Democrat Troy Jackson has defeated Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, flipping a long Republican-held seat and giving his party a crucial win as they seek to flip the U.S. Senate, according to projections by CNN and Fox News.
Collins called her opponent to concede, Jackson campaign spokesperson Maggie Amjad confirmed to USA TODAY.
Jackson had just a few months to run his Senate campaign after oyster farmer Graham Platner dropped out of the race following accusations of sexual assault, which he denies. Platner’s charisma and anti-establishment messaging had inspired a grassroots movement that helped him overtake Maine's Democratic Gov. Janet Mills in the Democratic primary.
Platner's exit from the race prompted worries about the Democrats’ chances of
defeating Collins, who has been in office for 30 years and is the only Republican to represent a state won by Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. The race remained in a dead heat through much of the year, according to polls.
But many remained committed to the movement and Jackson, a logger who served as state Senate president for six years, was also seen as an ideologically similar champion for economic populist policies—if less charismatic and sometimes emotional. While he started his career as a Republican who opposed abortion and gay marriage, he is now a progressive Democrat who has received high scores from abortion and LGBTQ groups. As a state legislator, he cosponsored Maine's expanded abortion rights protection and passed legislation giving loggers and haulers the right to unionize.
Throughout the campaign, Jackson highlighted his progressive bonafides, campaigning with heavy weights like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Verment, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, while tying Collins to President Donald Trump.
Collins has long held a reputation as a moderate Republican who has brought a lot of money back for Maine, and those are the arguments she leaned on in her campaign. But that reputation has been harder to uphold in the Trump era, where Mainers increasingly saw her as not doing enough to stop Trump’s agenda. According to an October Marist poll, 59% of Maine voters disapproved of the president.
An Oct. 1 analysis of the majority of Trump's second term from CQ Roll Call found Collins voted with the president 92% of the time. A New York Times analysis of her voting record found that her opposing votes rarely stopped Trump's agenda from passing. In one debate where Collins was asked for an example in which she voted against her party and actually changed the outcome, she touted her vote against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth – but Hegseth was ultimately confirmed.
In an interview before the election, University of Maine Farmington political science professor Jim Melcher told USA TODAY that Trump, in some ways, has been “the absolute worst thing that could have happened to Susan Collins.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Troy Jackson defeats Susan Collins to flip Maine Senate seat for Dems
