Susan Collins is running one of the most contorted campaigns in the 2026 cycle. The three-term Republican senator from Maine used a televised debate Tuesday to make the extraordinary claim that she voted with Joe Biden more than 90% of the time and has broken with her own party more than any other senator. The message was unmistakable: judge me by the company I don't keep. Her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, 58, a veteran former state legislator, was having none of it. Jackson hammered a single number — 96% agreement with Trump — and a single vote: the 2018 confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, which Jackson tied directly to the overturning of Roe v Wade. "Tonight is about who you stand with when it matters," Jackson said. His opening statement was a precision strike aimed at Collins' most durable political vulnerability. Jackson is a late entrant. He replaced Graham Platner, a former harbor master who had been building momentum on a populist progressive platform before being forced to withdraw in July over sexual assault allegations, which Platner denied. Democrats scrambled to field a replacement, and Jackson got his first broad audience introduction Tuesday night. The compressed timeline is both a disadvantage — less name recognition, less fundraising runway — and an advantage: less time for opposition research to land. Collins, 73, reacted to the suggestion that Trump might visit Maine with visible discomfort. "I don't think that President Trump is going to come to Maine," she said. "I'm not exactly his favorite senator." She criticized the Iran war as "not well thought out," noting she had voted to end it nine times, and broke sharply with the White House on Canada tariffs. "Canada is not China. It's our neighbor and our friends." The structural reality driving this performance is Maine's voting history. The state has gone Democratic in every presidential election since 1992 and rejected Trump in all three of his campaigns. Collins has survived this environment by cultivating a bipartisan brand, but each cycle the gap between her party's national direction and her state's preferences widens. The Kavanaugh vote cracked that brand in 2018 and Jackson is determined to ensure it stays cracked. Polls show the race neck and neck. That alone is a warning sign for Collins — incumbents polling at parity in a state they've held for nearly three decades are incumbents in trouble. The question is whether Jackson's compressed campaign timeline gives him enough runway to convert debate performance into votes. The Iran war, tariffs, and reproductive rights form a triple bind: each forces Collins to choose between her party's base and her state's electorate. She has chosen the state on rhetoric. Whether voters believe the rhetoric after the Kavanaugh vote is the entire election.
