BANGOR, Maine — On the night Democrats rode what their own House leader called "an American tsunami" across the country, the water stopped, by one Republican's count, about four thousand votes short of Maine's 2nd Congressional District.

That's where Republican Paul LePage walked into Sea Dog Brewing in Bangor around 2 p.m. Wednesday and did what candidates do when the Associated Press won't. "The public numbers have us up about four thousand," he said. "There is no path to victory for my opponent." Then, for anyone in the back holding a beer, "I am declaring victory."

His first official act as self-declared congressman-elect? Going to bed. LePage said he was very tired. Finally, a politician whose first priority matches the voters'.

Democrat Matt Dunlap was having none of it. "Maine has the most reliable elections staff in the world," Dunlap said in a statement. "This race is very close and there are plenty of ballots left to count. We'll have more to say as we learn more."

You need to know one thing about Matt Dunlap. His day job is Maine state auditor. The man counts things for a living. Asking him to concede before the count is finished is like asking a dentist to just eyeball it.

So the auditor is auditing his own election. Of course he is. When all you have is a calculator, every race looks like 50.1 to 49.9.

And that's the actual number. With about 89 percent of the vote in, the AP had LePage at 50.1 percent and Dunlap at 49.9. By 5 p.m., WABI had it at 50.3 to 49.7 with 91.7 percent counted.

Here's where it gets very Maine. There's a write-in candidate in the race, which means if nobody clears 50 percent, the whole thing could go to ranked-choice tabulation. A recount is likely, too. So the voters of Maine may get to pick LePage or Dunlap, then pick them again, then watch somebody count the picks.

The seat is open because Democrat Jared Golden didn't run again. Golden was the kind of Democrat who won in a district full of pickup trucks by occasionally agreeing with the people in the pickup trucks. National Democrats spent Tuesday celebrating a wave everywhere else, and according to WABI, this looks like the only seat in the nation a Republican flipped. One seat. They lost exactly one, and it was the one where they used to have the guy who talked to the trucks.

LePage, for his part, offered a mission statement that fits on a bumper sticker: "If it helps Maine, I'm going to be all over it, if it hurts Maine, I'm going to be all against it." Bold. Nobody has ever run on hurting Maine, but I suppose you get credit for saying it out loud.

So that's the state of play up here. One candidate has declared victory and taken a nap. The other is the state auditor, asking to finish the audit. And the rest of the Democratic Party is too busy surfing its tsunami to notice the one house that didn't get wet.

Plenty of ballots left to count, indeed.

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The Demorat is a satire publication. This article is parody and commentary based on real news reports; jokes, exaggerations and fictional elements are not factual claims. Quotes attributed to real people are drawn from published reporting.

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