U.S. Senate debates left Maine wanting | Opinion

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Cynthia Cushing, LMSW, of Readfield is currently pursuing a Ph.D. from the University of Maine, focusing on gerontology, social work and technology. In January 2026, she founded the Maine Coalition for Social Connection.

On Oct. 15 in Bangor, Maine voters got 15 seconds that explain where our politics has gone. A young man stood up in the middle of the final Senate debate to shout about data centers, and before security even reached him, the debate had stopped being about anything he — or any of us — actually came to hear.

The young man was Henry Elgie, a 19-year-old Bowdoin student. He said he was terrified — that AI data centers are destroying our climate and poisoning our water — and he asked Sen. Susan Collins a question a lot of Mainers have asked in one form or another: “Thirty years, for what?” As he was being led out, Sen. Collins remarked, “So this is obviously one of Troy’s supporters.” Troy Jackson answered, “Oh, shut up. I don’t even know that kid.”

That was it. That was the moment. In the week since, Mainers have been treated to wall-to-wall coverage of those 15 seconds — who was rude, who regrets what, whose temperament is fit for the Senate. Jackson went on national television to say he does not regret his words. The Collins campaign called his reaction “very telling.” Almost none of the coverage has been about what either candidate plans to do for the people of Maine. The exchange was replayed for a week because it was good television, not because it told voters anything.

Here is the part that should trouble us most. The remark that started it all — the suggestion that the protester was Jackson’s supporter, planted or otherwise — was not true. Elgie has said that there was “zero coordination” with the Jackson campaign and that he does not know Troy Jackson at all. He acted on his own, as a volunteer with a climate group. An unverified claim was broadcast across the state, and turned out to be false. Unsurprisingly, the truth reached only a fraction of the audience that saw the original video.

I am not writing to defend either candidate’s behavior in that moment. A United States senator should not state a guess as a fact. A man who wants to be a senator should not tell anyone to shut up. I am writing because of what the moment crowded out.

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That debate — the last one before we vote — included real exchanges about healthcare, about the people who may run our federal agencies, about the cost of energy. The protester himself was raising a question that matters here: what large data centers would mean for our electric bills and our water. None of that is what Maine has spent a week talking about. We spent it on 15 seconds of accusation and insult.

Somewhere along the way, we have accepted a different idea of what a debate is. A debate is supposed to be a job interview. Two people are asking us for one of the most powerful jobs in the country, and the interview questions are simple ones: What will you do about the cost of healthcare? What will you do about heating our homes and keeping the lights affordable? How will you represent people who did not vote for you? When a debate becomes a contest of who can land the sharpest accusation, we the employers walk out of the interview knowing less than when we sat down.

There is a small detail from that night that I keep coming back to.

Jackson has shaken Collins’ hand after every one of their debates, including this one. Two people who disagree about nearly everything still manage that much. It suggests the problem is not that our candidates are incapable of basic decency. The problem is what the format — and the coverage, and honestly, our own appetite for the clip — rewards.

By now, both campaigns have spent millions telling us what is wrong with the other candidate. I would like to hear something else. I would like each of them to spend their remaining time answering the only question that matters: what will you do for us?

Maine deserves that debate. We haven’t had it yet.

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Tagged: columns, election 2026, senate 2026