Good riddance to the political mailers | Victoria Hugo-Vidal

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I have kept the political mailers received at my house for the past two weeks. The total is at least 39.

I say “at least” because it turns out my wife might have recycled a few that she didn’t realize I was collecting for the purposes of this column. Thirty-nine political mailers in 14 days (plus a plastic baggie of pamphlets from the Androscoggin County Republican Committee, which I am not counting because it was dumped on my doorstep rather than arriving in my mailbox).

Of the 39 mailers, six were in favor of Democrats. One was a “make sure you’re registered to vote” paper from the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee that didn’t mention any issues or candidates. Thirty-two were in favor of Republican candidates. Only one was from the Maine Republican Party and a total of seven mailers were authorized by a candidate (mostly Paul LePage.)

On the Democratic side, four were directly from the Maine Democratic Party and two were from PACs. I don’t know why the Maine Republican Party isn’t sending out their own mailers. Maybe they’re secretly broke? Or, more likely, they’d rather have billionaire-backed dark money do their dirty work for them.

Elon Musk’s personal super PAC, America PAC, sent five mailers. SLF PAC, which has received over $158 million from Musk (and that’s just what I could find with a quick Google search) sent eight. There’s other PACs and committees as well, too many for one column.

Many of the mailers clearly used AI; some might have been regular photo editing by human hand but there was one where clearly someone prompted an image generator with something along the lines of “scary blue wave with famous Democrats” and it created images of Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren looking like sea gods. Troy Jackson, the choice of Poseidon! On the other side, Troy Jackson, Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer are edited to all be standing on a beach in the rain. I’m genuinely unsure what this ad is trying to communicate.

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Also, and I’m afraid I don’t know how else to say this, but several of the AI-influenced attack ads accidentally made Troy Jackson look sexy. I think whoever at SLF PAC designed them was going for an “evil rich guy” theme but they just made him look like he is auditioning to be the next James Bond, successfully. Jackson in real-life suits is nowhere near as svelte as these mailers make him out to be.

There was a great deal of implied racism in the Republican ads. Five of these ads featured Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, who has nothing to do with Maine but is a Latino woman and therefore, I guess, terrifying.

One even said, “You can’t stop them if you don’t vote,” featuring a picture of Troy Jackson alongside pictures of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani — the mayor of New York City, which doesn’t have anything to do with a Senate race in Maine (although at least, as a Bowdoin grad, Mamdani was once a Maine resident) and Kamala Harris.

The inclusion of Harris is particularly egregious because she doesn’t even hold an elected position right now. “America PAC” clearly just wanted to include a Black woman for purposes of getting the base fired up with hatred.

None of the attack ads featured Rep. Chellie Pingree, who also supports the Green New Deal and Medicare for All and, unlike Mayor Mamdani and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, is a Maine politician. Is it because she’s white and the conservative “get out the vote” operation needs to rely on a base sense of racist fear to drive turnout?

There was one ad that really summed up the whole election for me and, honestly, the whole country’s political situation. It’s from America PAC, and it says “Troy Jackson and his radical socialist allies want to change Maine forever. Susan Collins is fighting to keep Maine, Maine.”

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There’s no details about how Jackson wants to change Maine, or what exactly “keeping Maine, Maine” means.

That’s the point: the reader can fill in the blanks with whatever they want, whatever scares them the most. (This being an Elon Musk-funded ad, I suspect that “keep Maine Maine” means “keep Maine white” and no, I’m not talking about a snowy winter).

Personally I think it would be great if we could change Maine forever by, for example, passing universal healthcare so nobody has to worry about going bankrupt from a cancer diagnosis, or maybe investing in moving the state away from depending on foreign-sourced heating oil. That would be a great change.

But this flyer just boils everything down to “change” vs. “stay the same” even though it’s plain as day that the system now just isn’t working. And I get it. I’m autistic, I struggle with change to a clinically diagnosable degree. Change can be scary. But it’s inevitable. And change can be good! It’s not necessarily something to be scared of, not that you can tell from Republican political mailing, which is like 70% scaring old people that illegal immigrants are coming to get them somehow.

I cannot wait for this election to be over, for many reasons but at this point I am mostly just excited to stop getting all these gross mailers. They’re a total waste of money, time and trees.

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Tagged: election 2026, Victoria Hugo-Vidal