Maine voters defeat Susan Collins as Troy Jackson wins Senate seat

Thirty years is a long time to hold a U.S. Senate seat, and Susan Collins held Maine’s for exactly that long — until Tuesday night, when she conceded her loss to Democrat Troy Jackson in one of the biggest upsets of an already sweeping Democratic midterm wave, Slate reported.

The result lands hardest in Maine itself. Given the state’s politics and demographics, it should long have been a gettable seat for Democrats. Collins kept it anyway, not by being a Democrat, but by billing herself as something rarer: a bold independent who did what was best for Maine and Mainers rather than for the Republican Party. She brought home federal investment, cultivated a reputation for moderation, and for three decades enough voters bought the story. On Election Day, they stopped.

The Kavanaugh Vote That Haunted Her

If Collins wants a single moment to blame, the trail leads back to Oct. 6, 2018, the day she voted with nearly every other Senate Republican to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. The confirmation hearings had been arguably the most heated since Clarence Thomas’s, with Kavanaugh accused of sexual assault by three women and displaying, in Slate’s account, an anger and reactivity unlike the stoic rationality expected of a justice. He also refused to say plainly whether he would uphold Roe v. Wade — and anyone reading his answers could see he was signaling he would not, while preserving plausible deniability.

Troy Jackson wins the Maine US Senate race over GOP Sen. Susan Collins in a key Democratic victory

Collins ran with that deniability. She told reporters she had spoken privately with Kavanaugh for more than two hours and that he assured her Roe was “settled law” — a formulation that meant little, since any Supreme Court decision is settled only until the court decides otherwise. Predictably, Kavanaugh voted with the majority in 2022’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe and stripped abortion rights from millions of women. Justice Samuel Alito, whom Collins had also confirmed, wrote the opinion. Collins told the media she had no regrets about her Kavanaugh vote. By this cycle, voters were having some regrets about her.

The Moderate Mirage

Collins did occasionally buck the GOP. But the record undercuts the persona: she cast decisive votes against her own party fewer times under Donald Trump than under Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or George W. Bush, and on the votes that mattered most she fell more in line with Republicans under Trump than under any other president. That collided head-on with her self-image as a bold moderate willing to stand up to a president whose net approval rating in Maine was –32 on Election Day — and whom Maine voters had handed to Kamala Harris in 2022.

If I was Susan Collins, I’d be worried too. Good thing my name is Troy Jackson. GO VOTE. pic.twitter.com/CEs2RIXncC

— https://x.com/TroyJackson207/status/2117626053330116756

Most Mainers, Slate reported, saw through that story and objected to Collins being too supportive of the president. The broader midterm pattern was voters casting ballots not for Democrats but against Republicans and their figurehead; in Maine, they were voting particularly against Susan Collins.

A Democratic Primary That Nearly Derailed the Win

The Democrats made their own life difficult. The primary became an ugly factional fight between institutional moderates backing 78-year-old Janet Mills and DSA-adjacent progressives who elevated Graham Platner, an oyster farmer, into the national spotlight — only for the Platner campaign to collapse after accusations of sexual assault. Scrambling to get a candidate on the ballot by the deadline, the party landed on Troy Jackson, a 58-year-old former Republican turned Democratic majority leader of the Maine Senate who had finished third in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and is not known for charisma or political prowess.

Susan Collins’ loss: Maine finally saw the “independent” for what she was — Photo: europesays.com

One Maine voter told The New York Times that they were going to hold their nose and vote for the dope, adding, “I’m going to vote for Troy Jackson. The Senate’s full of idiots. At least he’s our idiot.”

That resigned pragmatism captures the mood: Jackson was not a dream candidate, but he was the vehicle for the one message that won — no more Susan Collins.

Troy Jackson declares victory in Maine Senate race as Senator Susan Collins concedes

What Comes Next for Maine

Collins’s defeat ends one of the longest tenures in modern Senate history and hands Democrats a seat they had chased for years. The persona she cultivated — a principled, pro-choice Republican willing to absorb political cost for principle — is exactly the kind of figure national politics says it wants. The problem, as this election showed, is that the persona had to be real. When the veil of independence grew thin enough for voters to see through it, they did.

Collins, who cast what critics called a cowardly vote at the moment the country needed her to defend fundamental rights, can blame only one person: the woman in the mirror.