Senator Susan Collins, a seemingly immovable fixture in Maine politics, will hang up her hat in January.
Her loss to Democrat Troy Jackson this week was, for many, unexpected. Jackson had roughly 100 days to convince voters that he was the better choice than a Senate force who has survived numerous Democratic attempts for her seat.
But on Tuesday, Collins’s playbook of painting herself as an independent decision-maker who delivers for her constituents finally failed. Many have blamed her defeat on President Trump’s poor approval ratings, despite the Senator’s efforts to highlight the times she has broken with Trump.
Collins has also helped to further Trump’s agenda, as her critics were always eager to stress. She voted in favor of a $70 billion funding package for immigration enforcement, a decision that became a focal point for some voters. Collins was a decisive vote in confirming Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee who later helped overturn constitutional protections for abortions — a vote, Collins said during the campaign, she did not “regret.”
In an interview with the New York Times on Wednesday, a day after her defeat, Collins blamed those external forces, rather than her own record.
“I was caught up in the Trump tsunami that swept away many incumbent Republican senators who have served their states well for many years and really care about our country,” Collins said.
Here’s what else Collins and her campaign said after losing to Jackson.
‘Never enough’
Collins, who is currently the only Republican in Congress representing New England, has survived national blue waves before.
The senator was reelected in 2008, when then-President Barack Obama won his first term and carried many other Democrats to Washington with him. She survived the 2020 election, even when her state voted for Joe Biden over the Trump ticket.
Collins has also broken from the Republican president on key legislation since Trump retook the White House in 2024. She voted nine times to end the war in Iran and acknowledged that Trump’s sweeping tariffs, namely on Maine’s neighbor Canada, were hurting her constituents.
But Collins told the Times that those efforts were not enough to separate her and Trump.
“Everybody ignores the fact that I voted to convict him in the second impeachment trial,” she said. “What bigger break could there be? It is never enough. I want results and they want angry rhetoric.”
Funding power
A familiar theme on Collins’s campaign trail was highlighting the federal funding she has funneled to Maine during her five terms in office.
She hosted campaign stops at firehouses, airports, and other spots that have directly benefited from having a senior senator on the Senate Appropriations Committee. Jackson, meanwhile, will enter Congress as as junior senator and with little say in where funds are directed.
Collins told the Times that she “wanted to make sure people know what their choice was.” Voters chose to go with a new senator.
“What she has been able to do over the last six years is extraordinary,” Collins’s campaign manager Steve Abbott told the Times. “Every town you go to, you see a project that was funded and work that needed to be done. That’s an opportunity that the state has walked away from.”
A ‘Margaret Chase Smith moment’
Collins told the Times that she took inspiration from Margaret Chase Smith during her time in Washington. In 1950, Smith, a Republican from Maine, made her “Declaration of Conscience” on the Senate floor, denouncing her Republican colleague, Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, during her freshman year in the chamber.
“I would argue that I have, like Margaret Chase Smith, taken a lot of tough votes and stood up for what I believe in,” Collins told the Times. “But I think the best comparison is we each lost our last race for the Senate. I have now had my Margaret Chase Smith moment.”
Kaitlin Lewis can be reached at Kaitlin.Lewis@globe.com. Follow her on X @kblewey.