Among the Super Bowl commercials hawking potato chips, beer and cars, viewers who tune in to the big game in Maine on Sunday will see a spot for the state’s Republican senator, Susan M. Collins, who is viewed as one of her party’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents.
The 30-second ad, which highlights efforts by Ms. Collins to support firefighters, is part of an expensive effort by a Republican-aligned group to help Ms. Collins fend off what is expected to be a fierce Democratic challenge in November.
It is part of an initial $5.5 million ad campaign on her behalf from One Nation, a nonprofit allied with the top super PAC for Senate Republicans, the Senate Leadership Fund.
“We recognize that live sporting events are one of the last remaining cultural events where everybody gets together and we can maximize eyeballs,” said Alex Latcham, the executive director of both One Nation and the Senate Leadership Fund.
The campaign, which started in late January and is set to run until the end of February, is “just the opening salvo” in the group’s spending for Ms. Collins, he said.
Ultimately, One Nation will spend at least $10 million on broadcast, cable and digital ads for Ms. Collins, said Chris Gustafson, a spokesman for the group. That spending supplements some $42 million that the Senate Leadership Fund has committed to help Ms. Collins through November.
The ad will be shown on local stations during a Super Bowl Sunday of particular interest to residents of Maine: The game will feature the New England Patriots, gunning for their seventh N.F.L. championship, playing the Seattle Seahawks.
Ms. Collins, seeking a sixth term, faces a particularly challenging environment in Maine, which Kamala Harris won in 2024. Ms. Collins has long managed a delicate balancing act as a moderate Republican, one of the few to occasionally criticize President Trump’s policies.
(After she joined four other Republicans last month to vote to start a debate over restricting the president’s ability to use military force in Venezuela, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that she and the others “should never be elected to office again.”)
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic minority leader, has said that flipping her seat is essential to his party’s path to the majority.
The Democratic primary in Maine, scheduled for June, has attracted two prominent candidates: Janet Mills, the state’s term-limited governor, and Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and political novice whose campaign has taken off with a progressive platform and endorsement from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
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