Susan Collins "it is time for you to go". Shame on you. After 30 years in the Senate you have become Donald Trump's rubber stamp
Echo opinion published in the Boston Globe by Abdallah Fayyed
Graham Platner’s downfall hasn’t dampened Maine voters’ hopes of sending new blood to the Senate.
Senator Susan Collins is still in trouble in Maine.
My reporting in Maine started in downtown Portland. Camden Jipson and Raiden Dionne, both 20, were waiting for their bus. I asked them how they’re feeling about the Senate race. Jipson doesn’t like Senator Susan Collins at all. Dionne agreed. What bothers him most, he said, is what’s been happening with immigration enforcement — specifically the crackdowns by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. When I asked if they would ever consider voting for Collins in November, they laughed and, without hesitation, said no. Their bus arrived and we quickly parted ways.
There are plenty of Maine voters who feel the same way. That much has been clear since the oyster farmer Graham Platner catapulted out of nowhere to handily win the Democratic nomination for Senate last month. Platner’s campaign fell apart after he was accused of sexual assault and dropped out of the race.
For a moment, it seemed the Democrats were doomed. Of all races in these midterms, Collins’s seat is one of the most important for the party to flip if it wants to regain control of the Senate. The election in Maine is shaping up to be one of the closest in the country. How were Democrats going to select a new nominee without making voters feel like there was a last-minute bait-and-switch?
But after the party held a televised and somewhat awkward debate between eight candidates, and at least 17,000 registered Democrats participated in county caucuses to help pick Platner’s replacement, Troy Jackson quickly emerged as the front-runner. On Saturday, the Maine Democratic Party held a convention that formally named Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, as the official Democratic nominee for Senate.
You might expect that kind of 11th-hour drama to dampen the energy in Maine. But many voters are still fired up by the prospect of finally unseating Collins, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, and is now running for her sixth term. And crucially for Democrats, Jackson is a progressive with policy positions very similar to Platner’s. The party’s hope, it seems, is that Jackson’s politics are similar enough to Platner’s for primary voters to feel their message was heard, even if they didn’t have a direct say in naming the nominee.
Courtney Walton, 41, is a firefighter who considers himself an independent voter. “We need a change,” he said.
Earlier this month, an ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was married and had a 3-year-old daughter, and his family says that he was legally authorized to work in the United States. The killing struck a nerve across Maine, and protests erupted outside Collins’s office in Biddeford, where demonstrators chanted, “Vote her out!”
“I don’t like how she’s supporting ICE and expanding their funding,” Walton said of Collins. “It’s not what we need right now.” When I asked him if he thinks Collins bears any responsibility for the shooting, he said, “Absolutely. If she supported ICE and voted to increase their funding, then it is absolutely on any of those politicians who vote that way.” Walton, a union member, voted for Jackson in the gubernatorial primary earlier this year, in part because of Jackson’s support for unions. He plans to vote for Jackson again in November, this time for Senate.
Collins has survived controversy before, most notably after casting the deciding vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. She ended up cruising to reelection in 2020. Since then, Kavanaugh sided with the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, upending abortion rights in the United States. Voters may have finally had enough. Earlier in the race, most polls showed Collins underperforming Platner, and a recent University of New Hampshire poll had her trailing Jackson by three points.
Ashley, 38, a small-business owner in Portland, is a registered Democrat but has voted for Collins in the past. The senator’s vote for Kavanaugh was the beginning of a turning point for Ashley. “She claims to be a moderate, but I don’t feel like she votes like one,” she said. Ashley asked me to use her first name only because she doesn’t want her political views to affect her business.
This year, Ashley voted for Platner in the primary and said she was “very excited” about him because he bucked the establishment, though she ultimately wasn’t surprised by the scandals that sank his candidacy. “People my age now are really confused by the Democratic Party, and you sort of wonder whose interests they have in mind sometimes,” she said. “I feel like [Platner] represented real people in Maine and he kind of felt like a sort of beacon of hope — that maybe some things could change.”
The whole process of selecting a new nominee to replace Platner reminded her of the 2024, presidential election. “At this point, I don’t feel like I have a choice,” she said. “Honestly, this feels a little bit like the Kamala Harris situation — it’s just that’s who the pick is.” Still, she said she likes Jackson and will definitely vote for him in the fall.
That it’s time for Collins to go seems to be a growing sentiment since her last reelection campaign. At a McDonald’s in Brunswick, I met another former Collins voter. Leo Gagnon, 92, has lived in Maine his entire life. He spent more than three decades at a paper mill and another 10 years working for the state — plowing snow and doing maintenance jobs. He voted for Collins in 2020, but plans to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. “Social Security isn’t even keeping up with the cost of living,” he said. “When I was a kid, they always told me, ‘Republicans are for the rich, Democrats are for the poor.’ It’s still that way.”
Collins, he says, has done some good for Maine, but she’s gone too far in President Trump’s direction for his liking.
To be sure, Jackson still has a lot of work to do to build a successful campaign in a short timeframe — and to make sure that the enthusiasm from the primaries doesn’t slowly evaporate. But perhaps the best thing he has going for him is the seemingly lackluster enthusiasm for his opponent.
It’s time for change, Gagnon told me. “We need new blood.”
There are plenty of Maine voters who feel the same way. That much has been clear since the oyster farmer Graham Platner catapulted out of nowhere to handily win the Democratic nomination for Senate last month. Platner’s campaign fell apart after he was accused of sexual assault and dropped out of the race.
For a moment, it seemed the Democrats were doomed. Of all races in these midterms, Collins’s seat is one of the most important for the party to flip if it wants to regain control of the Senate. The election in Maine is shaping up to be one of the closest in the country. How were Democrats going to select a new nominee without making voters feel like there was a last-minute bait-and-switch?
But after the party held a televised and somewhat awkward debate between eight candidates, and at least 17,000 registered Democrats participated in county caucuses to help pick Platner’s replacement, Troy Jackson quickly emerged as the front-runner. On Saturday, the Maine Democratic Party held a convention that formally named Jackson, a former president of the Maine Senate who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, as the official Democratic nominee for Senate.
You might expect that kind of 11th-hour drama to dampen the energy in Maine. But many voters are still fired up by the prospect of finally unseating Collins, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, and is now running for her sixth term. And crucially for Democrats, Jackson is a progressive with policy positions very similar to Platner’s. The party’s hope, it seems, is that Jackson’s politics are similar enough to Platner’s for primary voters to feel their message was heard, even if they didn’t have a direct say in naming the nominee.
Courtney Walton, 41, is a firefighter who considers himself an independent voter. “We need a change,” he said.
Earlier this month, an ICE officer shot and killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant in Biddeford, Maine. Guerrero was married and had a 3-year-old daughter, and his family says that he was legally authorized to work in the United States. The killing struck a nerve across Maine, and protests erupted outside Collins’s office in Biddeford, where demonstrators chanted, “Vote her out!”
“I don’t like how she’s supporting ICE and expanding their funding,” Walton said of Collins. “It’s not what we need right now.” When I asked him if he thinks Collins bears any responsibility for the shooting, he said, “Absolutely. If she supported ICE and voted to increase their funding, then it is absolutely on any of those politicians who vote that way.” Walton, a union member, voted for Jackson in the gubernatorial primary earlier this year, in part because of Jackson’s support for unions. He plans to vote for Jackson again in November, this time for Senate.
Collins has survived controversy before, most notably after casting the deciding vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. She ended up cruising to reelection in 2020. Since then, Kavanaugh sided with the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade, upending abortion rights in the United States. Voters may have finally had enough. Earlier in the race, most polls showed Collins underperforming Platner, and a recent University of New Hampshire poll had her trailing Jackson by three points.
Ashley, 38, a small-business owner in Portland, is a registered Democrat but has voted for Collins in the past. The senator’s vote for Kavanaugh was the beginning of a turning point for Ashley. “She claims to be a moderate, but I don’t feel like she votes like one,” she said. Ashley asked me to use her first name only because she doesn’t want her political views to affect her business.
This year, Ashley voted for Platner in the primary and said she was “very excited” about him because he bucked the establishment, though she ultimately wasn’t surprised by the scandals that sank his candidacy. “People my age now are really confused by the Democratic Party, and you sort of wonder whose interests they have in mind sometimes,” she said. “I feel like [Platner] represented real people in Maine and he kind of felt like a sort of beacon of hope — that maybe some things could change.”
The whole process of selecting a new nominee to replace Platner reminded her of the 2024, presidential election. “At this point, I don’t feel like I have a choice,” she said. “Honestly, this feels a little bit like the Kamala Harris situation — it’s just that’s who the pick is.” Still, she said she likes Jackson and will definitely vote for him in the fall.
That it’s time for Collins to go seems to be a growing sentiment since her last reelection campaign. At a McDonald’s in Brunswick, I met another former Collins voter. Leo Gagnon, 92, has lived in Maine his entire life. He spent more than three decades at a paper mill and another 10 years working for the state — plowing snow and doing maintenance jobs. He voted for Collins in 2020, but plans to vote for the Democratic nominee in November. “Social Security isn’t even keeping up with the cost of living,” he said. “When I was a kid, they always told me, ‘Republicans are for the rich, Democrats are for the poor.’ It’s still that way.”
Collins, he says, has done some good for Maine, but she’s gone too far in President Trump’s direction for his liking.
To be sure, Jackson still has a lot of work to do to build a successful campaign in a short timeframe — and to make sure that the enthusiasm from the primaries doesn’t slowly evaporate. But perhaps the best thing he has going for him is the seemingly lackluster enthusiasm for his opponent.
It’s time for change, Gagnon told me. “We need new blood.”
Labels: Abdallah, Boston Globe, Fayyed, Troy Jackson
posted by Juliana L'Heureux | 2:08 PM
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