Welcome to Washington: Is Susan Collins About To Do It Again?

It is hard to imagine any scenario in which Democrats retake the majority in the Senate without defeating Senator Susan Collins. Immediately after the 2024 election, despondent Democrats made clear that she was going to be their top target. Now, it appears they may have better luck investing in Trump-won states.Welcome to Washington, where lawmakers are attempting to cobble together a government funding agreement that would allow everyone to go home early in order to campaign. At the center of that negotiation is Ms. Collins herself, as chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. Her role atop the panel may prove critical to her winning, having brought nearly $1.5 billion in federal dollars back to her small state. “As Appropriations chair, Susan secured over a billion dollars for destroyers at Bath Iron Works and critical upgrades at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,” states a 30-second ad that began running last week. Though she had a polling deficit through most of the last 18 months, Ms. Collins’ fortunes have turned around. Her Democratic opponent, Graham Platner, suspended his campsign after he was accused of rape. Senate candidate Graham Platner after winning the Democratic nomination on June 9, 2026, at Blue Hill, Maine. AP/Robert F. BukatyElection forecasters are now estimating that Ms. Collins has a even odds at winning another term. The race is listed as a tossup by every forecaster, except for one which predicts that Ms. Collins is slightly favored to win, while another has the Democrats listed as their slight favorite. That’s before Republicans drop tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars on the airwaves. The Senate Leadership Fund plans to spend at least $42 million on behalf of Ms. Collins. One pro-Collins group — the Pine Tree Results PAC — has reserved nearly $24 million in advertising space. Ms. Collins’ campaign has a commanding fundraising lead, with more than $11 million in its warchest. These are all preliminary reservations, though the size of the spending earmarks signal how expensive this race could end up being. In 2020, when Ms. Collins last won, just over $200 million was spent. The firm AdImpact, which tracks political ad spending, predicts that the 2026 Maine race could cost nearly $500 million. The chaos of the Senate race on the Democratic side is likely to make grassroots donors especially wary of trusting the next nominee. On Sunday, a former president of the Maine state senate, Troy Jackson, became the presumptive nominee with a commanding performance at this weekend’s county caucus meetings. Senate candidate Troy Jackson during a debate on July 16, 2026 at Portland, Maine. AP/Robert F. BukatyTo win the nomination, a candidate must receive at least 301 of the 601 votes which will be cast. As of Monday morning, Mr. Jackson has won the support of more than 450 of those delegates. His top three competitors for the Senate nomination all secured fewer than ten delegate seats. Next weekend, Mr. Jackson is almost certain to accept his party’s Senate nomination at its convention. How viable Mr. Jackson will be as a statewide candidate, though, is an open question. He recently came in third place in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, having been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressive leaders — including Mr. Platner. Messrs. Jackson and Platner cross-endorsed one another in their respective primaries, so one can expect to see plenty of photos and videos of the two men together being run in Ms. Collins’ ads between now and November. Mr. Jackson has had an impressive electoral streak in his home state senate district. A fifth-generation logger by trade, Mr. Jackson has consistently outperformed other Democrats at his Aroostook County-based district in the northern part of the state. In 2020, Mr. Jackson won re-election by more than 18 points on the same day President Trump won the same district by double-digits. While Mr. Jackson’s campaigns are certainly impressive, it is no guarantee he can perform in a similar way statewide. What comes to mind is an interaction I had with a middle-aged woman — a key demographic in the state — in the days after the 2024 election. A friend took me to dinner about ten days after Mr. Trump had won his second term. The aforementioned woman was our waitress and at the end of the evening, she began laying into Mr. Trump.She called him a racist, a sexist, a “pig,” and stated that everyone who voted for him was uneducated. She then disclosed, however, how much she admired Ms. Collins and how she had broken with Mr. Trump in the past. She proclaimed to us that she could not wait to cast another vote for Ms. Collins come this November.

Welcome to Washington: Is Susan Collins About To Do It Again?

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