In the final stage of the tight Senate race in Maine, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, is trying to shore up her support in the center. Troy Jackson, her progressive Democratic challenger, is trying to excite his party’s base.
Their contrasting strategies were on display across two days this week in a race that could determine control of the Senate.
On Thursday, Mr. Jackson, wearing a button-down shirt under a navy vest, appeared at a theater in the state’s largest city, joined by Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez of New York, a 37-year-old democratic socialist who is considering a run for president. The visit followed trips by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, two progressive stalwarts to Maine to back Mr. Jackson.
On Wednesday, Ms. Collins, clad in a light blue suit, joined a 79-year-old retired senator with centrist credentials, former Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a former Democrat, for low-key stops at a century-old diner and a dusty shoe factory in politically split regions.
“I’m not A.O.C.,” Mr. Manchin said with a grin.
The two days of campaigning offered hints of where each side believes it has work to do in the electorate with less than two weeks left until Election Day. And they underscored the choice facing Maine voters.
They can side for a sixth straight election with Ms. Collins, who has long maintained a hold on a Democratic-leaning state by burnishing a reputation as a Republican who can work with Democrats. Or they can chart a new course, backing a progressive Democrat who has railed against the Trump administration and cast Ms. Collins as an enabler of the president.
Ms. Collins is trying to reassert her hold on an independent-minded electorate while arguing that Mr. Jackson is too far left for her state, which has one of the country’s oldest populations. Mr. Jackson, a former State Senate president, is working to activate the state’s many Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters who say they are hungry for change and infuriated by the Trump administration and Republicans who have supported it.
Ms. Collins, 73, in her understated style, questioned Mr. Jackson’s decision to bring Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to Maine — and noted that it came less than two weeks after Mr. Jackson, 58, campaigned with Mr. Sanders of Vermont.
Ms. Collins told reporters at the New Balance factory in Norway, Maine, on Wednesday that Mr. Jackson “certainly has every right to invite whomever he wants to campaign with him in Maine.” But, she added, “So far, it’s been from the far left of the party.”
On Thursday afternoon, Mr. Jackson appeared with Ms. Ocasio-Cortez at a nearly 2,000-seat theater in deep-blue and voter-rich Portland.
The congresswoman told the crowd that there were “a lot of consultants” who would advise Mr. Jackson not to campaign with her. “It takes a lot to say, you know what, no, I know my people, and I know who I am, and I’m going to do things my way,” she said. “So thank you, Troy.”
Mr. Jackson said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was “exactly what I want in my government — somebody that’s not afraid to stand up, fight for what she believes in.”
A runner-up in the Democratic primary for Maine governor this year, Mr. Jackson in July secured the Senate nomination as the choice of the state party’s left wing — replacing another progressive, Graham Platner, who initially won the nomination but left the race after a rape allegation, which he denied.
Mr. Jackson’s recent appearances are aimed at exciting younger and more progressive voters. A New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll last month suggested that Mr. Jackson held a narrower lead with young voters than other Democrats running this cycle. And some Maine Democrats say they are worried that Mr. Jackson has not excited the party’s base the way Mr. Platner did during the primary.
Ms. Collins has been facing an avalanche of attacks from Democrats, who have cast her as an ally of Mr. Trump and have hammered her over vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice, Brett M. Kavanaugh, who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. Ms. Collins, in turn, has been trying to remind voters of times she has worked with Democrats and broken on key issues with the president, whom she has never voted for, according to her campaign.
James Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine at Farmington, said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s visit carried more risk and more potential reward than Mr. Manchin’s, because the congresswoman could both “fire up” Democrats and put off some conservatives.
“A.O.C.’s appearance could have more effect than Manchin’s,” he said. “But it cuts both ways.”
The post What Dueling Visits by Ocasio-Cortez and Manchin Say About Maine’s Senate Race appeared first on New York Times.
