The state of Maine has carved out a peculiar place in American political life in recent years. Governor Paul LePage, who has served since 2011, is a Republican known for making inflammatory remarks, denouncing Hillary Clinton, and blacklisting news organizations that anger him, tendencies that may currently sound familiar. But Maine overwhelmingly voted for Barack Obama, twice, despite the highly unpromising demographics he faced there; the state has no large or even midsize cities to serve as Democratic bulwarks, and its population is about ninety-eight per cent white. Meanwhile, two of the last three people Maine has sent to the Senate have been women, and all three have often occupied Congress’s lonely middle ground. Maine does not adhere to the winner-take-all system when awarding electoral votes—another quirk—and in the 2016 Presidential election the state rendered a split decision: three electoral votes for Clinton, one for Donald Trump.
Is Maine on the left, on the right, or—imagine the thought—in the center? It’s less a swing state than a state of swing people, capable of voting all over the map in the same election and often identifying more with their quixotic, craggy state than with the starkly divided nation.
So when the country’s polarized politics invade the local landscape, it forces some uncomfortable choices. On Thursday, Trump singled out a Maine backer, Linda Bean, for praise on Twitter, and suggested that his followers shop at L. L. Bean, which is owned by her family: “Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean. @LBPerfectMaine.”
It’s unusual for a President-elect to direct Americans to shop at a business as a return favor, but unusual is an unstable concept lately, and the tweet probably registered to most Americans as a typical Trump gesture—she backed me; I’ll back her_._ But, in fact, Trump, like a clumsy Bigfoot, was stomping on delicate territory, possibly mistaking it for solid ground. It’s true that Linda Bean’s grandfather founded L. L. Bean, which has since become a major employer and a symbol of Maine’s rugged, piney identity, and she still sits on the board. But in Maine, at least, there is a sizable difference between supporting L. L. Bean and supporting Linda Bean.
On the morning that Trump posted the tweet, Linda Bean appeared on Fox News to protest an L. L. Bean boycott proposed by a nascent group called Grab Your Wallet, which targeted the company because Linda Bean had personally donated tens of thousands of dollars toward electing Trump. (Trump’s tweet was probably prompted by this “Fox & Friends”_ _segment; the President-elect has a habit of reacting on Twitter to what’s on cable news.) On Fox, the questioning was sympathetic and passed quickly over an ongoing dispute over the legality of Linda Bean’s donations. Bean looked grandmotherly with her gray hair and holiday-red sweater and sounded a common Maine refrain by decrying interference and “bullying” by outsiders. She said she has held shares in L. L. Bean since “the day I was born,” pronouncing it “bohn,” in classic Maine fashion, and generally allied herself with her small state and the family business.
But Linda Bean has been a lightning rod in Maine for years. Four days before Trump’s tweet, in response to the proposed boycott, L. L. Bean’s executive chairman, Shawn Gorman, took pains to point out in a statement that Linda Bean is only one of ten people on the board of directors and one of more than fifty family members involved in the business. (L. L. Bean did not respond to requests for comment.) Gorman portrayed L. L. Bean as an apolitical big tent, noting that it makes no endorsements or political contributions. His statement also read, though, as an attempt to put Linda Bean at arm’s length. “No individual alone speaks on behalf of the business or represents the values of the company,” he said.
A healthy contingent of Mainers have similarly tried to distance themselves from Linda Bean, even as she has made herself an inescapable topic of conversation there. (She did not immediately respond to interview requests.) A Yankee-inflected version of Scandinavia’s so-called Law of Jante holds sway in Maine—individual ambition and conspicuous wealth are generally viewed with suspicion. When Bean ran for Congress in 1992 (for the second time), she drew on her inherited money and faced accusations that she traded excessively on the strong reputation of L. L. Bean, where she was born into an ownership role. She has since launched numerous business initiatives outside of L. L. Bean. (The Twitter handle that Trump included in his tweet actually belongs to her own company, not to L. L. Bean, though it’s hard to say whether that was intentional.) Through these ventures, Bean has attempted to package the Maine experience and supersize it in a tourist-friendly way, not always to the taste of Mainers themselves, or even of the summer-house set.
As anyone who visits the Maine coast can observe, Linda Bean has horned in on the market in lobster rolls, waterfront dining, cottage rentals, weddings, tours, and boat rides, widening her reach and driving out smaller competitors. She has acknowledged using straw buyers and L.L.C.s to hide her role in buying up real estate. “When people see me coming, they think big dollars,” she once explained. A resident of the coastal village Port Clyde told a local reporter in 2010, “It’s a divided peninsula: those on the payroll and those who aren’t.”
Linda Bean entered the lobster trade—even more of a Maine signature than L. L. Bean—just a decade ago, in her mid-sixties, and she changed the face of it, at a time of enormous market upheaval. The grandmotherly figure who spoke out on Fox News against the bullying of a beloved rural family business was at one point buying eight million pounds of lobster a year, by her own account.
The actual Linda Bean story does not square well with the down-home, unthreatening image of L. L. Bean. But within the company, too, the political picture is complicated, even if everyone loves the boots. Gorman, who in his statement distanced the company from Linda Bean, has himself donated to several Republican candidates, as the Times_ _reported. Meanwhile, he chairs a foundation dedicated to helping disadvantaged Mainers, and L. L. Bean has been a leader in environmental conservation. Gorman’s uncle, the late Leon Gorman, preceded him as the president of L. L. Bean and, with his wife, donated seventy thousand dollars to the Obama Victory Fund in 2012. Leon Gorman is Linda Bean’s cousin, and on Fox she talked about his Obama donations, creating a spectacle that many Mainers would abhor—a discussion of family conflict and money aired on national TV.
L. L. Bean is a little like Maine, as one might expect. Both the state and the company contain multitudes, and both are trying, with mixed results, to hold on to an essential Maine-ness and dignity in a nation gone haywire. Most Mainers are apt to recognize that boycotting L. L. Bean does not make any more sense than boosting it on Twitter in reward for Linda Bean’s politics. They will likely be guided neither by Trump’s endorsements nor by consumer protests. They’ll buy the boots if they like them and vote for whomever they want.