BLUE HILL, MaineWhen you saw an article about Maine in the national press over the last year, it was usually a report that the states senior senator, Susan Collins, was toast. Yes, shed won re-election in 2014 by 37 points, but that was before her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The ByeBye, Susan bumper stickers started appearing not long after. The political reporters all found their way to the same trope: Ms. Collins hadnt changed, but Maine had.
In recent months, Ms. Collins led in not a single poll until the one that mattered on Nov. 3. But the news out of the Pine Tree State this week isnt just that Ms. Collins easily won re-election, but that across the state, people split their votes. Jared Golden, a Democrat, won re-election in Maines massive Second Congressional District, while President Trump also took the district and its one electoral vote (as he had in 2016). The two men had strikingly similar vote totals. Mr. Golden is an impressive young politician. A 38-year-old ex-Marine (combat tours of both Iraq and Afghanistan), he actually started his career working for Ms. Collins on Capitol Hill. But it was as a centrist Democrat that he entered Congress himself. One of his first acts in the House was to vote against Nancy Pelosi for the speakership. Hes bucked his party on issues like gun control and impeachment. Mainers like independence.
And they apparently dont like being told what to do. The 2020 Senate race was by a long shot the most expensive in Maine history. Ms. Collins raised $27 million: five times what she spent in 2014. And her opponent, Sara Gideon, raised nearly $70 million. Thanks to the outside money that poured into the state, at least $120 million was spent on advertising. The Bangor Daily News was surely ecstatic to report a 3,000 percent increase in political ad spending over 2014, but for many months I could not go online without being confronted with an attack on one or the other candidates record in deeply misleading terms. It was disgusting and, worse, dispiriting.
There has always been plenty to like about Senator Collins no matter your party preference. Her campaign ran ads that caught the flavor of this Caribou-born politician, and it highlighted some very Maine things about her. In four terms in the Senate, for instance, she has never missed a vote, said one commercial. (She finally missed one last month, according to GovTrack). She may have made a contentious vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, but she also gave a common sense-filled 40-minute speech explaining her decision. It was pretty hard to square the Susan Collins who you regularly see around Maine with the figure in the pocket of Donald Trump and rich corporations you saw in her adversarys ads.read more
Susan Collins Was Never Going to Lose
