Christian LaMontagne's arithmetic tells the story of Maine's Senate race better than any poll. The 27-year-old lobsterman now needs 104 catches to fill his boat's fuel tank, up from 40 a year ago, after the US war with Iran roughly doubled his weekly fuel costs to $700. Practically every node in Maine's billion-dollar lobster industry has been squeezed by Trump administration policies — the Iran conflict, sweeping tariffs, and the US-Canada trade war. LaMontagne remains undecided, and voters like him will likely decide the outcome. The race pits Troy Jackson, a progressive lumberjack and former state senate president who launched a 101-day sprint campaign after the original Democratic nominee withdrew amid sexual assault allegations, against Susan Collins, the Republican incumbent seeking a sixth term. Democrats view the seat as critical to retaking the Senate. Recent polling shows a dead heat heading into 3 November, with only 42% of likely Maine voters approving of Trump's job performance and 41% saying their congressional vote is primarily a vote against the president. Jackson's strategy is straightforward: make the race about Trump. He has worked to yoke Collins to the president's agenda, pointing to a New York Times analysis showing that while Collins breaks with her party 17% of the time, those defections rarely slow Trump's legislative machinery. His sharpest example: Collins opposed the final passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which imposed steep Medicaid cuts affecting Maine — but supported the procedural vote that brought it to the floor. A ProPublica report revealing an FBI investigation into an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving a Collins campaign donor, an inquiry that reportedly withered after Trump dismantled the relevant DOJ division, gave Jackson more ammunition. Collins's office called the report "categorically false." Collins's counter is tangible deliverables. In recent weeks she has touted a major Pentagon contract for Bath Iron Works, the release of over 300,000 barrels of heating oil from the federal reserve, and tariff exemptions for Maine industries caught in the Canada trade war. Her campaign argument is seniority as infrastructure: five presidents worked with, relationships built, resources directed. Rick Dolliver, a registered Democrat and restaurant owner in Ogunquit, plans to vote Collins again, calling Jackson a "rookie" with "no chance of getting anything done" if elected — and crediting Collins's role in creating the Paycheck Protection Program during Covid for keeping his employees on payroll. But the affordability crisis is eroding Collins's incumbency advantage in real time. Heating oil, used by nearly half of Maine households, has hit a record average above $6 per gallon. Cheryl Clukey, a 77-year-old retired school principal from Augusta who was raised Republican and has voted for Collins before, paid $729 for 131 gallons that didn't fill her tank. "I've never had that before, and I'm scared," she said. She now considers Collins's 30 years in Congress "enough." The wildcard is Collins's history of defying political gravity. She won re-election by nine points in 2020 despite trailing in most polls, buoyed by ticket-splitters who backed her for Senate and Biden for president. Whether that coalition holds when Trump's approval sits at 42% in the state and a federal immigration agent's shooting of 26-year-old Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Biddeford in July has hardened anti-administration sentiment is the open question. As Colby College professor Dan Shea put it: "Jackson, in some ways, seems almost irrelevant. I think it's about whether or not voters can tolerate giving Trump one more vote in the Senate." The structural tension is genuine and unresolvable by election day. Collins offers proven capacity to extract federal concessions from a hostile administration — contracts, oil reserves, exemptions — but every concession reinforces her utility to the Trump coalition she claims to resist. Jackson offers a check on the president but zero leverage in a chamber where Democrats may remain in the minority. Maine voters are not choosing between candidates so much as between two theories of power: insider extraction or outsider opposition, each with obvious and painful limits.
