Hours before many of her Republican colleagues and those seeking to join their ranks convened in a hulking Dallas arena for a two-day political rally headlined by President Trump, Senator Susan Collins stood in a 10,000-square-foot recreation center in central Maine on Wednesday and examined the ceiling.
Instead of the balloons and klieg lights that adorned the rafters hundreds of miles to the south at Mr. Trump’s extravagant midterm convention, Ms. Collins looked up and saw fluorescent bulbs and water stains that prompted her to ask the town’s manager if the building had a leaky roof.
“We did,” the manager, Dylan Lajoie, told her. But, he said, because of a $935,000 grant Ms. Collins had secured in a federal spending bill for the town of Newport, it had been possible to renovate and “refresh” the facility.
This is how Ms. Collins, at 73 seeking her sixth term in the Senate, is working to defend her job in a state that Mr. Trump lost, at a time when Republicans face strong political headwinds because of his flagging approval ratings.
To win re-election in November, Ms. Collins, a moderate who has been critical of the president and opposed some elements of his agenda, is deploying the same strategy that has kept her in the Senate for decades. She is keeping her distance from Mr. Trump and her party’s national brand and message, and instead highlighting local issues and how she has used her position in Washington, including as the chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, to deliver for her tiny state.
It is a matter of political survival for Ms. Collins, who is viewed as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent and is facing harsh criticism from Democrats who accuse her of failing to stand up to Mr. Trump even as she often expresses grave concern about his policies and actions.
Her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, a former State Senate president, has tried to make the election a referendum on the president and tag Ms. Collins as “a puppet” for him. He has pointed to her voting record as he works to persuade moderate and independent voters who have backed her in the past that she has not done enough to thwart Mr. Trump’s agenda.
With control of the Senate at stake, Ms. Collins must now confront whether her longstanding relationship with Maine voters can overcome an increasingly partisan political environment.
“Legitimate question,” Ms. Collins said in an interview Wednesday afternoon outside the recreation center, where contractors were excavating a lot for a new athletic field. “There’s no doubt that our politics are far more polarized than they used to be. But Maine people are practical, and they want results. They don’t want someone who’s just going to rant and rave and be hyperpartisan.”
Back in Dallas, Mr. Trump and Republicans from across the country were making the opposite case at their midterm political convention, which appeared geared toward animating the president’s right-wing base.
During their speeches, Republicans repeatedly attacked Democrats, characterizing them as overly left-wing and bent on destroying the country. Mr. Trump dismissed concerns about the high cost of living, defended unpopular trade policies, promised a payout to Americans if the G.O.P. won and urged his supporters to act as if they were voting for him.
“Please pretend that I am running,” Mr. Trump told Americans across the country.
Ms. Collins — who told reporters on Thursday that she “did not get a chance” to watch Mr. Trump’s speech and was “not familiar” with his proposed checks to Americans — would perhaps rather that Maine residents pretended he wasn’t.
Mr. Trump lost Maine in the past three presidential elections, and many of his policies are felt acutely here. With winter approaching, residents are concerned about the rise in fuel and heating oil prices driven by wars in Iran and Ukraine. The escalating trade war with Canada has worried businesses that are reliant on the country, which Maine borders, as a trading partner.
Ms. Collins has repeatedly objected to Mr. Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and she has tried to distance herself from them. On Thursday morning, she stood with the owners of a sand and gravel business in Naples, Maine, and said that she had pushed the White House to remove tariffs on road salt and cement.
“I’ve urged the administration to get back to the table and negotiate with Canada,” she said.
Yet even as she criticized his policies, Ms. Collins avoided mentioning Mr. Trump by name, sticking instead to her own work and the problems facing her constituents. (Like many other politically vulnerable Republicans, she skipped the Dallas convention, aides said, in line with her longstanding policy of forgoing such party gatherings whenever she is up for re-election.)
During Wednesday’s bus tour, Ms. Collins talked about legislation that helped small businesses while she shopped at an outdoor sporting goods store. At a credit union, she spoke to workers about a law she sponsored to protect older Americans from predatory financial scams. She stopped at Newport’s fire station and talked to the fire chief and a captain about directing federal funds to firefighters in the state.
Still, Ms. Collins could not escape the shadow of Mr. Trump’s policies. The Newport Fire Department is across the street from a building that state lawmakers said would be turned into a federal immigration facility.
Ms. Collins told a local reporter that she had not been aware of that plan, and she sought to highlight her role in allocating funding for body-worn cameras. But Democrats have criticized Ms. Collins for not doing enough to curb the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, particularly a fatal shooting by an ICE agent in the state earlier this year.
Mr. Jackson has not had much time to introduce himself to voters. A CNN poll released on Wednesday, during Ms. Collins’s bus tour, showed a close race but also found that a significant chunk of likely voters did not yet have a clear impression of Mr. Jackson.
So far, however, he has centered his campaign largely on trying to turn Ms. Collins’s long experience into a liability.
“It’s never been more important to elect a U.S. senator that will stand up to him,” Mr. Jackson said on Wednesday at an event with a teachers union, referring to Mr. Trump. “I don’t have to tell you that Susan Collins won’t do that. You just have to look at her record.”
Ms. Collins is banking on her constituents choosing the candidate they know, particularly after her initial opponent, Graham Platner, withdrew from the race in July after a sexual assault allegation and was replaced by Mr. Jackson.
Most of her stops were sparsely attended, with the senator accompanied by her staff and met by volunteers and supporters who were trailing the bus through town.
Still, when she stopped for chicken tenders and fries at Sawyer’s Dairy Bar in Newport, Ms. Collins, a longtime political fixture in the state, was stopped repeatedly by customers who recognized her and asked for photos.
Elizabeth Hook, 83, said that she had previously met Ms. Collins when the apparel company where she worked at the time opened a factory in Maine. A Republican who has at times crossed party lines to vote for Democrats, Ms. Hook said that she would be sticking with Ms. Collins this year. She commended the senator for continuing to work across the aisle.
“You know, it’s not a war between Republicans and Democrats, but for God’s sakes, we’ve got to get along,” Ms. Hook said. “We’ve got to compromise. She has a good head on her shoulders, and I can’t throw that away for a fly-by-night.”
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