Troy Jackson highlights Collins’s Trump votes as fuel costs and abortion shape Maine race
Susan Collins is running for a sixth U.S. Senate term against Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, a former state senator, in one of the nation’s most competitive races in the November midterms. To win, Collins must navigate a polarized electorate in President Trump’s second term, with anger over inflation and fallout from the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade. Jackson is highlighting Collins’s votes siding with Trump, who remains deeply unpopular in Maine. The Wall Street Journal characterized Collins’s re-election obstacles as many imposed by Trump, noting his unpopularity in Maine and Jackson’s repeated focus on her votes siding with him.
Collins, 73, has won tough races in the blue-leaning state on her way to becoming the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history. She has cultivated an image as a bipartisan legislator, focused on constituent service and delivered hundreds of millions of dollars for Maine as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. She travels the state, showing up for ribbon-cuttings and talking with voters at fairs and storefronts, with many recalling meeting her before.
In 2024, Collins was re-elected by a comfortable margin despite trailing in opinion polls for most of the race, as Trump lost Maine by 9 percentage points. Polls are tight again this time. Aggregated race ratings come from the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
During the spring, the Collins campaign had expected to face Graham Platner, a political newcomer who electrified crowds. Platner’s candidacy was derailed by sexual-assault allegations that he denied, forcing Democrats to hold a special convention that selected Jackson, a former logger close to labor unions.
The Trump administration is in the middle of a trade war with Canada, Maine’s top trading partner. Fuel prices remain high, including the cost of home-heating oil, which has nearly doubled in the past year as Maine residents prepare for winter.
In interactions with reporters, Collins frequently notes the times she has broken with Trump and the steps she has taken to soften the blow of tariffs and fuel costs. She describes herself as the leading opponent of the Canadian tariffs, pointing to exemptions she has helped win for cement and road salt. Last week, she secured exceptions for some products used in agriculture, a boon for the state’s blueberry, apple and potato farmers. She has spent much of the fall working with the Trump administration to release emergency stocks of home-heating oil. She also has clashed with White House budget chief Russ Vought over administration efforts to cut funding already signed into law.
Jackson has his own political challenges. Collins has blamed state policies under Jackson for high electricity rates, while Republicans have aired ads criticizing Jackson’s receipt of tens of thousands of dollars in annual travel expenses after he bought a home in Augusta, the state capital, where the Maine legislature meets. Collins has supported abortion rights and noted that Jackson sided with antiabortion legislators roughly a decade ago. There have been signs that her vote to confirm Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court’s ruling ending a constitutional right to an abortion might have damaged her brand. “That’s what sealed the deal. I was never going to vote for her again,” said Devan Weber, 44, an elementary-school teacher from York in southern Maine. Weber, a Democrat, said she voted for Collins in four consecutive Senate elections, including in 2020.
Collins has repeatedly won reelection by carrying moderate women and helping stem losses in Democratic-friendly coastal towns in southern Maine. Her familiarity can also help. In September, Jim Grattello spotted Collins at a business-themed event at a gravel-and-sand company in Naples, Maine, and reminded her that he had served as mayor of Biddeford. Grattello, a Democrat, recalled, “We walked in a parade together 30 years ago,” and said he intends to vote for her.
At a ribbon-cutting in Farmington, Maine, Collins joined community leaders for an upbeat event celebrating the opening of an emergency-operations center she helped fund through her powerful role in the Senate. Down the street, demonstrators opposing her reelection and supporting Jackson protested her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Elon Musk’s funding of Republican causes and the high cost of fuel and goods. One demonstrator dressed as Marie Antoinette. Asked about the political environment, Collins called it the most difficult of her career. “I have had tough races always, but this is the first time where there have been nonstop lies about me and my record—character assassination,” she said during a session with reporters last week. The campaign has included accusations by both sides of wrongdoing, frequent protests and vandalism of one of her offices.
Jackson’s campaign has criticized Collins and her allies for noting that Jackson is married to his second cousin. His longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, wrote in an opinion article in the Bangor Daily News last week, “Our children have been dragged into this campaign. Our relationship has been mocked.” Collins raised the relationship in an interview with Politico in September. A radio ad paid for by a super PAC supporting Senate Republicans featured a folksy tune that included the lyric, “If he screws his own family, he’ll screw yours too.” Collins said she had “nothing to do with that ad,” which was funded by the Senate Leadership Fund PAC, and said it should be taken down.
When a protester interrupted the final televised Senate debate, Collins responded, “This is obviously one of Troy’s supporters.” Jackson replied, “Oh, shut up,” and said he didn’t “know that kid.” Collins has since aired advertising publicizing the incident.
The skirmish underscored the degree to which more than $230 million in advertising has blanketed Maine since January, according to AdImpact. Republican groups have spent more than $134 million to help Collins, AdImpact data show. “Susan Collins is a very good campaigner—she should never be underestimated,” said Democratic state Sen. Joe Baldacci of Bangor. “She’s got all kinds of money, but I think people are fed up. It’s just a question of whether they’re going to blame her enough or not.”
Since Collins’s 2018 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, local police have conducted more than 500 checks of her home in Bangor, according to an August report in the Bangor Daily News. Her home was pelted with eggs in September and, later in the month, her Biddeford regional office was vandalized. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen,” said Republican state Sen. David Haggan of Hampden, who supports Collins. “It’s terrible to see these horrible, vicious attacks.”
During the campaign, Collins faced allegations that the Federal Bureau of Investigation reviewed her ties to a donor who was seeking federal contracts; a ProPublica report said the matter was closed by the Justice Department under the Trump administration. Collins called the allegations that she exchanged federal contracts for campaign donations “completely false” and a “partisan hit job.”
The Wall Street Journal assessed that a Collins victory would cement her status as a giant in American politics and a figure with a nearly unmatched ability to occupy the nation’s shrinking political center. It said a defeat would show the electoral limits of centrist GOP candidates running away from Trump in blue-leaning states. Former Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat-turned-Independent who campaigned alongside Collins last week at a New Balance factory in Norway, Maine, said, “You lose Susan Collins, you lose the soul of the Senate.” As of Oct. 27, Republicans held a 53-47 Senate majority; two independents caucused with Democrats. Democrats are looking to flip a number of states, including Maine, Texas, North Carolina and Ohio.