During a heated debate recently hosted by WMTW in Portland, Maine, incumbent Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, refused to say whether she plans to vote for President Trump on Tuesday.
For Collins, Trump’s presidency has left her stuck in the middle with voters in Maine, a state that was nearly split on supporting the president in 2016 but is backing Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by double digits in 2020, polls indicate.
“I’m not getting into presidential politics,” Collins told moderator Steve Bottari during the Wednesday night debate.
But presidential politics will likely play a significant role in determining whether Collins, one of the few remaining centrists in Congress, will return to the Senate in January for a fifth term.
Polls show Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, Maine’s state House speaker, with a narrow but consistent lead.
More daunting for Collins are poll numbers showing that Biden, the former vice president, leads Trump among Maine voters by about 13 points.
Trump’s poor performance at the top of the ballot could drag down Collins, although her supporters note that she always performs better with voters than anyone at the top of the ticket.
In 2008, for example, Collins beat Democratic challenger Tom Allen by 33% even though President Barack Obama trounced Republican Sen. John McCain by a nearly 18-point margin.
But it could be difficult for Collins to win this time if Trump loses by double digits, polls suggest.
Collins, the only New England Republican left in Congress, is fighting to survive against a massive influx of outside spending on behalf of Gideon, who has held a consistent lead in all polls.
Gideon, 48, has outraised Collins by about $31 million and has outspent the Collins campaign by nearly $7 million in the most recent quarter, according to the Bangor Daily News. Overall, more than $170 million have been spent on the race.
Out-of-state liberal organizations have dumped money into the race, eager to unseat Collins since 2018, when she voted to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The groups are hoping to flip the Senate, currently in the hands of the Republican Party, and give the gavel to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.
The race is one of several toss-up Senate contests that will determine which party controls the majority in January.
Collins has sought to show voters she operates independently and is focused on serving constituents, not the party leaders.
“The focus of this race has always been on the people of Maine and what she has and can still do for them,” Collins’s campaign spokeswoman Annie Clark told the Washington Examiner. “For two years, national Democrats have flooded the state with millions of dollars in false attack ads urging them to vote against their own self-interests solely to make Chuck Schumer the majority leader of the Senate.”
Gideon has worked to tie Collins to Trump, whom Mainers view poorly when it comes to handling the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare, and other top issues, polls show.
An October poll taken by Portland-based Pan Atlantic Research found nearly 60% of likely voters viewed Trump’s handling of the pandemic as “poor” or “very poor.” The same poll gave Biden a 10-point lead over Trump and found Gideon with a 7-point lead over Collins.
It’s a bigger lead for Gideon than internal GOP polls, which, according to one campaign aide, show the race is “brutally close.”
Gideon has criticized Congress, and Collins, for failing to pass a new round of federal aid that would include “hazard pay” for workers deemed essential during the pandemic, and she added that Collins has done little to criticize Trump for appearing to downplay the virus.
Collins has promoted her leading role in passing the Paycheck Protection Program, a nearly $700 billion loan program included in the last round of federal coronavirus aid, which has helped thousands of Maine’s small businesses to survive economic lockdowns.
Collins criticized Gideon for shutting down the state legislature in March due to the pandemic. The United States Senate has mostly remained in session.
Collins, 67, is also touting her seniority. She’s in line for the top post on the Senate Appropriations Committee, one of the most powerful panels in Congress. The role would allow Collins to steer billions of federal dollars to Maine for infrastructure projects and other programs.
While Collins voted against confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, arguing that the confirmation process took place too close to the election, Democrats are linking Collins to the Senate GOP’s historic confirmation of hundreds of federal judges selected by the Trump administration. The conservative picks will potentially reshape the courts for decades to come.
“You hand-delivered Donald Trump’s and Mitch McConnell’s judiciary agenda,” Gideon said during Wednesday’s debate.
Collins pointed out that, in most cases, Democrats also voted for the judicial nominees.
Those in Collins’s corner believe she uniquely can pull off a victory even if Trump badly loses the state because she’s a centrist willing to buck the party at times.
“She is independent in many ways, and that leaves more of a pool of people who really have to think about how they are going to vote rather than automatically going in lockstep, like they would with other candidates,” Republican strategist Brent Littlefield, who served as a senior political adviser for former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, told the Washington Examiner.
