This week, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) inserted a $50 million line item into the Commerce, Science, and Justice fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill for University of Maine science and environmental infrastructure projects. And she continues to pick up the pieces following Gov. Janet Mills’s earlier confrontation with President Trump over transgender athletes. At the end of June, she announced the restoration of about $100 million in Department of Agriculture funding to the Maine university system, after federal officials snatched back that money, and she continues to labor over reversing other federal department funding pauses.
Being chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee carries those kinds of privileges. Collins, just like Robert Byrd, Ted Stevens, and others before her, is able to wield legendary powers on behalf of her home state, to the envy and consternation of other pols who would do the same thing if they had the opportunity. And yet, despite this power, Mainers can expect their fair share of pain ahead.
With a single procedural yes vote, Collins paved the way for the dramatic shredding of the country’s social safety net, which will plunge tens of thousands of her own constituents in the poorest state in the Northeast into some very hard times. Never mind her performative no vote on final passage of the Trump administration’s signature domestic-policy mega-bill; she had sealed the fate of many Mainers already.
The Maine Center for Economic Policy finds that as a result of that mega-bill, up to 31,000 people in the state could lose SNAP benefits, another 170,000 will see cuts to the value of their food assistance, and up to 34,000 could lose Medicaid, due to new work requirements and other enrollment hurdles. Cuts to clean-energy tax credits will put up to 15,000 Maine jobs at risk. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent of Maine income earners will get a tax cut of $34,000 on average.
This is not even the only bill where Collins opted for party loyalty over her constituents. As Puck News reported, Collins was planning to offer an amendment to the rescissions bill Republicans passed into law last week that would have preserved funding for global health programs and nearly all of the funding for public media. It had enough votes to pass, but pressure from conservative senators—with an appeal to party unity—led her to drop the amendment. As a result, not only will more desperately poor people abroad die of starvation, but public radio stations in rural areas like Maine will struggle to deliver critical news and information for their communities.
There are other party-line votes sure to anger Collins’s constituents, like continuing to vote for anti-abortion judges. But as she makes life harder for Maine families, the question remains: Will she pay any price for this at the ballot box?
Collins’s longevity owes everything to a simple construct: A committed partisan masquerading as a New England moderate, she survives by splitting the difference on everything, from the Affordable Care Act to elevating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. From that perspective, the reconciliation bill is no different. Nor is operating behind the scenes to claw back funding, or adding a rural hospital fund as a Band-Aid to protect against the Medicaid cuts.
Collins’s longevity owes everything to a simple construct: A committed partisan masquerading as a New England moderate, she survives by splitting the difference on everything.
But while Collins hopes the ugly consequences of her July 2025 votes, some of which were designed with the midterms in mind to go into effect beginning in 2027, will erupt after the election for the seat she intends to contest for a sixth time, the consequences are already being felt, including in Maine, where Northern Light Health has warned of workforce and service reductions.
Despite the MAGA murmurings of a primary challenge, running to the right of Collins is a path to certain defeat. And yet there’s no room either for traditional New England Republicans, who are practically extinct. For Democrats, success in the only seat in the U.S. Senate held by a Republican that Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris won at the presidential level would demand hammering home how the budget cuts affect the daily life of the average Mainer. But right now, the five contenders have little to no statewide recognition, in a race where someone should be poised to make some noise. What’s next?
In 2020, Sara Gideon, the Speaker of the Maine House, went up against Collins and lost by almost nine percentage points after spending about $75 million to the senator’s nearly $30 million, phenomenal price tags for a small state. This was the same election where Biden beat Donald Trump in Maine by nine points. Collins defied conventional groupthink on campaign funding and horse-race trends. In 2020, Gideon led in polling for most of the race.
Collins’s approval ratings are currently sinking. But there are intangibles in a state with only a million and a half people. Many people have met or at least seen Collins in the Portland airport or a local supermarket. Those brief encounters don’t replace town halls, and voters have been clamoring for them—Collins hasn’t held a town hall in decades—but they at least create some connection.
The most well-known Democratic hopefuls in Maine are fixated on Augusta; for the first time in living memory, Mr. Smith doesn’t want to go to Washington. With the very popular Maine Gov. Janet Mills term-limited after two terms in office, there are 12—count ’em—candidates running. The front-runners include secretary of state Shenna Bellows; state Senate president Troy Jackson; and Hannah Pingree, the former Speaker of the Maine House and the daughter of Rep. Chellie Pingree. Angus King III, the son of independent U.S. Sen. Angus King, is also in the race. Good thing there is ranked-choice voting in Maine.
Even though Collins remains the person to beat, some possible Democratic contenders are waiting on Mills to make a decision. After wrapping up a successful eight-year tenure with high marks for her pandemic leadership and standing up to the Trump administration, Mills is considered the only Maine politician with the heft to take on Collins. Known for her careful deliberation—she announced her gubernatorial re-election campaign just eight months before Election Day—she has yet to state her intentions. She did announce that she would skip the summer National Governors Association meeting this weekend in Colorado, not necessarily the decision that someone eager for a Senate seat makes.
Democrats may be enthused about Mills, but her candidacy has its drawbacks. In the wake of the 2024 debacle, the Capitol Hill gerontocracy is a major issue for both parties. Collins is 72, and Mills is 77, putting them both in their eighties after a full six-year Senate term. In the debates over opening up opportunities for younger politicians, even older candidates who are aging well—think Bernie Sanders—do get lumped in with those individuals whose physical and cognitive decline has been on full display; think of Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District of Columbia’s nonvoting delegate, or the late California senator Dianne Feinstein. Yet that debate in the state with the oldest population in the country could also spark a backlash, since there are a myriad of factors, from genetics to the ability to handle the pressures of campaigning and governing, that can accelerate or stave off the aging process.
If Collins reverses course and decides to retire, the Maine GOP has the bigger problem. Hauling out an ultraconservative Republican won’t work in a place where Democrats and independents have the edge, and it’s unclear who that individual would even be. The one with the highest profile, former governor and Florida snowbird Paul LePage, is spoken for. He’s decided to take on Democratic Rep. Jared Golden in Maine’s Trump +10 Second Congressional District. It’s a seat he could very well take.
Like most politicians, Collins has been proud to announce all the dollars she’s bringing home: for airport improvements, economic development projects, education grants for first-time students. But she was the deciding vote for a bill that will cause tangible pain for so many Mainers. She had this to say in a press release about that reconciliation bill that she voted to advance: “My vote against this bill stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”
She can be concerned. Except when it counts.