Republican Sen. Susan Collins lost her bid for a sixth term Tuesday, falling to Democrat Troy Jackson in a race that capped a night of sweeping Democratic gains, CNN projected.
Collins called Jackson to concede shortly after midnight Wednesday, Jackson’s campaign said, according to the Kennebec Journal.
Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate and a fifth-generation logger from the northern town of Allagash, will be the first Democrat to win a Senate race in Maine since 1988. Collins, first elected in 1996, had repeatedly defied the odds in a state President Donald Trump lost in all three of his presidential runs.
The loss deepens a brutal night for Republicans, as Democrats captured control of the Senate and the House.
Jackson wasn’t his party’s first pick. Oyster farmer Graham Platner beat Gov. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary but quit the race after a rape allegation, which he denies. Maine Democrats chose Jackson to replace him at an unusual nominating convention in July.
Republicans tried to tie Jackson to Platner, a former political ally, but the race turned largely into a referendum on Collins and her relationship with Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Maine. Jackson argued throughout the campaign that Collins wasn’t as independent as she claimed.
He also hammered her 2018 vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later joined the majority that overturned the federal right to an abortion. Collins has said she disagreed with that ruling, and that it would have been inappropriate to ask Kavanaugh how he’d rule on a case before it reached the court.
Polls had pointed toward trouble for Collins in the final stretch. She hadn’t led a public poll since late September, the Bangor Daily News reported, and the final New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll showed Jackson ahead by 6 points.
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