Collins, Jackson clash over Trump pushback in tight Maine Senate race

Susan Collins and Troy Jackson faced off on a Tuesday night stage in Maine with the Senate majority potentially hanging in the balance. The Republican incumbent, seeking her sixth term, spent much of the debate defending a record built over three decades in Congress—her seniority, her seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee, her ability to steer federal dollars back to Maine. The Democrat, a former state Senate president from the same rural northern county as Collins, kept returning to a single argument: that Collins talks a good game about standing up to President Trump but rarely follows through.

Collins has built a reputation as a Trump skeptic within her party. She voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year. She has criticized the president's policies and strategy. She was quick to note, when asked whether Trump might campaign for her in Maine, that she is "not exactly his favorite senator." But Jackson pressed the point that these gestures amount to theater. He cited her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court—a decision that set the stage for the high court to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow states to ban abortion for the first time in more than fifty years. "Would you trust her to pick the next Supreme Court justice?" Jackson asked.

Collins responded that she evaluates nominees based on qualifications and that she disagreed with the Roe decision. She also noted, pointedly, that she has "always been pro-choice," a dig at Jackson's own previous opposition to abortion. The exchange illustrated a core tension in the race: Jackson was trying to paint Collins as complicit in Trump's agenda, while Collins was trying to position herself as a principled moderate who has resisted the president on key votes.

The debate sharpened around the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which extended tax cuts from Trump's first term and included Medicaid cuts. Collins voted against the final bill but voted yes on an earlier procedural measure to advance it. Jackson seized on this, arguing she had helped set the fire and then wanted credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out. Collins countered that her willingness to let the bill move forward allowed her to secure a fifty-billion-dollar fund for rural hospitals—a concrete example of the kind of deal-making she argues only seniority and relationships can achieve. Jackson dismissed this as insufficient. "What about everything else?" he asked. "I mean, we can't eat road salt."

Both candidates criticized Trump's tariffs on Canada, which have sparked a trade war with Maine's neighbor. Collins said she has been working behind the scenes to secure exemptions for goods critical to Maine's economy and to municipal operations. Jackson mocked this approach as writing a "strongly worded letter" and demanded more aggressive action. The candidates also clashed over how to respond to an incident in which an ICE officer killed a man in Maine during a traffic stop over the summer. Collins called it "horrific" and said ICE needs "serious reforms" but should continue to exist. Jackson said the man was "murdered" and that ICE should be "disbanded" and should not have received a surge in funding.

The race itself is remarkably tight despite Maine's leftward lean—the state has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate statewide since the 1980s. Collins' ability to survive tough reelection challenges has frustrated Democrats for more than a decade. Most polls show the race at razor-thin margins, and control of the Senate in the next Congress may well depend on its outcome. Jackson, a longtime state lawmaker, was inserted into the race at the last minute after the Democratic primary winner, Graham Platner, withdrew amid sexual misconduct allegations that Platner has denied.

Collins also attacked Jackson's record in state politics, questioning his effectiveness as a legislator and arguing that many of Maine's affordability challenges—high energy prices, Medicaid reimbursement rates—stem from failures by politicians in Augusta. She pointed out that bills Jackson introduced as state Senate president were rejected in committee without support from his own party. "If you can't find one person in your own party to vote for your bills when you were the Senate president in Maine," she asked, "how do you think you're going to get things done in a closely divided Senate as the most junior senator?" Jackson responded that Collins "doesn't understand the legislative process" and that it "gums the system up" to vote for bills that have no chance of passing. The debate left both candidates where they began: Collins arguing that experience and relationships deliver results, Jackson arguing that those relationships have compromised her principles.