Susan Collins and Graham Platner draw battle lines in Maine Senate race
after Gov. Janet Mills’s departure opened the path for Graham Platner, Sen. Susan Collins and Platner are rolling out their first general-election ads in Maine’s battleground Senate race-an outcome that could shape control of the Senate for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s term.
Collins’s 60-second spot presents her as a steady, results-focused centrist, emphasizing federal resources she helped bring to Maine, including the rebuilding of the Eastport Breakwater pier. It largely avoids directly attacking her opponent and instead spotlights her long record of delivery.
Platner’s ad takes the opposite approach, adopting a populist “run the GOP establishment out of Washington” tone while portraying himself as an insurgent challenging Collins’s “performative politics,” asserting that “Susan Collins’s charade is over.” It also echoes democratic critiques that Collins often signals concern about Trump or Republicans before ultimately siding with them.
Democratic strategists and national party leaders, while initially building around Mills’s preferred “blue-chip” style, are now prepared to back Platner to defeat Collins and pursue the goal of winning a democratic Senate majority.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Democrat Graham Platner are showcasing their divergent paths in Maine’s battleground Senate race in the aftermath of Gov. Janet Mills’s (D-ME) abrupt departure.
Collins and Platner are dishing out their first ads of the general election campaign, which could determine control of the Senate for the last two years of President Donald Trump’s term. The 60-second spots couldn’t be more different.
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Collins, a centrist Republican who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, presents her nearly three-decade, five-term Senate career as results-driven. In her new ad, Collins features the federal tax dollars she’s brought back to Maine with the rebuilding of a collapsed pier vital to an East Coast town’s waterfront economy. The one-minute spot makes no reference or mention of Collins until nearly the 30-second mark.
The spot “speaks directly to one of the most pressing issues facing Maine families today: affordability,” the Collins campaign says.
Platner, the combat veteran and oyster farmer, chooses the resistance route. His one-minute ad resembles the style of a populist conservative vowing to run the GOP establishment out of Washington but with the rhetoric of a progressive insurgent taking on Collins’s “performative politics.” He vows that “Susan Collins’s charade is over.”
The Platner campaign says the ad “fixes the campaign’s messaging squarely on the senator he is running to defeat.” And, hitting at longtime criticism from Democrats that Collins often expresses concern about President Donald Trump or fellow Republicans before ultimately siding with them on policy, the campaign referenced “Collins’s signature furrowed-brow concern — the votes that come down the wrong way, the statements that change nothing.”
“This could not lay out more of a contrast, which I think plays in Graham Platner’s favor,” said Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist and former aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), who now chairs Senate Democrats’ campaign arm. “He’s tapping into anger. She is tapping into what is, or remains of, her strength, which is, ‘I’ve served this community for a long time. I’ve brought back resources.’”
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National Democrats have extended a reluctant embrace of Platner in the wake of Mills clearing the way for him to scoop up the nomination next month. The establishment-aligned governor was among Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) blue-chip recruits that he envisioned leading the party back to the majority in November. But now, Schumer and the party’s campaign arm are prepared to “work with” Platner to defeat Collins in pursuit of their “North Star,” which is “winning a Democratic Senate majority.”
Collins makes no reference to Platner in her ad. Instead, her campaign says her efforts to help rebuild the Eastport Breakwater pier, the deepest natural seaport in the continental U.S., after its 2014 collapse is part of her mantra to run “on a strong record of delivering real results.”
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