Susan Collins concedes Maine Senate race to Troy Jackson, ending a 30-year run in the Senate
Five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins has conceded her Maine Senate race to Democrat Troy Jackson, ending a 30-year tenure in Washington and delivering Democrats another pickup in their midterm sweep.
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins has conceded her Senate race to Democrat Troy Jackson, bringing an end to a 30-year career in the United States Senate and denying her a sixth term.
Collins called Jackson on Tuesday night to congratulate him and to promise a smooth transition, Jackson campaign spokesperson Maggie Amjad confirmed. Collins later said it had been the honour of her life to serve the people of Maine in the Senate.
CNN projected Jackson as the winner, while the Associated Press had not yet called the race at the time of the concession. With more than 513,000 votes counted, Jackson led Collins by about 53 per cent to 47 per cent, according to NBC News results cited in reporting of the race.
First elected in 1996, Collins was the Senate's longest-serving woman and one of its best-known moderates. She repeatedly survived as a Republican in a state that has not backed her party's presidential candidate since 1988, building a reputation for bipartisan deal-making and for breaking with her party on high-profile votes.
This year, however, she faced a different political climate. Reporting on the race pointed to economic headwinds, including fuel and home heating oil prices — an especially sensitive issue in a largely rural state known for harsh winters — as factors that helped Jackson.
Jackson, 58, is a former president of the Maine Senate and a fifth-generation logger from the remote town of Allagash. His path to the nomination was unusual: he initially ran for governor, finished third in the Democratic primary in June, and was then selected as the party's Senate nominee in July.
He replaced Graham Platner, a former Marine and oysterman who dropped out of the race after facing allegations which he denied. Jackson therefore had only about 100 days to run a statewide Senate campaign against one of the chamber's most established members.
His campaign repeatedly attacked Collins over her relationship with President Donald Trump, arguing that she had enabled his agenda. Collins, for her part, had tried to distance herself from Trump during the campaign, a balancing act that had worked for her in previous elections.
The result adds to a night of Democratic pickups that delivered the party control of the Senate, with flips also reported in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Kansas and Iowa. Maine had long been a target for Democrats, who saw Collins's seat as a prize precisely because it had eluded them for three decades.
For Maine, the change is also a generational one. Collins entered the Senate in 1997; Jackson will arrive as a former logger and state legislative leader whose campaign was assembled in a matter of months rather than years.
What happens next in Washington will depend on the final shape of the new Senate, but the Maine result itself is now settled by concession even before every count is formally called. Jackson is set to become Maine's next senator when the new Congress takes office in January.
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