Maine U.S. Senate race has been a 15-month odyssey of twists and turns, all driven by its potential to reshape power in Congress and alter President Donald Trump’s final two years in office. The attendant national media spotlight has tracked all the plotlines of micro and macro importance.
But the race could turn on a simple question: Are Maine voters angry enough at President Donald Trump that they’ll part with Republican Sen. Susan Collins, the state’s longest serving senator in more than a century?
Democrat Troy Jackson, the candidate hastily drafted by Democrats in late July, is hoping that they will, and he has spent the past 90 days trying to nationalize the contest by framing Collins as an enabler of Trump’s unrestrained second term. Collins, meanwhile, has sought to rekindle the election magic that lifted her to a resounding victory six years ago, running a hyperlocal race that focuses on her seniority and ability to direct federal dollars to Maine.
The candidates’ divergent approaches were crystalized on the same in late August.
Collins dropped in to Kenduskeag, just northwest of Bangor, to celebrate the fruits of her seniority and influence: a new library funded in part by a slug of federal cash that she secured through a congressional earmark. While she was there, she also made note of the new fire station that will one day sit right next to it.
"I have been able to secure funding for 45 fire stations all over the state to be rebuilt or renovated, and today we see what an important role they play,” she said.
It wasn’t an official campaign stop, but it allowed Collins to advance her central argument for why she deserves a historic sixth term: That as chair of the Senate appropriations committee, she brings home federal money that might otherwise go to other states.
Jackson was making a different case at an event in Brunswick: that Collins has refused to leverage her influence in Congress to stop President Trump.
“You know, tariffs, the Iran War — all these things Susan Collins, I believe, could stop,” he said. “But she doesn't want to stop them because that's who her master is."
On Tuesday, Maine voters will decide whether Collins, the only Republican member of Congress in New England, should return to Washington or be replaced by Jackson, a former logger and longtime state legislator and former Maine Senate president who has firmly aligned himself with organized labor and the wing of the Democratic Party led by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
With so much at stake, Democratic and Republican political groups, many with secret donors, have spent accordingly — more than $200 million so far.
It's the costliest race per capita in the country, and the majority of the ads, mailers and the nonstop barrage of text messages have been negative, if not downright nasty. The persuasion value is debatable, but the investment by monied interests, corporations, billionaires — even trillionaire Elon Musk — reveals what they believe is on the line.
Jackson was drafted by Democrats when progressive firebrand Graham Platner succumbed to scandal. His win at the nominating convention was largely attributed to his affiliation with organized labor and a volunteer network that quickly secured commitments from delegates.
But his platform — Medicare for All, taxing the wealthy — also largely mirrors Platner’s focus on the struggles of working class Mainers, an approach that helped the oysterman win more primary votes than any other Democratic Senate candidate in state history.
Jackson is no stranger to those same issues. He was drawn to Sanders after losing a Democratic primary for Maine’s 2nd Congressional District race in 2014.
"I'm nothing extraordinary,” he told the audience in Brunswick. “But I've worked with a lot of hardworking people in my life and a lot of families that were holding on hope that they were going to have somebody that was actually going to step up for them."
Jackson didn't enter the Senate race until late July, and the campaign scrambled to channel Platner's populist message, but without the force of its charismatic messenger.
"I owe Donald Trump nothing. I owe the billionaires nothing. I owe the people of Maine everything," Jackson said during a stump speech with Sanders in October.
Jackson’s embrace of the progressive platform was not decisive in the race he originally wanted to win. He placed third in the Democratic primary for governor in June.
Lisa Eaton, a Democratic voter from Kennebunk, was among the primary voters who didn’t choose Jackson first during the ranked-choice election. She showed up to an event headlined by historian Heather Cox Richardson to get a better look at the candidate taking on Collins.
"It was an enthusiasm thing, totally. When he was running for governor, I voted for him, but I ranked him. He wasn't in the top," Eaton said.
To boost Jackson’s profile, particularly among women, the campaign has tapped a parade of high-profile surrogates, including New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
"He has stood up for our equal pay. He has stood up for our rights. And the most important thing for us as women to do, is to elect this man to the U.S. Senate,” Ocasio-Cortez said during an event with Jackson in Portland.
Collins, meanwhile, has toiled in the long shadow of Trump. His war in Iran and trade war with Canada have made him even more unpopular in Maine than he was when he lost the state by seven points two years ago.
And his cowing of the Republican Congress has complicated Collins' claims of independence, a key piece of her political identity that has long won over Maine’s fickle, but determinative block of unenrolled voters.
"I vote very independently,” she said during a debate hosted by Maine Public. "We need more people in the center. We don't need more people who are going to vote a straight party line."
To bolster this narrative, Collins campaigned with former West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a one-time Democrat who left the party to become an independent.
"So when I hear all this stuff on TV, she's not bipartisan. That's a lie. She's the most bipartisan person we have in the Senate today. And I have said this publicly, she is the soul of the Senate,” Manchin said at one of two events he held with Collins.
Even the White House has tried to reinforce that image. In late August it dispatched Vice President JD Vance to Maine to campaign for Republican candidates on the ballot.
Collins did not attend, but Vance made sure to mention her.
"She does an amazing job so please give it up to our very independent friend, Susan Collins,” Vance said.
But in that same rally Vance also defended the president's trade war with Canada, using rhetoric sharply at odds with Collins’ stance that the White House is alienating Maine’s leading trade partner.
It also undercut Collins' efforts to keep the race local and Trump an abstraction.
Instead, Collins has had to ask the Trump administration for carve-outs on Canadian tariffs. She also made a direct plea to the administration for the release of New England home heating oil reserves to mitigate the effects of the war in Iran in a state where more than half the homes use it as a primary heat source.
"This is good news, by increasing the amount of supply we should see some price relief,” she said after the administration granted her request.
Collins has framed these favors as evidence of her influence. Jackson says it wouldn't be necessary if she would only stand up to Trump.
Maine voters will now resolve these dueling views of Collins' power.
For the past 30 years Collins has prevailed by playing to their local interests. Jackson is hoping voters will see those interests as directly tied to the direction of the entire country.
