ME-SEN: Democrat eyes challenge to Susan Collins in Maine
Jordan Wood, a former congressional staffer from Maine, has told fellow Democrats that he plans to launch a bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, according to two people familiar with his plans who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.
Wood, 35, would be one of the first Democrats to enter the race against Collins. He worked for former Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) as her chief-of-staff, and before that served in a leadership role at End Citizens United, a campaign-finance reform group.
Collins is the only Republican up for reelection next year in a state that Kamala Harris won in 2024. And she has been a top Democratic target for decades. But she has proved difficult to unseat, most recently dispatching Sara Gideon, the well-funded 2020 Democratic nominee, after months of trailing her in the polls.
Wood is born and raised in Lewiston and now lives in Bristol. Wood has spent a chunk of his career in the nation’s capital, which could expose him to attacks that he is out of touch with the state. He moved back to Maine in 2021 after spending 10 years in national Democratic politics.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/17/jordan-wood-challenge-susan-collins-maine-00297115
= new reply since forum marked as read
Mary Ann Lynch, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, is a model Democrat. She began her political career as a staffer for Democratic Governor Joe Brennan and has supported the party with donations and volunteer work for more than 40 years. In the past two elections, she voted a straight Democratic slate—Joe Biden, U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree, Governor Janet Mills—with one exception. Last fall, with control of the Senate on the line and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings a traumatic recent memory, Lynch cast a ballot for Republican Senator Susan Collins. She has no regrets. “I’m a ticket splitter,” Lynch told me. “I don’t often split, but I do split. I vote for the person who I feel would be the best for Maine and for the country. Instead of saying we need more Democrats or more Republicans, I would say we would need more people like Susan Collins who reach across the aisle to get things done.”
Lynch does not share the ominous feeling, increasingly common among Democrats, that time is running out. A paper-thin majority in Congress is likely to disappear next year, leaving just months to pass paid family leave and protect voters from conservative attempts at disenfranchisement. As the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pettifog and delay, many Democrats wish for just one more Senate seat. And as Texas and other states pass restrictive abortion laws unchecked by the Supreme Court, frustrated Democrats turn to voters in Maine, who returned Collins to the Senate last fall despite her vote for Kavanaugh and the Republican tax bill, and ask: Why?
Exit polling indicates that 13 percent of Collins’s support in 2020 came from registered Democrats. Women overall broke for Collins over her challenger, Sara Gideon, 49 to 46 percent. How did these constituencies make a decision seemingly so against their own interests? How do they feel about it now? Ask them, and their answers often evoke nostalgia for things lost—paper mills, union jobs, and a bipartisan, collegial Congress. They also share a lack of urgency about the slow-moving constitutional crisis instigated by Donald Trump, a sign, along with the election of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia this fall, that Democrats will have to do more to win than point to Trump’s misdeeds, especially now that he’s off the ballot.
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Collins’s votes in the Senate since her reelection have been just fine with Green, too. This summer, she helped defeat the For the People Act, arguing that its sweeping voting rights provisions—making Election Day a federal holiday, restoring eligibility to felons who’ve served their sentences, keeping names on voting rolls, automatically registering eligible voters—went far beyond preserving the right to vote. Green wasn’t convinced either that such sweeping action was necessary in response to laws such as Georgia’s, which forbids giving water to people waiting to vote. (With many polling places closed in Black areas, lines are often long.) Should people be allowed, Green mused, to give voters even such small gifts as a bottle of water? “What is that law saying? I don’t know,” he said. “Leave it to Susan. I trust her.”
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Also, this did not help, it allowed to spread the bullshit that she is mostly a bi-partisan sensible 'moderate' who can step into the breach:
https://rollcall.com/2019/04/11/democratic-sen-joe-manchin-endorses-gop-sen-susan-collins-for-2020/
