Former Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a longtime centrist Democrat who became an independent shortly before he retired last year, plans to campaign in Maine this week for Senator Susan Collins, a Republican seeking her sixth term.
In an interview, Mr. Manchin said he wanted to join Ms. Collins because he had “never” worked with a “more centrist, independent-minded person.” He said he expected to spend all day Wednesday with her in Androscoggin County, in southwestern Maine, which voted for President Trump in the last three presidential elections.
Ms. Collins is in a tough re-election fight with her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, a logger from northern Maine who morphed from Republican to progressive Democrat across a long political career. Over the last few months, and especially across the candidates’ four debates, Mr. Jackson tried to hammer Ms. Collins’s connection with President Trump, while she focused on portraying herself as an independent voice who crossed party lines several times to vote in the Senate.
Mr. Manchin scoffed at Mr. Jackson’s claims that Ms. Collins had been a rubber stamp for President Trump. “She’s not Donald Trump’s senator,” Mr. Manchin said. “She’s not the Republican senator. She’s Maine’s senator.”
Mr. Manchin said on CNBC last month that he would be campaigning for Ms. Collins, but he had been speaking with her for a long time about actually going to Maine.
“I said, ‘Whenever you run again, I’m going to come. I’ll be there if you want me to,’” Mr. Manchin said, adding, “You lose Susan Collins, you lose the soul of the Senate.”
The post Manchin Says He Will Campaign With Collins in Maine appeared first on New York Times.
