{"id":198499,"date":"2026-08-23T02:24:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T02:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198499\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T02:24:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T02:24:28","slug":"bobby-charles-republican-candidate-for-maine-governor-doesnt-plan-to-attend-jd-vance-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/198499\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobby Charles, Republican candidate for Maine governor, doesn\u2019t plan to attend JD Vance event"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"\t\t\tBobby Charles, Republican candidate for Maine governor, fields questions from the media during his visit to Phoenix House Recovery and Reentry Center in Lewiston on July 31. (Rich Abrahamson\/Staff Photographer)<\/p>\n

Bobby Charles, the Republican candidate for Maine governor, doesn\u2019t plan to attend a visit by Vice President JD Vance to a Brewer manufacturing facility on Monday, according to a spokesperson. <\/p>\n

Vance is scheduled to speak Monday at Compotech, a defense technology company. It will be his second visit to Maine this year after he appeared in May for a rally at the Bangor International Airport<\/a>, where he also spoke in support of former Gov. Paul LePage, who is running for Congress in the 2nd District; and Sen. Susan Collins, who is up for reelection.<\/p>\n

Vance declined at the time to endorse in the Republican primary for governor, which featured more than a half-dozen candidates. <\/p>\n

The vice president\u2019s second visit to Maine comes as Charles, the winner of the June primary, appears to be distancing himself from President Donald Trump and his administration, likely in an attempt to win over moderate and independent voters. Polling has found Charles to be significantly lagging Democrat Hannah Pingree in the race so far.<\/p>\n

At a campaign event Thursday<\/a>, Charles made a point of telling reporters that the governor\u2019s race is \u201cnot about national politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not know President Trump,\u201d Charles said. \u201cI have never met him. But, I will work with him. I will also stand up against him if he opposes something Maine needs. I am running to serve one group of people: the people of Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dale Crafts, a spokesperson for Charles, said in a text message to a reporter that Charles was already scheduled to meet with members of Maine\u2019s addiction and recovery community Monday. Charles has no plans to meet with Vance at any point while the vice president is in Maine, he said.<\/p>\n

Spokespeople for Collins and LePage did not respond Friday to inquiries about whether they will be in attendance in Brewer. <\/p>\n

Staff Writer Billy Kobin contributed to this report. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bobby Charles, Republican candidate for Maine governor, fields questions from the media during his visit to Phoenix House…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[119],"tags":[169,168],"class_list":["post-198499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jd-vance","tag-james-david-vance","tag-jd-vance"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117142452036871596","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}