Maine cannot afford to lose Susan Collins’ bipartisan voice in Washington | Opinion
A political advertisement targeting Senator Susan Collins has sparked fresh debate in Maine’s 2026 Senate race. The spot, produced by a group called WinSenate, features four women who accuse Collins of never standing up to former President Donald Trump on three policy fronts: the Iran conflict, Medicaid funding and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The narrators cite four specific votes by Collins to support their claim: she opposed a measure to invoke the War Powers Resolution regarding Iran, she backed a procedural vote that allowed Senate debate on Trump’s 2025 spending bill, and she voted to confirm Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch—two of the five justices who later formed the majority that overturned Roe.
What the ad omits, according to public voting records, is that Collins later changed her position on the Iran war powers measure, voting with fellow Maine Representative Jared Golden to invoke the resolution. Records also show she voted against final passage of the 2025 Trump‑backed spending bill.
On the Supreme Court issue, the advertisement does not note Collins’s support for the three justices appointed by Democratic presidents—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson—nor that she broke with Trump to oppose the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whose vote supplied the fifth needed to overturn Roe. Analysts point out that, had the Court been composed solely of justices Collins endorsed, the precedent protecting abortion rights might still stand.
WinSenate describes itself as a super PAC aligned with Senate Democrats. Its website, winsenate.org, consists of a single image of the American flag and provides no mission statement, policy platform or explanation of its criticisms of Collins.
Fact‑checking organization PolitiFact examined two WinSenate ads focused on Collins and rated them “false” and “mostly false.”
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, points to her role in steering federal funds to Maine projects as evidence of her influence on behalf of the state. Maine Democrats have nominated Troy Jackson, a state senator known for aligning closely with progressive leaders such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, as their challenger.
Supporters of Collins argue that her record shows a willingness to break with party leadership on key votes, offering a bipartisan voice in a Senate increasingly divided along ideological lines. They contend that re‑electing her would preserve a centrist option for Maine voters wary of partisan extremes.
The advertisement, which wraps its message in patriotic imagery, continues to air across Maine television and digital platforms as the campaign season advances. Voters will soon decide whether the criticism leveled by WinSenate reflects an accurate assessment of Collins’s record or a selective portrayal intended to sway opinion.
