BUCKSPORT, Maine — Sen. Susan Collins’s bid for a sixth term in the Senate is a test of political gravity.
For years, the Republican senator in an ever-more Democratic Maine has run so far ahead of President Donald Trump that she practically floated above him, suspended in air thanks to a mix of selective defiance and canny use of Senate seniority to steer millions to the small state for local works projects.
But 11 years into Trump’s political life, Collins’s campaign against Democrat Troy Jackson has been weighed down by the Republican president and his constant controversy and growing disapproval. Trump is everywhere in the race. When voters talk about it, they invoke Trump more than they do the two candidates. Democratic ads accuse Collins of doing “whatever Donald Trump wants” and Jackson has claimed that the president “owns” Collins.
Collins rejects these attacks and told The Washington Post that she has “done more than any member of the Maine delegation” to stop “harmful” actions by the president. She defended her more measured approach to Trump, whom she called unpopular with “terrible” numbers in her state.
“It does absolutely no good and is ineffective to go give a fiery speech to build up your social media following and to get on a popular podcast,” Collins said. “It may make you feel better … but it doesn’t change the outcome.”
A month out from arguably her most difficult bid for reelection, the 73-year-old Collins argues that throwing her out of office due to Trump would be shortsighted, because her stature as a senior Republican allows her to do more than anyone else in Maine to push back against an administration that will only be in power for two more years.
“Although I am certainly not the president’s favorite Republican or favorite senator, by any stretch, I am able to work with members of his team in a way the rest of the delegation cannot,” she said.
Her future depends on voters buying this argument. She and Jackson are squaring off in their first televised debate Tuesday night as polls show a close race. A New York Times-Portland Press Herald survey released in September found Collins with a narrow lead, but highlighted her issues with Trump: Only 32 percent of Maine voters approve of the job the president is doing.
Anti-Collins voters regularly remark that the senator expresses concern with Trump’s actions without meaningful attempts to stop them. Several voters across the state told The Post that even though they respect and like Collins, they plan to vote against her.
“It’s not even anti-Susan Collins; it’s anti-Trump,” Bob Cravens, 72, said between sips of a Manhattan at a popular bar in Ellsworth, Maine. “I like Susan Collins. I like what she’s done in the past. I voted for her. I think she’s competent. But God could be running as a Republican and I would vote against him or her because I think this country will be destroyed if Trump has another two years unfettered.”
Polls show the most critical voters in Maine will be those who disapprove of Trump but are open to backing Collins, a sizable group.
Collins has ridden this trend to victory before. She defeated Democrat Sara Gideon by nine percentage points in 2020, even as Trump lost the state by the same margin. In Hancock County, a coastal region home to Ellsworth, Collins defeated Gideon by six percentage points, while Trump lost the county by 12 percentage points.
Doug Smith, a 76-year-old retired paper mill worker and Hancock County native, was one of those voters who backed Collins but rejected Trump in 2020. He said he won’t do it again.
“She’s done a lot for the state, but we need people in there that will bring Trump under control,” Smith said in the shadow of the paper mill he worked at, which closed in 2014. Trump has “shown himself to be who he is” during his second term in office, he said, and Collins hasn’t met the moment.
“I don’t even particularly like Troy Jackson,” Smith said, “but we need some Democrats in there that will give a little balance because the Republicans are giving him free rein.”
Jackson declined to be interviewed. But he has argued that he believes Collins thinks “we’re all stupid in this state and in this country.”
“You can’t say on one hand ’I’m the most powerful person, I’m the chair of appropriations, don’t replace me, we’ll never be this powerful again,’ but all of these things she could have done something significant to stop she wouldn’t,” Jackson said last month.
Collins’s race in Maine may be one of the clearest tests of Trump’s effect on a candidate.
Maine relies on business and tourism from bordering Canada, which the president endangered through his ongoing trade fight. The Trump administration chose to surge aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown in Maine communities, bringing Collins’s votes to fund ICE to the forefront of her reelection. And while Collins has run on her seniority as a top congressional appropriator, Trump has subverted congressional spending authority by clawing back billions in federal funding the Maine senator approved.
Collins, when asked about these issues unpopular with voters, often name-drops the conversations she has had with Trump officials, like when she called Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in July after an ICE agent fatally shot a 25-year-old Colombian national in Biddeford, Maine.
Republicans argue that if anyone can survive a midterm backlash to an unpopular president, it’s Collins.
“While she may have different relationships with different presidents over the years, you can always count on Senator Collins being her own person,” said Jason Savage, a longtime Republican operative in Maine who used to run the Maine Republican Party.
And that has helped Collins win over unlikely supporters.
Beth Clark, 54, is a self-described liberal. The former social worker has never voted for Trump, and described the president as “a neo-Nazi in disguise.” And yet, Clark plans to vote for Collins this year because of the senator’s help after a teenager killed her daughter. Clark, in an act of forgiveness, wanted the young man directed to a youth diversion program that Collins supported.
“If Collins stays in, we will have the backbone that we need and the experience we need to get America out of the hole that we are in,” Clark said.
Collins’s argument for reelection hinges on constituent work like this, and her ties to the state. Collins was born and raised in Aroostook County — the same far-north place Jackson is from, affectionately known in Maine as “the county.”
One ad for her reelection shows her sitting on potatoes, the area’s most notable crop. In conversations with voters, she regularly recalls her work for local organizations and businesses.
“There are workhorses and show horses,” Collins said at a memorial for fallen firefighters in Augusta on Saturday, “and I am a workhorse who gets things done.”
That argument has worked for Collins before. But even she acknowledged this election was different, calling it “more vicious, by far.” Collins’s house has been egged, and the doors to one of her local offices were spray-painted with an epithet tying her to Trump. Democratic-backed ads, based on a report from nonprofit newsroom ProPublica that have tied Collins to a closed FBI investigation into political corruption, have tried to undercut her image as someone solely out to help Mainers.
The FBI closed an early-stage inquiry into allegations that a defense contractor made concealed political contributions benefiting Collins in exchange for help securing federal contracts. The inquiry centers on the former head of the Hawaii-based defense contractor Navatek, who told investigators that he discussed a large political contribution with the head of a super PAC supporting Collins during her 2020 run.
Collins denies the allegations. She said that she believes Mainers know she has “served with integrity,” but admitted you “always worry when baseless lies are repeated over and over again.”
Collins has broken with the president during his second term, despite Democrats regularly citing that she has voted with him 95 percent of the time, according to CQ Roll Call’s count. After initially supporting the Iran war, Collins has joined with Democrats to restrict the president’s military power on Iran. She voted against Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary and Todd Blanche as attorney general. And while she voted for a procedural vote to advance Trump’s controversial tax and spending legislation in 2025, she eventually voted against it on final passage.
Those breaks have not gone unnoticed by Trump and his Republican base, but they highlight Collins’s predicament: holding the president’s base together while continuing to win over independents and Democrats. Collins did not attend an August event Vice President JD Vance held in Brewer, Maine, and told The Post that she doubted Trump would call her about holding a rally in Maine, something the president suggested was possible on Monday.
Keith Fischer, a 76-year-old retired fire service worker from Belgrade, Maine, has noticed how Collins has broken with Trump. He attended the firefighters’ event wearing a shirt that memorialized conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
She’s a “squishy Republican” that has “done so much for the state,” he said. He plans to vote for her, but worries that the state’s shift to the left could end her career.
“She is in a tough spot,” Fischer said.
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