Susan Collins is running for reelection as Maine's moderate Republican senator in what's shaping up to be a test of whether political independence can still shield a lawmaker from the national party's drag. The comparison Democrats are now drawing is brutal: Jon Tester in 2024.
Tester was everything Collins is today. A Democrat in a deep red state. A repeat winner with a brand that transcended partisan lines. A senator who had proven he could swim against the national tide. Then he lost to Republican Tim Sheehy.
The warning came directly from someone who knows: a former Tester campaign operative who worked the 2024 race. Speaking anonymously due to constraints at a new job, the operative said Collins faces the same trap that closed in on Tester. Sheehy's strategy was straightforward. Tie Tester to the unpopular national party. Shrink Tester's room to maneuver by targeting the shrinking pool of ticket-splitters willing to cross party lines. It worked.
"The lesson there is you can't outrun the national environment, or you can only outrun it so much," the operative said. "Susan Collins is the same story: how much can she outrun the ticket?"
Collins is trying. She walked in a Casco parade on Saturday and told NBC News she's disappointed in Trump's tariffs on Canadian goods, which she views as economically damaging to Maine given the state's deep economic ties to Canada. "I've opposed the president when I think he's wrong, and I've supported him when I think that he's right," she said.
The problem is that Democrats are already running the playbook that worked against Tester. They're hammering Collins for voting with Trump 96% of the time. They're hitting her on votes for Trump's tax law and his Supreme Court pick Brett Kavanaugh, whose vote overturned Roe v. Wade. Troy Jackson, the newly nominated Maine Democratic Senate candidate, made that central to his convention speech Saturday. "Who has she served? She has served Donald Trump," Jackson said.
The Tester operative was blunt about the effectiveness of that messaging. The ads tying Tester to President Biden in 2024 were "incredibly potent." Biden, the operative said, was "about as popular as Jeffrey Epstein in Montana." Harris fared no better. "You get to a certain point where it's not possible to make up that margin," the operative said.
Whether Collins can outperform her party will depend partly on the national political environment. Trump lost Maine in all three of his presidential runs. Jackson is banking on Trump's declining approval ratings and voter dissatisfaction with his economic record to create conditions favorable to Democrats. Trump's numbers on handling the economy are weak, and that weakness has historically been difficult for senators of his party to survive.
Collins' 2026 race is now fully framed. She's a senator with genuine independence credentials who votes with her party far more often than not. Jackson is a Democrat with a straightforward message. The question for Collins is whether independence can hold up when the base of her party is unpopular. In Tester's case, it couldn't.
Author Sarah Mitchell: "Collins beat the odds twice before, but Tester's loss suggests the math is getting harder for any Republican trying to survive a hostile national environment by being the exception."
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