BANGOR — He’s the grandson of immigrants, the brother of a former governor and the youngest child in a family that fed countless patrons at its namesake restaurant.

If you know Maine politics, if you’re from Bangor, or both, you know the Baldacci name.

But in a midterm election year with high-profile races featuring several candidates from politically connected families, Joe Baldacci hopes his record in the city of Bangor and the Maine Legislature will matter more to voters in the 2nd Congressional District than any preconceptions they have of his family.

His brother, John, was governor. Like him, he’s a Democrat. But Baldacci, now a state senator, believes he’s the right fit for the conservative-leaning 2nd Congressional District as someone who has not been afraid to oppose his party at times.

Baldacci, 61, has done fairly well in polls ahead of the June 9 primary against State Auditor Matt Dunlap, ex-Capitol Hill operative Jordan Wood, and University of Maine graduate student and social worker Paige Loud.

The winner will take on combative former Gov. Paul LePage in November for the chance to succeed U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a moderate Democrat who is not seeking reelection after holding the rural and Trump-voting district since 2018.

Baldacci’s rosier position could be double-edged. In early May, the national campaign arm for House Democrats announced it is supporting him. While Baldacci welcomed the news, it drew criticism from primary opponents and divided Democrats in other states with critical races in which the national party made endorsements.

The candidate says he’s optimistic voters will appreciate his accomplishments and his record.

“I think with my deep roots in the district, my experience (in) local government that I feel was pretty successful, and my experience in the Legislature and getting things done makes me uniquely qualified for this office,” Baldacci said.

A FULL HOUSE, A FAMILY RESTAURANT

The Old Baltimore restaurant opened in Bangor in 1933. The name honored the Maryland city that Baldacci’s step-grandfather, Vincent Carparelli, arrived in when he first made it to the U.S. from Italy.

One day around the middle of the century, a woman named Rosemary Karam, who was the daughter of Lebanese immigrants, went on a date at the restaurant. Robert Baldacci, the son of Italian immigrants, made a bold move: He was Rosemary and her date’s waiter, and he slipped the young woman his number.

The two would go on to marry and have eight children. Joseph Baldacci is their youngest, born in February 1965.

The Old Baltimore later became Baldacci’s and then Momma Baldacci’s. The restaurant made it through a teardown and numerous relocations amid Bangor’s urban renewal phase, and also through a bankruptcy in 1974.

It survived, and served a host of high-profile patrons over the years, such as John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton. It closed in 2008 after Baldacci’s brother, Paul, and his parents had died.

Some of those bustling restaurant years were quite tough for the family, and everyone chipped in. Baldacci started working there around the age of 13, making breadsticks and eventually waiting tables.

Away from the restaurant, having 10 family members in one house on Palm Street in the Tree Streets neighborhood made for a “very boisterous, noisy, active home,” Baldacci said.

Baldacci was on student council and the tennis team at Bangor High School. One of his proudest accomplishments was being one of Maine’s two recipients in 1983 of the United States Senate Youth Program that included a weeklong trip to Capitol Hill to meet a host of government figures. The program also came with a scholarship that paid for most of his first two college years.

In Washington, he got to meet then-President Ronald Reagan on Reagan’s birthday. (“I disagree with his policies, but his personality, it was authentic. He tried to make everybody a friend,” Baldacci recalled of the Republican.)

Baldacci went on to serve as a national delegate for Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign.

Encouraged by his father to go into law, Baldacci went to the University of Maine to study political science and then got his UMaine law degree in 1991. While at the law school, he co-founded the Maine Association for Public Interest Law, which provides scholarships to students interested in the field.

He started dating his wife, Beth, who went to Boston College with Baldacci’s sister, after both of them had finished law school. They have two children, Olivia, 25, and Caroline, 27.

Baldacci then began his own law firm, which primarily deals today with family law, criminal and bankruptcy work. Just as the family restaurant once was, Baldacci’s law firm is in downtown Bangor.

TAKING ON LEPAGE AND TRUMP

Like his father, Baldacci became a Bangor City Council member, serving from 1996 until 2002. He then returned to the council from 2011 to 2017, also twice serving in the joint mayor-council chair role.

Although he largely focused on local issues, he waded into national politics from time to time. The balance of local and national is the backbone of his congressional campaign.

“In a time of dark images, I see a Bangor that will never tolerate hatred, bigotry, discrimination or prejudice — not now, not ever,” Baldacci said upon being named mayor in 2016, right after Trump’s first election.

Earlier that same year, he made his first bid for the 2nd District to challenge the Republican incumbent, former U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin. But Baldacci dropped out of the primary race that February and backed Emily Cain, who would lose to Poliquin in the general election.

Some of the council work Baldacci likes to highlight includes helping the fire department set up its ambulance and paramedic unit, and negotiating an agreement with officials in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to allow for international commuters between the two cities to clear customs before boarding their flights. Baldacci also noted that in 2017, he helped Bangor reach a 10-year contract extension with Waterfront Concerts to keep bringing major music acts to the small city.

Baldacci ran for and won election to the Maine Senate district covering Bangor and Hermon in 2020 to succeed a term-limited Bangor Democrat, former Sen. Geoff Gratwick. Baldacci won reelection to two more terms before deciding in January to run again for Congress.

In his TV ads, Baldacci says he has pushed back against Trump administration policies as a state senator — and against LePage when he was Bangor mayor. In 2016, the then-governor proposed a new facility to house criminal defendants deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial. But LePage’s plan did not come to fruition, as Baldacci and Bangor residents opposed the facility over safety concerns.

A CONTRARIAN AT TIMES IN AUGUSTA

In the Legislature, Baldacci successfully proposed more protections and funding for mobile home communities, and for emergency managers to be trained in administering the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.

Baldacci’s votes in the Maine Senate put him at odds at times with most members of his party. He opposed the repeated, unsuccessful efforts to enact stricter data privacy protections and a measure from Gov. Janet Mills to strengthen the state’s “yellow flag” law. That measure also required background checks for private gun sales in the wake of the 2023 Lewiston mass shooting.

As chair of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, he said he’s not been afraid to call out the Mills administration over persistent child welfare issues.

He also has stayed up on local issues. He’s advocated for a repeatedly defeated proposal to study an expansion of Amtrak service to Bangor. And he’s weighed in on efforts to help revitalize the flailing Bangor Mall, which now has a prospective buyer looking to partially turn it into new condos.

Baldacci’s legislative record shows he offers a moderate voice on certain issues, while also being open to various ideas, said Peter Crichton, an Aroostook County native and former local and county government administrator whose last role before retirement was being the Auburn city manager.

Crichton, 69, has known Baldacci for nearly 50 years, and was among those who encouraged him to run for Golden’s seat.

“He understands that the American dream is slipping away from a lot of people,” said Crichton, who lives in Windham. “And I think he has a vision that would be good for the 2nd District and good for Maine and the country.”

Baldacci has “definitely proven himself” with his elected service in Bangor and the Legislature, said Donna Gormley-Greeley, a former TV news anchor in Bangor who now owns an in-home care agency and volunteers for Baldacci’s campaign.

“He’s very thoughtful in his decision-making. He doesn’t rush,” she said. “I really believe he is the only one who can defeat Paul LePage, and that is the goal.”

A BALDACCI BACK IN WASHINGTON?

When Vice President JD Vance visited Bangor International Airport last week, Baldacci held a news conference outside the Margaret Chase Smith Federal Building to lay out his vow to fight for reproductive rights if elected to Congress.

“In Congress, I’ll codify Roe, protect access to mifepristone and fight for the healthcare every Maine family deserves, because the government has no business in Mainers’ doctor’s offices,” Baldacci said.

Baldacci has a few other priorities, too, that would feel more doable if Democrats flip the GOP’s narrow House majority. But unlike Dunlap and Wood, he’s reluctant to go all the way on supporting Medicare for All, one of the policies beloved by the more liberal wing of the party.

Baldacci thinks Medicare for All is an “important goal” down the line, but he said he would first work with other willing members of Congress to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 55.

Devoting enough funding for veterans’ healthcare is another priority, and he would seek to serve on the House committees dealing with agriculture and transportation. Baldacci said that would give him the chance to weigh in on forestry and rural transit issues that affect the 2nd District. He said Maine farmers are on his mind, and thinks Trump’s sweeping tariffs have hurt them.

If elected, Baldacci said he would look for a simple, “temporary” apartment in Washington — though he would want it to be a bit bigger than the “tiny, tiny apartment” where he visited his brother John while he was a congressman from 1995 to 2003.

“He got it real cheap. I opened the refrigerator door, and he had orange juice and a banana,” Baldacci recalled. “My brother John was (living) a much more Spartan lifestyle. I would have to have a bit more there.”