Troy Jackson and Susan Collins Take the Floor in Maine

These days, it’s not uncommon for candidates to scramble to avoid direct contact with voters. In some of the closest races—like Ohio, Michigan, and Texas—Republican Senate candidates have turned down Democratic debate challenges. In the Lone Star State, President Trump has tried to cajole his pick, the hapless Ken Paxton, a man who’s never debated in three runs for attorney general, into taking on his challenger, state Rep. James Talarico. So far, he’s failed.

In other states, the debate tradition continues on, but Republicans who participated may be rethinking the wisdom of their choice. In Georgia, Sen. Jon Ossoff pummeled his opponent for re-election, Rep. Mike Collins, for associations with white nationalists, saying that “you’ve hired half the Third Reich” and “if John Lewis were marching today from Selma to Montgomery, Mike Collins would be grabbing a billy club.”

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In Michigan’s tight contest, Abdul El-Sayed attacked his opponent Mike Rogers for “monetizing his time in public office” with “two yachts and a McMansion in Florida,” and going after “the Peeping Tom vote.” In Kansas, Sen. Roger Marshall was booed throughout a debate at the state fair. There likely won’t be a second debate in any of these races.

What’s remarkable about Maine’s Senate contest, one of the more dynamic races in the country, is that the candidates agreed to four debates. Though the one-hour forums tie former state Senate President Troy Jackson and Sen. Susan Collins into painfully short answers and even shorter rebuttals, Maine voters have the opportunity to watch how these two distinctly different candidates operate.

What this week’s first two debates have underscored is that neither the former state Senate president nor the 30-year veteran member of Congress has secured a decisive advantage in a race that remains quite close. Going into the forums, neither candidate was known as an incandescent speaker. With charisma not on offer, voters must pay less attention to style and more to substance.

Collins understands that her advantage is wielding power, and she has contented herself with repeating the reminders of the extensive catalog of the bills she’s passed and the bacon she’s brought home. She’s pleased to claim that Jackson misunderstands her votes or her Senate Appropriations Committee chair responsibilities. Yet these victories appear increasingly small amid the massive failures of a pointless war in Iran, the shredding of the social safety net, voting to send Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, and more.

One of her most consequential failings, consistently targeted by Jackson, was the procedural vote to advance Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. An analysis by MECEP Action, the political and advocacy arm of the Maine Center for Economic Policy, shows that though Collins brought home nearly $3.5 billion over the past decade, OBBBA will extract more than $4 billion over the next ten years from Maine, a harsh fact that will deliver a brutal shock next year when many of the major social service cuts go into effect.

Collins responded Tuesday night to the coming Medicaid cuts by noting that she’d secured funds for rural health care (a measure that forces states to take deregulatory action to get the cash), but she has not adequately explained why she went along with OBBBA from the jump.

On abortion, Collins inexplicably continues to backstroke away from her Brett Kavanaugh vote by noting she was the only Republican to vote to confirm the triumvirate of liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as if those votes would comfort the Maine women who traveled to Washington to entreat her to vote against Kavanaugh. Nor is her description of Jackson’s evolution from an anti-abortion stance to a pro-choice footing as “flip-flopping” particularly persuasive.

When confronted with a notorious local example of ICE brutality—the shooting death of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the Biddeford father killed this summer—Collins acknowledged the tragedy but pivoted to calls for “reform,” adding that ICE agents now wear body cameras and investigations are ongoing. (Curiously, Collins’s Thursday night defense of ICE repeated almost word for word her assertions during Tuesday’s debate.)

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In the second debate, Collins also inexplicably repeated what was generally acknowledged as a blunder on Canadian tariffs, boasting about securing exceptions like concrete, pulp, and road salt. That last commodity, as Jackson memorably reminded viewers, cannot be eaten and was of little consolation to Mainers compared to the hundreds of other goods subject to tariffs. Instead of avoiding that minefield, she tackled the topic again on Thursday, trying to explain again that road salt was a very expensive item for some smaller towns. To his credit, Jackson did not repeat his observation, but pivoted to remind viewers that Congress, not the president, has constitutional responsibility for tariff policy.

Jackson met the moment. Despite the weeks of hand-wringing about whether the former Allagash logger was up to debating the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee (his six years serving in state leadership positions somehow have been forgotten), he had a steadier presence and firmer responses to attempts to bait him on issues like the evolution of his thinking on abortion.

The damning ProPublica pay-for-play investigation regarding Collins’s alleged dealings with Hawaii-based defense contractor Navatek continues to simmer. On Thursday night, Jackson accused Collins and her husband of profiting off the Iran war, for which she demanded an apology. Collins took Jackson to task for his son’s role as an Augusta lobbyist during his tenure in the state legislature. The Maine Monitor has reported that questions over lobbying family ties are areas where both candidates come up short.

FOR THE PAST DECADE, the Democratic Party has been wringing its hands over its losses with white working-class voters. Now that they have a bona fide white working-class candidate in Jackson, warts and all, they must know that he may appeal to these voters—especially as they come to realize that the racial solidarity they prized and the throwback nirvana that Republicans have repeatedly promised has never existed in the country for poor and working-class whites.

Brutal immigration tactics, DEI reversals that include white women, and turning the clock back on more than a half-century of political, social, and scientific advances have come fast and furious. Fidelity to the GOP did not save working-class white voters from trade wars, or high heating oil and gas prices, or Middle East conflicts.

Democrats dreamed of a working-class hero in a Graham Platner package. But in a scenario strangely reminiscent of the fascination with a New York real estate tycoon, Platner’s most fervent supporters were seduced by charisma and overlooked the blemishes. The remedy selected by Platner’s own supporters is a plain-speaking Allagash logger.

After multiple reports surfaced about Jackson being muzzled by consultants from away, as they say in Maine, he has resumed his plain-speaking ways in recent days, taking calls on talk shows and speaking out on Israel—even having to apologize for comments on Jewish Mainers’ opinions on Gaza.

Troy Jackson and Susan Collins debate again next week. It remains an uneven electoral climate for both candidates. Underestimating a veteran lawmaker like Collins is always unwise. Lackluster debate performances may not change much, but voter anger could very well send her into retirement. But just how angry are Mainers with the reprehensible status quo that sends home the bacon?

Either way, Maine minds seem to be made up. Last week, a Marist poll revealed that only a scant 1 percent of registered voters are undecided, and a Washington Post-Schar School poll published Friday shows Jackson only narrowly out in front. It may take a seismic event to dislodge those decisions, which is always a possibility in a contest that’s already had its fair share of tremors.

The post appeared first on The American Prospect.