Maine Sen. Susan Collins has been deploying a rare tactic in a battleground Senate race: agreeing with her opponent.
“Troy [Jackson] and I agree that the war should come to an end ... I agree that the president did not have a good plan,” she said of the war in Iran.
“Both of us would have voted no on final passage,” she said of Republicans’ 2025 reconciliation package.
“The bottom line is that Troy and I both would have voted against the Canadian tariffs,” she said of President Donald Trump’s trade dispute.
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Collins made those comments during a debate against Troy Jackson, her Democratic opponent. Collins is arguing to voters that the biggest difference between her and Jackson is that her seniority, particularly on the Senate Appropriations Committee, and position as a key Republican vote give her the power to spare Maine from more dramatic effects of Trump’s agenda.
“There’s a fundamental difference between Senator Collins and Troy Jackson: she delivers results; he would get nothing,” Blake Kernen, the communications director for the Collins campaign, said in a statement to The Washington Sun.
Jackson, meanwhile, argues that a reliable Democratic vote would benefit Maine more.
“Unlike Collins, Troy would not have voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, advance legislation slashing Mainers’ health care, or hand ICE billions without guardrails. Those votes have real consequences for people who can’t afford a lobbyist in Washington,” said Maggie Amjad, a spokesperson for Jackson, in a statement to The Sun.
“Thirty years of seniority means nothing to a family losing health care or struggling to heat their home,” she said. “What matters is whose side you’re on.”
When Collins started her first term in 1997, Republicans made up half of New England’s Senate delegation. Now she’s the only one, and widely seen as the only Republican capable of winning a Senate seat in Maine. She’s also the only Republican senator in the country running for reelection in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024.
Collins, who is often critical of Trump, is running on a personal record of being able to secure funding for projects across the state, emphasizing the constituent work she’s spent years doing from Washington.
“It is a very hard job to try to shoehorn in a one-size-fits-all policy across every part of this state, but Susan Collins does it better than anybody else that I have ever seen,” said Maine state Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, a Republican backing Collins, adding that the state is “wicked diverse,” with competing interests in the logging, fishing, farming, shipbuilding and tourism industries.
Trump has never won statewide in Maine, but some of his policies are having outsize effects there, including the U.S.-Canada trade dispute — since Maine is a border state — and immigration enforcement — an ICE agent shot and killed a Colombian man in Biddeford.
Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump appointee, told The Sun that the race is about who can be a more effective voice against the president, especially as his poll numbers reach all-time lows.
“There aren’t many people that are looking for a MAGA warrior in these midterms, much less in Maine,” Bartlett said. “There’s some credibility she has — not many people mistake Susan Collins for Donald Trump.”
Trump has lashed out at her repeatedly. When asked at a debate if Trump would hold a rally for her in Maine, Collins said that she’s “not exactly his favorite senator” and he wouldn’t be visiting. And after she voted to pass a War Powers Resolution aimed at curbing his power to expand military operations in Venezuela, he included her on a list of senators he said “should never be elected to office again.”
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