During a recent press gaggle on the south lawn of the White House, a reporter asked President Trump if Americans’ financial situations are part of his thinking as he negotiates on ending the Iran War.

President Trump said denying Iran a nuclear weapon was the only thing on his mind.

But recent polling suggests Trump—and incumbents and challengers actually on the ballot this fall—ought to be very concerned with the growing economic challenges facing Ross Martikke and other Americans due to the Iran War and the president’s conduct of the conflict.

I met Ross Martikke on a recent Sunday for a chat at the trailer he shares with his fiancé in Old Town.

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A pro-Susan Collins super PAC, Pine Tree Results, launched an early $2 million ad campaign attacking Democrat Graham Platner with more than a month to go before the U.S. Senate primary.

Maine Governor Janet Mills, out of money and trailing Platner in the polls, announced she was suspending her primary campaign.

Later that same day, in Washington, Susan Collins voted with the Democrats for the first time on a resolution to halt the war with Iran.

It’s gotten me thinking about how to best understand where the race is right now, how it got here, why it’s different from Senator Collins’s past reelection campaigns and where it may be headed.

Democrats must win this race to have any hope of regaining the Senate majority. Republicans need it to hold on to the upper chamber.

For the Democrats, it’s a tough assignment against a tough opponent, even in a year with a much younger, progressive challenger drawing large enthusiastic crowds across the state, and where so many key indicators point towards a political environment favoring Democrats.

In 2014, I spent an entire day riding around on a bus with Susan Collins.

News managers at Maine Public Radio, where I was a reporter, had assigned me to profile the senator as part of our election coverage. Collins was running to serve a fourth term in the senate against another political newcomer at the time named Shenna Bellows, Maine’s current secretary of state and a candidate for this year’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination.

I met Collins, several staffers and other media that early August morning in Bangor, where we boarded her campaign bus. The itinerary for the swing followed a campaign blueprint Collins has used successfully in her races over the years: prearranged visits to businesses run by supporters, many of which have benefitted from federal funding the senator has delivered or pieces of legislation she’s helped to pass. The first stop on the 2014 trip was at a local market twenty minutes outside of Bangor. After arriving to cheers and greetings from the store’s owners and supporters assembled out front, Collins had a series of interactions that still speak, 12 years later, to a political identity she’s cultivated carefully and used effectively in Washington and in her reelection campaigns.

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In the spring of 2014, Collins’s approval rating stood at 79% in Pan Atlantic’s annual Omnibus Poll. She went on to win reelection in a rout that November.

A little over two years later, in August of 2016, Collins wrote the op-ed that would foreshadow the difficult road ahead for her in holding together the coalition central to her brand and electoral success back home.

“My conclusion about Mr. Trump’s unsuitability for office is based on his disregard for the precept of treating others with respect, an idea that should transcend politics. Instead, he opts to mock the vulnerable and inflame prejudices by attacking ethnic and religious minorities. Three incidents in particular have led me to the inescapable conclusion that Mr. Trump lacks the temperament, self-discipline and judgment required to be president.”

“Some will say that as a Republican I have an obligation to support my party’s nominee. I have thought long and hard about that, for being a Republican is part of what defines me as a person. I revere the history of my party, most particularly the value it has always placed on the worth and dignity of the individual, and I will continue to work across the country for Republican candidates.”

Susan Collins, Washington Post, August 8, 2016

What Collins didn’t say was how she would continue to appeal, in the event of a Trump victory, to the pockets of unenrolled voters and centrist Democrats who had supported her in her past races.

In 2017, Collins cast a key early vote helping to defeat a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but later that year supported the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which eliminated the individual mandate requiring most Americans to purchase health insurance under the ACA.

Later passage and funding of separate legislation to stabilize the health insurance market and keep premiums low never materialized, despite promises made to Collins by GOP Senate leadership and the Trump White House in exchange for her support for the tax cut bill.

In 2018, Collins, who holds a pro-choice stance on abortion, voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor.

“Noting that Roe v. Wade was decided 45 years ago, and reaffirmed 19 years later in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, I asked Judge Kavanaugh whether the passage of time is relevant to following precedent. He said decisions become part of our legal framework with the passage of time and that honoring precedent is essential to maintaining public confidence.”

Kavanaugh later voted with the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion.

From a pure political perspective, the rise of Trump put historically moderate Republican senators like Collins, already a dying breed, in a bind. On these consequential issues and many others, it had become increasingly difficult for Collins to satisfy all parts of her political coalition back home on every legislative vote or judicial or cabinet confirmation.

It’s important to note here that there’s longstanding disagreement by some in political circles in Maine and beyond about the true authenticity of the political identity Collins has carved out in her years in the U.S. Senate.

By early 2020, the pandemic was raging. Daily life had been turned upside down. Voters across the nation seemed poised to punish incumbents at the polls. Susan Collins’s approval ratings were underwater. And Democrats in Maine and Washington D.C. saw a historic opportunity in the candidacy of Sara Gideon, Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, to defeat Collins and retake the majority in the U.S. Senate.

The race became the most expensive political campaign in Maine history with Gideon spending $48 million and Collins $23 million. Gideon led in every single poll throughout the cycle. And on election day, Collins defied the odds and cruised to a comfortable 8-point win, outperforming Donald Trump’s vote share in his defeat and making Maine the only state in the nation to elect a GOP Senator in 2020.

What helped Collins pull the race out and what does it tell us about the 2026 U.S. Senate campaign underway in Maine?

In 2020, Collins went all out to get voters to focus on her Maine roots and lifelong allegiance and service to her home state, as compared to the out-of-state background of her opponent. Sara Gideon grew up in Rhode Island and moved to Maine in 2004. Collins ran ads attacking Gideon for her left leaning positions, her voting record in Maine and unpaid taxes tied to property in Freeport.

Gideon countered that Collins had transformed from a moderate Republican problem solver into a far-right rubber stamp for Donald Trump’s extremist policies and appointees.

Gideon had the support of every key part of the establishment, including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, labor unions, women’s groups and the endorsement of former President Barack Obama.

What the 2020 exit polls made clear was that Collins had been able to successfully reassemble her electoral coalition of conservatives and moderates, despite polling suggesting otherwise.

Labeling Gideon as “from away” in the minds of enough voters also dovetailed with efforts to get them to see her as a tool of the Democratic establishment in Washington, and as an inexperienced legislator who would deprive Maine of the advantages that come with having Collins on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

All senators are eager to tout the resources they bring to their home states. Anyone who has worked as a reporter in Maine over the past 30 years has covered events where Collins appears, with other members of Maine’s Congressional Delegation, to celebrate federal funding awards.

Collins puts extensive planning and advance work into these kinds of appearances, as I saw first-hand while working for TimberHP during the company’s early startup phase. Prior to our groundbreaking ceremony at the Madison mill in July of 2023, I was responsible for planning sessions with members of the delegation who had helped secure early US Forest Service funding for the company and would be speaking at the ceremony. In multiple calls with Collins’s staff, I gained a different appreciation than I’d previously had of how important these funding awards and events are, both practically and politically, to the Senator.

Collins became chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee when Republicans took control of the Senate in 2024. In February of this year, the Bangor Daily News published an op-ed piece by Collins, looking ahead to the campaign.

Now, as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, I have the power and determination to fight even harder for Maine. Last week, we achieved something Congress hasn’t accomplished in years when nearly all the annual federal funding bills that went through our committee were signed into law. This required hard work and long hours, but it will benefit Maine by delivering $425 million, this year, to improve hospitals, fire stations, workforce programs and many other projects. In the past five years, I have secured nearly $1.5 billion in congressionally directed spending that is being invested in more than 650 community projects in all 16 counties.

Collins’s campaign is leaning heavily into the argument that what the senator delivers for Maine—from her perch atop the appropriations committee—is not easily replaceable. It’s the main thrust of her campaign’s advertising with spots touting everything from funding for diabetes and cancer research to support for new firefighting equipment in rural towns to multimillion dollar technology and growth investments in key heritage industries. The ads are heavy with testimonials from voters vouching for the impact these efforts have had on their lives.

Collins appears to be counting on her ability to run a similar campaign to her successful 2020 race, with a few tweaks. But that may prove to be difficult. Donald Trump’s approval is at record low levels in recent polling. Voters blame him and his party for an unpopular war, high gas prices, persistent inflation, tariff-induced economic uncertainty, rising health care costs, corruption in the White House and an overall environment of chaos and incompetence.

And in Graham Platner, Collins has an opponent unlike any she has faced before. A combat veteran and Maine native, who has come out of nowhere to lead a political movement that’s drawing large crowds, national attention, money and enough momentum to force the Democratic Party’s handpicked candidate, a two-term sitting governor, from the primary before a single vote was cast.

How the following issues play out will likely determine who wins in November.

The Iran War

Gas Prices

The Economy

The Race to Define Graham Platner

Nationalized v. Localized Election

Trump Not on the Ballot

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I was a total news nerd growing up. In hindsight—by personality and temperament and family ties to the profession—I was an easy mark.

My grandfather on my dad’s side was a reporter and editor during the 1940s for Life Magazine, where he wrote profiles of military legends like General George S. Patton, spent time in the Pacific theater covering the air war against Japan and reported, wrote and edited stories on national politics and general assignment news, stateside.

My mother freelanced for the New York Times. It was through my uncle, her brother, that I first came to see that storytelling and journalism could be a worthy calling.

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My awakening came on Christmas morning in 1979 or 1980. My parents had a small Sony television at the foot of their bed. I came into their bedroom and saw my uncle on the screen. He worked as a correspondent for ABC News at the time. I think I knew this at some level but didn’t really understand what that meant. My uncle was speaking into a microphone. He was standing on the roof of a building. It couldn’t have been more than a few stories tall. Behind him, in the camera shot, were Iranians demonstrating in the streets, chanting, and shouting, “Death the America!”

My uncle, I eventually learned, had undertaken an assignment as a correspondent for Nightline, a new show on ABC launched to follow the 11:00pm local news with the latest developments on the hostage crisis in Iran. I watched the show when I could or when my uncle let us know he had a story coming up. Writing and reading became the only things I cared about in school. I wrote some articles for the school paper. And on my high school graduation day, the budding news dork inside of me exploded in joy when I unwrapped my aunt and uncle’s gift: a photo of a severe-looking Ted Koppel at the Nightline anchor desk, signed by the man himself.

Nightline’s hold over me began to loosen a bit when a new show grabbed my attention. 60 Minutes, every Sunday night at 7pm on CBS, got an entire hour to tell its stories. I began watching the show as often as I could. I remember in those quaint days—before the digital revolution changed the way we produce and consume media—being amazed at the breadth of stories week to week on 60 Minutes. Hard hitting investigative pieces that held powerful government and corporate actors to account. In-depth interviews with the important newsmakers of the day. Foreign affairs coverage that broadened Americans’ understanding of our nation’s indispensable role in the post-World War 2 world and how lucky we all were to be living in the U.S. despite its many flaws. Thoughtful profiles of the musicians, actors, painters, comedians, writers and other artists channeling the deep longings that unite us—the things we all feel.

Everyone who has loved 60 Minutes over the years has a favorite journalist who has worked on the program. I greatly admired Mike Wallace’s pitbull ethos in his most contentious interviews on investigative stories, even though I couldn’t imagine being able to summon the same nerve myself. Bob Simon’s reporting around the world, on some of the most dangerous conflicts and war zones, was empathic, gripping, but never sensational.

Any uncertainty about the identity of my favorite correspondent was put to rest on my first trip to New Orleans. I was 19 and a friend attending Tulane invited me down for Mardi Gras. My memories of that weekend are hazy. That’s probably just as well. Here’s what I do remember. My buddy informed me that we would be going to some legendary music venue I’d never heard of, a place called Tipitina’s, to see a performance by the Neville Brothers. He buried the lead on two pieces of pertinent information: the show’s 12:00am start time and the voyage we were all about to go on together. The band didn’t come on exactly at midnight. But when they finally showed up—lord sakes alive! A hot sweaty room of blissed out people exploded in joy to the familiar sound of Hey Pocky A-Way from the stage. Amidst the rapture, my inner news dork couldn’t help but notice the tall gentleman with the shaved head to the side of the stage, banging a cowbell, dancing in a frenzy, the Mardi Gras beads around his neck tussling every which way.

Mr. Ed Bradley himself! In the flesh, jamming with the Nevilles!! I couldn’t believe it.

I left the club with the sun coming up and the conviction that Bradley was my new hero. I loved the grace and care that shone through his stories on the lives and challenges of the most vulnerable in our nation and world. When an interview subject was dissembling across from him, Bradley had a unique ability to level his gaze, crack a slight smirk and express incredulousness—all without being condescending. His profiles of recording artists were the rare exception on television—lengthy, probing, and lacking the simplistic cliches that too often plague mainstream reporting on rock and roll and other American music. His 2004 interview with Bob Dylan is legendary. I never knew Bradley or had the chance to meet him. But I felt the loss acutely when he passed away from blood cancer in 2006.

I’ve continued to follow and admire 60 Minutes in the years since and still believe it’s an important vehicle to hold power to account and provoke discussion about our values as individuals and as a nation and member of the global community. This past week reaffirmed the show’s unique power to deliver these moments. It also offered fresh evidence of changes afoot that could make the show less likely to do so in the future.

Last Saturday evening, a gunman attempted to storm the White House Correspondents’ dinner with President Trump, key cabinet members and the D.C. press corps in attendance. The close call, coming after two previous attempts on the president’s life and taking place at the same hotel as the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981, turned the weekend news cycle upside down. Top news organizations went into immediate live coverage Saturday night on air and online. The Sunday morning political talk shows focused almost entirely on the events at the WHCD. Weekend coverage of the story wrapped on 60 Minutes.

The show, as it often does when important news breaks, rearranged its rundown to add a fresh segment at the top—a sit-down interview between correspondent Norah O’Donnell and President Trump less than 24 hours after events at the WHCD.

No one was harmed during the scary events at the WHCD on Saturday. The gunman never got close to the ballroom where the dinner was taking place, and the president, the vice president, cabinet secretaries, White House staffers and media in attendance were all able to evacuate the premises safely.

Trump was mostly subdued during the 60 Minutes interview until O’Donnell asked him about the following words in the assailant’s “manifesto.”

“And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.”

Trump immediately lashed out at O’Donnell calling her a “disgrace” multiple times for asking the question.

Media critics can debate the appropriateness of the question or whether the new brain trust at CBS News was privately thrilled with the digital media impressions and clicks that were invariably produced by the combative exchange.

The interview continued on, uneventfully, for another 4 minutes.

After a commercial break, correspondent Scott Pelley appeared on the screen to introduce show’s next segment—an interview with former Republican Senator from Nebraska, Ben Sasse, who is dying from pancreatic cancer.

Watching the pairing of the Trump and Sasse interviews back-to-back was riveting television at a time of deep division in America.

President Trump, in possession of the single largest megaphone of any person in the world, flashed the arrogance and cruelty that embodies his administration’s approach to politics, public life and America’s role in the world.

Sasse, never a member of the MAGA tribe, was one of only seven GOP senators to vote to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial after January 6th.

Since his terminal diagnosis in December, Sasse has been using his final months to wrestle—in an extraordinarily open and courageous way—with the existential questions he’s now facing and the role faith, family and friends are playing in his last journey.

Sasse jokes with his interviewers.

He pokes fun at the self-important, performative and disingenuous behavior of politicians in Washington.

He laughs easily at himself.

He runs towards—not away from—his own imminent mortality and radiates love and gratitude in the process.

His 60 Minutes interview, coming as it did after the segment with the president, was a gift given in real time to each of us individually, regardless of our own politics, belief systems, spiritual dispositions and other differences.

It was also an invitation to the country as a whole to reconsider the values now guiding participation and personal conduct in politics and public life.

That it came on 60 Minutes was appropriate and timely.

A few days before the attempted assassination at the WHCD, Trump and top cabinet members and advisors had a private party and dinner with key CBS News executives and Paramount Skydance head David Ellison, according to reporting by Puck’s Dylan Byers.

Byers reports that long-planned changes to 60 Minutes, including layoffs, more digital programming and possible franchising beyond the Sunday evening time slot, will commence after the program’s current season ends on May 17th.

This past Sunday’s show served as a powerful reminder of the unique role 60 Minutes has played in the larger debate over the type of values America ought to stand for.

Its continued ability to do so will depend on what sort of program emerges when Season 59 of 60 Minutes begins later this year.

Graham Platner has been drawing large crowds since he entered the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate last year—and according to recent polls—is now leading Governor Janet Mills in the race to take on Senator Susan Collins.

A few weeks ago, I drove up to Greenville on a rainy Monday evening to see Platner do a town hall in a school gymnasium.

I was curious to see who would turn out for Platner in one of Maine’s most conservative counties and why.

Greenville residents John and Cindy Bohl, who’ve both voted Republican in the past, agreed to chat after the event.

Cindy began by sharing a conversation she had at a funeral in town the day before.

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A few weeks ago, I drove up to Greenville, Maine to watch Graham Platner hold a town hall in one of the most conservative counties in the state. After the event I met Cindy and John Bohl, longtime Greenville residents and Platner supporters.

Thursday’s episode of Unorganized Territory will feature my conversation with Cindy and John. We cover a wide range of topics in addition to their support for Platner. I hope you’ll give it a listen.

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Here’s an admission that will surprise few people who know me well: I’m addicted to political news. I make time each day to devour whatever compelling podcasts, newspaper stories and magazine pieces I can fit in. Politics is not a beat I was especially draw to as a public radio reporter. But as journalists working in small to medium-sized newsrooms all know, there are times (legislative hearings, campaign coverage, election nights) when every reporter and editor gets pulled into political coverage.

As a news consumer and political junkie, there’s no shortage of reporting and stories to feed my addiction.

I appreciate the work of certain well-sourced reporters in Washington, covering the White House and other government agencies, who cut through the fog of propaganda to deliver an accurate snapshot of what’s actually happening inside Trump 2.0. I’m grateful for incisive coverage of the federal courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and how this vital pillar of our constitutional system is functioning in a time of maximalist assertion of executive power. The two major parties are currently at war over redistricting across the country and smart, in-depth coverage is critical to understanding the powerful political and financial interests battling to influence how our Congressional maps are redrawn. I’m also a sucker for the inside-baseball stuff: the sausage-making stories about strategy, strategists, polls, advertising, campaign finance and the scandals of the moment.

As I developed the concept for Unorganized Territory, my decision to cover the 2026 election through the voices of Maine voters was influenced less by the political media I consume on a daily basis and more by the reporting and storytelling that has most captured my imagination during my own obligatory stints as a reporter on the campaign trail.

My jam falls into two basic buckets: the way policies, implemented by those we elect, are playing out in the lives of real people with no skin in the game; and the complicated mixture of personal qualities and public service ideals that motivate candidates to run for office and allow some, but not others, to connect with voters and build political movements.

Being related to two U.S. presidents, as I am, is not exactly a common occurrence and has certainly influenced my interest in these questions.

So has a few of my reporting experiences over the years.

I spent a week traveling through southern Illinois in early 2002 with a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate who literally believed that he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan. The election was still months away, but the candidate, a complete unknown, already had a sizable staff at his beck and call. In his chauffeured car, between events, he spent most of his time on the phone calling potential donors. His ego though, even at this early stage, seemed to get in the way of his ability to connect with the limited number of folks showing up at his press conferences and events. He came in third in the primary.

Things worked out very differently for another unknown candidate I was lucky enough to cover.

I will always remember being in the office of 848, the daily news program at WBEZ-FM Chicago, and learning one morning about an Illinois State Senator who would be appearing shortly on the show.

“Who is Barack Obama?” I asked no one in particular. To which the late, great Teshima Walker, then an 848 producer, casually replied, “Oh, he’s going to be President of the United States someday!”

I came to understand this possibility, even likelihood, myself during my months covering Obama’s 2004 U.S. Senate campaign.

Two moments stand out.

On the evening of July 27, 2004, my editors sent me to the Billy Goat Tavern to cover candidate Obama’s keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention. TVs in the bar were broadcasting the convention, but no one seemed to be paying much attention. That quickly changed as Obama’s speech began. Patrons in the packed bar crowded near the TVs in hushed silence as Obama’s address surged towards its memorable “red state blue state” crescendo. At the end, there was an unmistakable sense that those in the room had witnessed something historic together.

I saw this magnetism on display again a few months later, when former two-term Republican governor, the late Jim Edgar, invited Obama to address students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where Edgar was teaching at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs. From the moment he set foot on campus that October afternoon, Obama was mobbed by surging crowds of young people who would later become part of the diverse coalition of voters that twice elected him President of the United States.

For those who think I’m about to compare Graham Platner, the Sullivan oyster farmer and political neophyte, to Barack Obama—I’m sorry to disappoint you.

What is true, though, is that Platner has drawn consistently large crowds (for Maine) to his town halls across the state since he launched his campaign last year.

The crowd in Greenville, while small compared to other Platner events, was still notable for a rainy Monday night in March in conservative Piscataquis County.

I went to Greenville because I wanted to watch Platner interact with voters to better understand his appeal in a race where his opponent, Maine’s outgoing two-term governor Janet Mills, isn’t exactly chopped liver.

Why, exactly, is he igniting something resembling a political movement in Maine?

For roughly two hours, Platner laid out his priorities and answered voters questions on health care, the economy, tax policy, the growing divide between the most well off in America and everyone else, immigration enforcement and anger with Senator Collins over her votes on the One Big Beautiful Bill and the president’s ability to wage war with Iran.

Voters in this gymnasium responded enthusiastically to Platner’s gruff, plain spoken communication style, sharp denunciations of the Trump Presidency and messaging joining Susan Collins and Donald Trump at the hip.

According to a slew of recent polls, Platner is now the Democratic frontrunner in the primary.

No one has a crystal ball of course.

If he wins, Platner will most certainly face a hard-fought campaign against perhaps the most resilient Maine politician of the modern era—someone who has consistently won tough races when counted out.

What is also true, though, is that Maine’s senior U.S. Senator has never had to run for re-election in an environment quite this inhospitable.

It will be a fascinating campaign to watch.

It’s Unorganized Territory, the podcast where Maine voters have their say on the 2026 election and America’s political moment. I’m Jay Field. It’s Thursday April 9^th.

I met Wayne Farrin one afternoon as he was finishing up lunch with real estate colleagues at the Jefferson Market and General Store.

As we chatted about the election, I quickly learned that Wayne has two other jobs besides being a realtor.

He’s also the elected representative for Jefferson and surrounding towns in the state legislature and owns and runs the general store.

It’s been more than a month of war with Iran, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.

High gas prices that drag on are the equivalent of political kryptonite.

They mess with family budgets and can cause voters to spend less and punish incumbents at the polls.

Unorganized Territory hit the 2026 State of Maine Sportsman’s Show at the Augusta Civic Center to informally sample the level of concern within one part of Maine’s nearly $10 billion tourism economy.

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One morning, earlier this week, I paid a visit to the state capitol in Augusta.

A one-day, mobile museum featuring original artifacts from American history was set up in the Hall of Flags, under the Capitol Dome, in honor the nation’s 250^th birthday.

A crowd was just starting to gather, as I introduced myself to a man standing near the exhibit table in a dark sweatshirt and ball cap, a 64-year-old pastor from Fryeberg named Eric Ness.

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Diane Langworthy has lived in Aroostook County almost continuously since the early 1980s.

She’s retired now, after a long career as a pastor with the United Church of Christ, where she served parishes in Houlton and Fort Fairfield.

As she looks to November, Diane has questions.

Will high food prices make it more difficult to afford the large family meals she loves to cook for her sixteen grandchildren—many of whom live nearby and have defied the County’s persistent outmigration trend?

Will she and her husband have the health care they need nearby, as they age?

Or will they need to move away, as some friends already have?

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We all have that friend, right?

When the subject turns to politics, elections and the state of the world, they go there.

This is the person who says out loud the stuff everyone around them is thinking, but not saying.

This is Jason Ward.

Jason went to the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He served as a naval engineering officer on a guided missile cruiser in the Persian Gulf and was the ship’s judge advocate general or JAG. After leaving the Navy, Jason moved to the private sector, climbed the ladder in executive recruiting, and now runs his own headhunting business. I met Jason late one afternoon, in an empty conference room at the Cushing Town Office, a few days after Alex Pretti was killed by border patrol agents in Minneapolis.

Joanne Mason follows Maine politics and elections closely. She’s chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee. Joanne lives in Readfield with her husband, Ken, the county’s elected sheriff. Readfield, like so many Maine communities, is narrowly divided politically. In 2024, its residents cast 900 votes for Kamala Harris and 875 votes for Donald Trump. You never know where a conversation will lead once you hit record. Forty minutes into our chat, Joanne shared a family story on the far-reaching, traumatic impact of recent ICE raids across the country. Before we got there, she touched on issues resonating in 2026, how she sizes up candidates, the volatile political climate in recent years and the more forgiving, collegial style of politics she experienced growing up in Augusta and raising her own family in Readfield.

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I first launched Unorganized Territory shortly after my son Sam was diagnosed with leukemia at age 17. Storytelling—through writing or audio, professional or personal—has been source of solace in my life. I thought a Substack newsletter would be a good way to update family and friends on Sam’s progress. I also thought it could help me process what I was feeling as I supported him through the grueling treatment required to save his life.

My intention was to write here semi-regularly. Maybe twice a month. But the deeper into cancer caregiving I went the less bandwidth I seemed to have. It was as if my right-brain creativity was pushed aside by a desperate, brawny, left-brain dominance: the logic, facts and executive functioning required to organize and dispense daily medications, deliver home chemotherapy infusions and monitor and treat side effects and fevers. I used whatever right brain capacity I had left to bear witness to Sam and soothe his pain and fear. I managed to write a few updates. I tried not to be too hard on myself.

It’s impossible to know, in advance, how a health ordeal will change a family. Sam is in the middle of his freshman year now at the University of Maine. He’s finished with his treatment, cancer free and has a great long-term prognosis. His sister, now a thriving high school junior, navigated her own struggles early on in her brother’s illness with her trademark mixture of self-advocacy and resilience.

When Sam got sick, I had just left a start-up company where I had worked since 2019 in communications and marketing. The gig was my first long-term one since leaving public radio journalism in 2016 to be a full-time custodial parent. Throughout Sam’s treatment, I did part-time communications work for my former employer, the start-up, and figured, initially, that the logical next step for me was a consulting business providing similar services.

I had every intention of hard charging it into this next phase with barely a wink and a nod to what I’d been through with Sam. But this past summer, a bunch of things happened in rapid succession. I moved to a new place—our second move during Sam’s treatment. My long-term relationship ended. And both kids went off to school in August.

The empty nest just gutted me. There’s no other way to put it. A stream of delayed grief—many months of caregiving, followed by the breakup, followed by the empty nest—overtook me.

It’s scary staring at the blank page. My uncertainty and anxiety, though, felt relative compared to what I’ve watched Sam go through with so much courage and so little complaint. His example has created a well of family strength, one that I was able to draw on to ask the right questions about my own immediate future.

What do I love to do?

What fears are holding me back from going all in on the thing I love doing?

Here’s my truth: I’m a journalist and a storyteller. I’ve missed this work more than I realized. A real crisis has a way of sharpening focus. Time is finite. So, with that in mind, I’m excited to share the news of my return to reporting and storytelling with the relaunch of Unorganized Territory.

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A bi-weekly podcast on Substack, Unorganized Territory tells the story of the 2026 election in Maine, and our American political moment, through the voices of voters in the towns, villages and small municipalities at the heart of community life in the nation’s most rural state.

In the process, Unorganized Territory seeks to encourage active listening across cultural divides at a time when shouting, intolerance and vitriol are dominating American political discourse.

Maine voters follow elections closely and take the franchise seriously. Hard work, resilience and resourcefulness have been woven into the fabric of family and civic life in Maine for generations and have shaped the state’s historically independent-minded approach to politics.

Next year, Maine voters will make choices that will directly influence which party controls both houses of Congress.

Unorganized Territory believes there’s space and an important need in the media landscape for coverage of this consequential election through the real lives, experiences and voices of those doing the actual voting across Maine. Weekly stories and audio diaries of differing lengths, touching on community pride and sense of place; the roots of voters’ personal engagement with politics and choices in elections; economic uncertainty and affordability concerns; rising health care costs and housing insecurity; President Trump and his policies and the often-stark divide between the realities of rural life, and the way rural voters and their communities are often represented, perceived and stereotyped far away in the country’s urban power centers.

Unorganized Territory will be free at first, as I work to build a following.

A trailer for the show will be released tomorrow.

Listen in beginning March 10th on Substack, Apple, Spotify and other major podcast platforms.

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