BANGOR, Maine — Vice President JD Vance traveled to this key battleground for control of Congress on Thursday to energize Republican voters by promoting his administration’s anti-fraud efforts.
He was stumping for the state’s former governor Paul LePage (R), now running for Congress in a House district seen as one of the GOP’s best opportunities to flip a Democratic-held seat. But the state’s most prominent Republican, Sen. Susan Collins, was notably absent as Vance offered measured praise for the moderate who, at times, has crossed President Donald Trump.
Vance appeared before a crowd of hundreds at an airport hangar in central Maine with a few dozen protesters gathered across the street. Dozens of people lined up behind him, holding blue-and-white signs that read, “Protect taxpayer dollars.” During his hour-long remarks, Vance largely stuck to talking points known to energize the MAGA base, focusing on the administration’s work to investigate suspected fraud within social safety net programs and ensure undocumented immigrants are not illegally benefiting.
“Let’s send Paul LePage to Washington to help us fight the fraudsters,” Vance said.
LePage, a two-term governor with a history of racially incendiary rhetoric, spoke before Vance at the rally and joined the crowd to watch the vice president’s remarks. LePage has embraced Trump in his political comeback bid and has previously called himself “Donald Trump before Donald Trump.”
Vance conceded that he could “get frustrated” with Collins, who voted to impeach Trump in 2021 and against his sweeping domestic policy bill last year. But Vance framed Collins’s moderate reputation as a positive.
“If she was as partisan as I sometimes wish that she was, she would not be a good fit for the people of Maine,” Vance said. “So let’s give a shout-out to Susan Collins, who’s doing a great job.”
A spokesperson for Collins said the senator could not attend Vance’s event in Maine because she needed to be in Washington for Senate votes. (Collins has not missed a roll-call vote since 1997, when she became a U.S. senator, according to GovTrack, which logs the voting records of congressional lawmakers.)
Collins faces a tough reelection battle against oyster farmer Graham Platner, a fiery populist candidate expected to win the Democratic nomination after his chief rival, Gov. Janet Mills, dropped out of the race last month. Collins’s supporters hope that a trail of controversies following Platner and her bipartisan reputation can help her hold office in a state that consistently goes blue in presidential races.
Soon after the rally, Platner posted video clips of Vance praising Collins.
As he waited to get inside the hangar, Luc Allain, an independent voter who lives in nearby Herman, credited Collins for being “resilient” in the face of a difficult election and periodically opposing the administration.
“I don’t agree with all her policies, but at least she’s a person who speaks her mind,” said Allain, a 60-year-old salesman. “You can’t be all one-sided.”
Arthur Nickerson, a lifelong Republican voter who attended the rally, said he wasn’t bothered by Collins’s absence. He believes her consistent desire to be present in Washington for votes proves her ethics as a senator.
Nickerson, 57, said he was satisfied after watching Collins appear last month at the state’s GOP convention, where he was a delegate. He sees her as the candidate most fit to do what is best for his state compared with Platner, who has little political experience.
“We can’t afford to lose a senior senator to get somebody that doesn’t know what they’re doing,” he said.
As Nickerson spoke, LePage walked past the line of attendees waiting outside the hangar, receiving a smattering of cheers and applause. During his remarks, LePage said he would be committed to targeting fraud and touted his efforts to investigate it when he was governor.
Vance also took the opportunity Thursday to lambaste Mills and her administration for alleged fraud in Maine. He framed the issue of fraud as a nonpartisan one but said that the Democratic governor seemed unwilling to work with the federal government to combat the issue.
Trump tapped Vance to lead anti-fraud efforts, and while administration officials have described their work as apolitical, they have targeted states run by Democrats, and Vance frequently invokes it while campaigning for Republican candidates. The anti-fraud mission has been a focus of the vice president while Trump is in China. On Wednesday, Vance announced that the Trump administration had sent letters to all states asserting that they would need to show they are prosecuting Medicaid fraud to keep receiving federal anti-fraud money.
It was strategic of Vance to center his messaging on fraud and illegal immigration while boosting the GOP’s candidates, said Mark Brewer, a political science professor at the University of Maine.
“That’s something that Trump and the MAGA Republican crowd can’t pass up,” Brewer said. “It’s too politically useful.”
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report.
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