What she will say is she feels like the more blue and populated south near the coast get an outsized say about the fate of her state.
What do they not understand?
SHAW: People that come from away - and that could be out of state or downstate - and come up here to the county to recreate, if you will, when people here usually can't afford to do that same recreation. So the feeling is that the population and the people that vote are in the masses in Southern Maine. And we're up here. And whatever the decision is, we have to kind of live with that.
FADEL: Across 700 miles, from a logger to a potato farmer to a woman working at a thrift store and food bank, there is this sense of being left behind. But if the Democratic Party thinks that means these Americans will just turn to them, this snapshot of voters in Maine tells a much more complicated story. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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