Must-Win Republican’s New Ad Gets Brutal Verdict From Ex-Aide
The embattled senator’s former staffer said a poorly judged ad means “the race is over.”
Eric Lee/REUTERS
Republican Sen. Susan Collins has made a colossal campaign blunder that one of her former staffers says may well have cost the GOP a must-win election.
Collins’ team put out a 30-second spot featuring Maine TV personality Bill Green talking the senator up and taking aim at her Democratic opponent Troy Jackson over his background as a logger.
“Now, I also know Troy Jackson, but we’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here,” Green says in the ad. “We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn’t have the tools he needs to be effective.”
Patten did not mince words.
LinkedIn/Sam Patten
Collins’ ex-aide Sam Patten led the online backlash by torching the incumbent for going after Jackson’s blue-collar roots.
“I didn’t believe this ad was real,” Patten wrote. “For more than 30 years, Susan Collins has carefully concealed her intrinsic arrogance because she is very smart and knows well that in Maine politics that would be fatal.”
Polls have put Jackson ahead in the Senate race.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“With this ad, she gave that up,” he went on. “The race is over.”
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He wasn’t alone. Democratic former congressional candidate Jordan Wood said the commercial “made my jaw drop,” while labor federation Maine AFL-CIO said that “Susan Collins has spent so much time in Washington she thinks working-class Mainers are beneath her.”
Collins, 73, is a multimillionaire whose family has operated a lumber business in northern Maine since 1844.
Jackson, 58, a former logger who went on to become president of the Maine Senate, has built his campaign around attacking Collins as out of touch with ordinary Mainers struggling with unaffordability under Donald Trump.
The incumbent first won election in 1996. She has spent nearly three decades cultivating a reputation as an independent-minded moderate in the purple state and lately as one of the few Republicans willing to challenge the president’s MAGA agenda.
Her bid for a sixth term has now descended into a bruising fight for survival in a state that backed Kamala Harris over Trump in 2024.
Collins’ campaign was already in trouble before her latest commercial aired, with polls putting Jackson ahead by 2 percentage points among likely voters and the Cook Political Report rating the contest a toss-up.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority, meaning Democrats need to gain a net four seats to seize control of the chamber at the midterm elections next Tuesday.
The Daily Beast has contacted Collins’ campaign for comment on this story.
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