Jared Golden

Former Gov. Paul LePage, the Republican nominee for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District in November, declined to answer a question this week about whether he supports President Donald Trump’s military actions in Iran.

LePage, a 77-year-old Lewiston native whom Trump has endorsed in the race to succeed U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, was asked an Iran-related question as part of a Q&A that the Press Herald conducted with him and State Auditor Matt Dunlap, the Democratic nominee in the 2nd District race.

LePage campaign adviser Brent Littlefield responded by text message Monday on LePage’s behalf to questions related to Trump and healthcare but did not reply to repeated requests to answer whether LePage supports the Trump administration’s actions to date in Iran. The campaign also would not say whether LePage, if elected to Congress, would vote to limit or block Trump’s actions in Iran.

Dunlap, 61, a former secretary of state, Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine leader and state representative from Old Town, has criticized the Iran war and its economic consequences that have included higher gas prices. After the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran in February, sparking the broader war and killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, Dunlap called the action an “illegal war” that Congress should vote to end.

LePage’s avoidance on the Iran question is notable given public opinion is not on the side of his party’s standard bearer. Just one in three Americans expressed support for the Iran war in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll. Most respondents, including about 40% of Republicans, feel Trump has failed to clearly explain his goals for the conflict that has resulted in the deaths of 18 American military members and thousands of soldiers and civilians in Iran, Israel and Lebanon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Tuesday with Trump at the White House to discuss the war and the on-again, off-again peace negotiations with Iran and Lebanon. Afterwards, Netanyahu called it “one of the best conversations” he and Trump have had.

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As Republican lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, prepare for reelection fights in this fall’s midterms, they are sure to face more questions from voters about the war. Confidence in the national economy has continued to sour this summer amid the conflict, as average gas prices nationally have remained above $4 a gallon.

Collins and a small number of Republicans in the Senate and House have joined Golden and most Democrats in voting for numerous war powers resolutions aimed at reining in Trump’s ability to conduct more strikes in Iran. But those measures have failed thanks to broader GOP opposition. (Golden voted against an resolution in April before backing more recent measures.)

LePage did touch briefly on the war powers topic during a conservative talk radio appearance in May, when WVOM host Ric Tyler asked him a more generic question: “How do you sum up the actions going on in Iran?”

LePage began his response by referring to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and how legislative chambers “allowed” certain things to happen “for multiple decades” to make them essentially become legal precedent, saying “I feel the same thing about the War Powers Act.”

LePage went on to say he thinks “it goes back as far as Jimmy Carter,” referring to the former Democratic president, though Congress actually passed the first War Powers Act in 1973 over the veto of Republican President Richard Nixon.

The legislation sought to restrain a president’s ability to commit U.S. forces overseas without first consulting with Congress, though numerous subsequent presidents from both major parties have ignored or gone around it through executive actions.

“They’ve allowed it not to be enforced for years and years and years, and now, at the last moment, they want to go in and make it work,” LePage told Tyler. “It’s just, you know, you either follow it or you don’t follow it. You can’t be governing by the courts, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Tyler then pivoted to another topic and did not follow up with LePage during that May interview about whether he would support a war powers resolution to limit Trump’s actions in Iran.