Collins isn’t worried — Even though Maine is blue on paper

David M. Drucker, Tribune News Service

In 2020, Susan Collins’ Democratic challenger raised so much money, she couldn’t spend it all. Yet Sara Gideon lost in a blowout. Maine’s moderate Republican senator defeated her 51% to 42%, even as the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, won the state 53% to 44%. With the 2026 midterm elections drawing near, Collins again looks vulnerable as voters across the country, especially in Maine, show signs of souring on the leader of her party, President Donald Trump. Political analyst Amy Walter detailed the dangerous terrain Collins is navigating in an efficient X post, writing in part: “...the red lights are really blaring in MAINE, where Morning Consult polling shows Trump underwater by 17 pts. SEN Collins at -16...” Quite an opportunity for the Democrats, if there ever was one, in a midterm cycle in New England.

As Decision Desk HQ notes, Maine is a D+6.9% state as ranked by the Cook Partisan Voting Index, meaning its electorate is more Democratic than the national average by nearly 7 percentage points. And yet ... and yet. Maine has not elected a Democratic senator since George Mitchell retired in 1995. (Maine’s other senator, Angus King, caucuses with the Democrats, but is an independent.) So Maine Democrats have been here before, and not only in 2020. In 2008, an election that saw Republicans lose eight seats in the US Senate, Collins was barely contested, winning reelection with more than 61% of the vote even as Democrat Barack Obama won Maine with 57.6%.

So how will 2026 be any different? Republicans claim with confidence that it won’t be. “Authenticity matters and Susan Collins is one of the most authentic senators ever. All the dark Democrat money on Earth can’t change that,” Republican operative Kevin McLaughlin told me. McLaughlin, a top GOP strategist at the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2020, is running the 501(c)4 political nonprofit organization, Stronger America, formed to ensure that Collins, 72, will return to Capitol Hill for a sixth term. Pine Tree Results, a super PAC that will advocate on the senator’s behalf with advertising and other political activity, is relying on a mixture of experienced Maine operatives and national strategists. The latter group features Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio, whose prominent clients include Trump.

In Collins’ last campaign, Democratic groups attacked her relentlessly, and largely with impunity, throughout 2019. Republican groups, for the most part, did not come to the senator’s rescue until the 2020 election year got underway. This time around, the organizations backing the incumbent Republican senator are planning an aggressive air war beginning this year, hoping to shield her from both the opposition and any voter backlash against Trump that materialises. Although history and Trump’s sinking approval ratings suggest a midterm rebuke of the president is in the offing, 18 months out the map of Senate seats on the ballot still favors the Republicans preserving their 53-47 majority.

It’s easy, then, to see why Maine matters. Given their available opportunities, it’s hard to see Democrats retaking the Senate majority without ousting Collins. But first, Democrats need to find a strong, viable challenger. So far, they haven’t. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Kirsten Gillibrand, both of New York, have failed to land a topflight recruit. Representative Jared Golden, the centrist Democrat who holds Maine’s otherwise solidly Republican Second Congressional District, took a pass. Many voters like the state’s two-term Democratic Governor Janet Mills, who can’t run for that office again. But at 77, she’s unlikely to pursue a six-year Senate term as her next act. That leaves the Democrats with Jordan Wood, a former congressional aide; he closed the second quarter with an underwhelming $800,000 or so in the bank. Meanwhile, Cathy Breen, a former state senator, may yet jump into the Democratic primary. Hardly the all-star lineup Democrats need to take on Collins, a battle-tested, savvy politician built for scenarios just like this.

Examining the DSCC’s website, it appears Democrats believe they can soften Collins up by casting her as an ally and facilitator of Trump. That’s despite her votes against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — the president’s tax-and-spending bill — and a rescissions package that eliminated $9 billion in previously approved federal spending. (The rescissions package slashed funding for Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, both of whose stations and programs are often widely used in small, rural states like Maine.) It’s a strategy that has worked on countless senators over the years. It just has yet to work on Collins. Unusually, Trump appears to be giving Collins room to maneuver. Rather than threaten to punish her with a GOP primary challenger, as he has in response to recalcitrance from Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky and outgoing Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, the president has let Collins oppose him without voicing a peep of frustration, perhaps recognizing no other Republican is positioned to weather a midterm storm the way she is.

There is some polling to suggest this time might be different. But even if Democrats finally get their white whale in Collins, the Senate map remains a tough slog. North Carolina, now an open seat with Tillis’ retirement, is the Democrats’ next best opportunity to flip a seat — and North Carolina is an R+3.2% state. Every other Republican-held seat up for election next year is in a state with a partisan voting index that favors the GOP by double digits. And Democrats will have to defend vulnerable seats in Michigan and Georgia. Then again, as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky told me some years back when I interviewed him for the Washington Examiner during his long tenure as the Republican leader: “The map doesn’t win elections ... The atmosphere is not irrelevant.”