Invisibility, Collins’s Key Survival Skill in Maine, Emerges as a Negative

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is campaigning for a sixth term with her time-tested strategy, hoping to again survive as a blue-state Republican by keeping a low profile. Yet her presumptive Democratic challenger, Graham Platner, is using a flood of press attention, much of it negative, to turn her greatest strength — invisibility — into a weakness.Thursday night on Fox News Channel, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania described how the steady drip of allegations against Mr. Platner has overwhelmed voters. “The one good thing you could say about the guy,” he said of his fellow Democrat, “is that he has so many offensive things that it’s hard to keep up with it.”Psychologists call this “warning fatigue,” a paradox where too many signs about potential dangers desensitize people, who tune out and ignore the alerts. Mr. Platner has countered the tempest with a simple message as a calm alternative to the deluge. Having a troubled life, in his telling, demonstrates that he’s not a career politician.The message that Mr. Platner is a victim of the press and GOP is resonating with Democrats eager to flip Ms. Collins’s seat. On Thursday, the Platner campaign announced that it had raked in more than $200,000 in the 24 hours following a New York Times exposé on his sexting with women outside his marriage.Thursday on MS NOW, Mr. Platner said he’s “sick and tired” of “focus group-tested, two-dimensional figures who just repeat talking points. It’s the reason I’ve been willing to go out and … talk about really private parts of my life very publicly, and to make sure that people can see that I am open and I am honest, even if it’s uncomfortable.”Yet Mr. Platner hasn’t been quite so forthcoming and insists that each new shoe will be the last to drop. “We just don’t know what more can come out,” a Massachusetts Democrat, Congressman Seth Moulton, said of Mr. Platner’s scandals. These include a Totenkopf tattoo associated with Nazis and the candidate’s trolling on an anonymous messaging app, Kik, which is “widely used for sexual encounters,” per the Wall Street Journal, and which has raised concerns about misuse by child sex predators.Mr. Moulton, like Mr. Platner, focused his talking points on Ms. Collins. “Every single day,” he said, she “rubber stamps Trump’s agenda.” He laid gas prices, the war in Iran, and “killing innocent people in the Middle East” at the senator’s feet, alleging that her actions are hurting chances of “deterring and preventing a war with China.”This version of Ms. Collins is unrecognizable to anyone who has followed her career. New England’s last Republican member of Congress survived by being a moderate and incredibly dedicated to her job. Yet while other mavericks, like Mr. Fetterman, trumpet their independence, Ms. Collins prefers to fade into the Capitol’s woodwork.In “Our Cartoon President,” Stephen Colbert’s satire during Mr. Trump’s first term, Ms. Collins was portrayed as an anxious woman who’d go to absurd lengths to avoid taking tough stands. The hyperbole illustrates how Ms. Collins avoids the spotlight, a tactic that’s allowing Mr. Platner to define her as if she’s the newcomer in their race.Forgotten is that she voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial, opposed his One Big Beautiful Bill, and rejected legislation to recover $9 billion in foreign aid and public media funding. Ms. Collins has drawn Mr. Trump’s ire on many issues over the course of his two, non-consecutive terms. “Republicans,” he posted on Truth Social in July, “when in doubt, vote the exact opposite of Senator Susan Collins. Generally speaking, you can’t go wrong.”Being willing to buck the GOP’s agenda in Washington ought to help Ms. Collins in Maine. Mr. Trump lost the Pine Tree State by seven points in 2024 and nine in 2020. Independents are its largest voter bloc at 36.4 percent. Democrats stand at 33.8 and Republicans at 29.8 percent of the state’s electorate.Mr. Platner may yet prove too toxic for that moderate Maine electorate. Yet it’s never wise to rely on an opponent self-destructing. To earn a sixth term, the best strategy for Ms. Collins is to counter the emerging image of her as Mr. Trump’s rubber stamp — something that’s hard to do if you’re reluctant to step out of the woodwork and be seen.

Invisibility, Collins’s Key Survival Skill in Maine, Emerges as a Negative

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