Troy Jackson Takes Down Susan Collins in Maine, Growing Democrats' Senate Majority

Maine has flipped. Democrat Troy Jackson defeated longtime Republican Sen. Susan Collins, NBC News projects, handing Democrats another seat and fattening the Senate majority they grabbed in the midterms. Collins had been a prime GOP target all cycle as the only Republican holding a state President Donald Trump lost.

Jackson didn't get much runway. He only became the nominee in late July, stepping in after Graham Platner dropped out over a sexual assault allegation, which Platner denied. From there, Jackson and his allies hammered Collins for her ties to Trump in a state the president has never won. 'Sen. Collins votes with Trump 96% of the time. The billionaire class is who she's been fighting for,' Jackson said in a debate. Collins disputes that figure.

Collins leaned hard on her resume instead. As chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, she argued she delivered for Maine, saying in a debate, 'I have secured $1.5 billion for 672 projects all over the state of Maine during the past five years.' Jackson wasn't buying it, arguing she could have blocked Trump's tariffs and the war with Iran, and knocking her vote to advance his tax cut and spending package, the 'big, beautiful bill.' He even jabbed at her power play directly: 'Power means nothing if you won't use it when the people in Maine need it.'

The matchup had a homegrown twist. Both hail from remote Aroostook County, and Jackson, a former logger, was the first challenger from Collins' own backyard to take her on. He ran a working-class pitch, while Republicans painted him as a career politician who raised taxes. Jackson also staked out progressive ground, backing 'Medicare for All' and abolishing ICE, and campaigned with Sen. Bernie Sanders in the final stretch.

Jackson's political path has been anything but straight. He got into politics after helping lead a logger blockade at the northern border in 1998, ran for the state House as a Republican in 2000, won a seat as an independent in 2002, then became a Democrat, eventually serving as state Senate president from 2018 to 2024. He lost this year's gubernatorial primary before capturing the Senate nomination with heavy union backing.

Collins had defied gravity before. In 2020 she won by 9 points even as Trump lost Maine by the same margin, and she'd held the seat since 1997, building a brand as an independent voice who voted to convict Trump in his 2021 impeachment trial after Jan. 6. She even knocked his trade war with Canada on the trail. This time, the anti-Trump tide was too strong, and the president's endorsement of her re-election didn't save her.