PORTLAND, Maine — Democrat Troy Jackson has won Maine’s U.S. Senate seat, defeating five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins and closing out a Senate career that began in 1997.
Jackson, 58, is a former logger and a past president of the Maine Senate. He came into the race late, winning the Democratic nomination at a special convention after the first nominee, Graham Platner, withdrew from the race. Jackson had earlier lost the Democratic primary for governor.
The result gives Democrats one of the pickups they wanted most this year and widens the Senate majority the party secured on election night. Democrats also won control of the U.S. House, which puts both chambers of Congress in Democratic hands for the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.
Collins was first elected in 1996 and was the only Senate Republican running this year in a state Trump lost in 2024. She built her brand as a moderate who sometimes broke with the president. She voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment trial in 2021, voted against repealing the Affordable Care Act and opposed the One Big Beautiful Bill. During the campaign she pointed to the federal money she helped send to Maine as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
Jackson ran on economic populism and workers’ rights. He argued that Collins enabled Trump’s agenda with key votes, including her vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and her vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary. Collins described Jackson as inconsistent and short on the experience needed in Washington.
Cost of living hung over the race. Fuel and heating oil prices climbed in the weeks before the vote as temperatures fell, and federal tariffs have hit several of the state’s key industries.
Jackson told supporters at his victory party that working people had won.
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