Senator Susan Collins faces a tough Maine Senate race as voters react to President Trump. After three decades, her moderate style struggles against rising prices and a push for change. "It's important to send a message," said voter Liz McCormack. Many people now feel torn about her future in office.
Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, is facing a moment like no other in her three decades in office, one that is testing whether her moderate brand of politics can survive perhaps the most polarizing presidency in modern history.
Ms. Collins, a symbol of centrism and a paragon of decorum, has won five elections in a state that reliably votes for Democrats in presidential races by burnishing her reputation as an independent-minded Republican who delivers for Maine. But this year, she is battling forces that are squeezing her from several directions: a working-class rage about rising prices, a call for generational change and, above all, a burning desire among many voters to make a statement against President Trump's divisive second term.
"I respect her," Liz McCormack, 65, a Democrat and retired professor in the coastal college town of Brunswick, said one recent day as she cast a ballot for Ms. Collins's Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson. Ms. McCormack voted for Ms. Collins in 2020, she said. But this time, she added, "it's important to send a message."
Ms. Collins's predicament, as well as her enduring strength, were on display last week as she weaved through a crowded, sprawling fair in Fryeburg, Maine.
There were well-wishers who effusively thanked her for service. And children who flocked to her side. But then there was the emotional farmer, undecided in the Senate race, who stopped her to tell her how hard it was to make ends meet. And the young man who jeered her as she argued that Maine voters really were not all that hungry for change.
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