Can Susan Collins Survive Trump’s America? 

SURRY, Maine — “On the Road” has brought me to the tables of some of the most charming, and tasty, eateries in America. Yet nowhere has been as idyllic as Perry's Lobster Shack.

Set on a harbor, where — in local parlance — Midcoast meets Downeast, the view from Perry's over the water is of Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park. The lobstermen were motoring to the end of the pier, a few hundred feet from the dockside picnic tables and the tiny kitchen where the catch would meet its fate. All on a gorgeous late afternoon in August.

It was, I told Sen. Susan Collins as she arrived here, the Maine Summer Industrial Complex hitting on all cylinders. A chamber of commerce day in Vacationland.

It was also a placid setting for the most turbulent race in the country this year.

You know the story by now. Graham Platner’s rapid rise and fast fall. Democrats scrambling to replace him and the selection of former state Sen. Troy Jackson. And Collins’ determination to serve what may be her final term after nearly 30 years in the Senate.

Yet what brought me here, besides the splendid steamers and lobster roll, was less the drama than the political science experiment posing as a Senate race.

How has Collins defied political polarization — she’s the last senator to represent a state where the other party won the last three presidential elections — and do local appeals still matter in an era of nationalization?

She was less than thrilled to discuss President Donald Trump, dodging my question about whether he’s a good man and emphasizing how well she works with his advisers rather than him. Her balancing act in a state bifurcated by red and blue, north and south, coast and inland requires her to win votes from the president’s admirers and detractors.

Collins’ bet is that what links these disparate voters in a sprawling state is political sophistication, an appreciation for the local projects she can deliver as Appropriations chair.

She also flashed some bladework when discussing Jackson, as she cracked her lobster: She doesn’t talk, Collins happily said, about how the mother of her opponent’s children is also his second cousin.

Her challenge is the convergence of the local and the national, the risk of grumpy voters throwing her out because they’re frustrated with Trump and the cost of living.

Can Collins make the race about her clout, or will it be shaped by what a lobsterman told me as he hoisted his trap onto the dock here: “Gas is up, and lobster is down.”

You can watch the full video on YouTube or listen to it as a podcast.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Hey, folks! This is Jonathan Martin coming at you on the road from Surry, Maine. We got a lobster boat just coming in. We're at an iconic lobster pound here: Perry's Lobster Shack. The lobster rolls are fresh. Everybody's sharing steamers, and D.C. feels a long way away, but politics is never far off these days, and especially not here in Maine.

Can Democrats, after 30 years, finally claim their elusive white whale by defeating Susan Collins — who has proved to be a survivor politically, defying the tribalism and polarization of our times? But in the Trump era, everything is nationalized, and can she survive a deeply unpopular president? 

Senator Collins! So you're up for reelection once again. Once again, the Democrats are trying to defeat you. They don't quit, do they? They just keep coming at you. 

You know, it's so ironic because year after year, I'm named as the most bipartisan member of the Senate, and yet I'm always Chuck Schumer's number one target.

Have you ever told him that, by the way? "Chuck, you know the rankings have me as the most bipartisan."

I believe I did after the 2020 election.

The challenge you have here is the classic political challenge of our time, which is that you're trying to emphasize what you've done for the state, and your opponents are trying to focus on the national environment and national politics. 

In some ways, this campaign is a political science test. Can local appeals, can traditional factors like incumbency and delivering for a state — obviously you're the chair of the Appropriations Committee — does that still matter in this era, where we're all living on our phones and everything is tribal? I guess that's really the challenge for you, isn't it? 

It certainly matters in a state like Maine with a population of 1.3 million people — with a lot of small towns, with a low-income population. Just this morning I was in Kenduskeag, where I was helping to sign the wooden truss for a new library. The previous library was in a building that dated back to the 1800s and did not have plumbing. It did not have running water. So when I'm able to secure a million dollars toward the cost of a brand new library for the town of Kenduskeag, you bet it matters.

But obviously, the challenge you have is trying to get folks away from the daily barrage of news alerts, push alerts, tweets, everything on social media, to focus on the local when politics has become totally nationalized. And your party sent JD Vance up here. I saw in the Bangor Daily News that they had Vance come in. The second paragraph, it says that you apparently had a scheduling conflict here. You were somewhere else in the state. 

I was.

That's a coincidence when JD Vance came in. What were you doing? 

I had personal appointments that day that I didn't want to try to move around because they were hard to get. But I talked to JD. I talked with him regularly, and I thought his comments were great. He talked about how I'm at times a challenge for the administration.

He was on message, wasn't he? 

He recognizes that my job is to represent the people of Maine. For example, yesterday I spent a half hour talking to the special trade representative, Jamieson Greer, because of the Canadian tariffs, which are terrible for families in Maine, for our lobster men and women, for our small businesses, for our manufacturers, for our farmers. There's just nothing good you can say about them.

So why is the president doing that? Given that your seat is probably the most vulnerable Senate seat Republicans have in the country? 

I wish he wouldn't, and I don't understand the dynamics, but I was able to point out to the ambassador all the problems that they create for families in Maine. For example, our blueberries, our lobster, our lumber, our potatoes, all produced here, largely processed in Canada. If they're going to be tariffed in both directions now, that makes it unaffordable.

And just some straight talk: It'd probably be hard for you to survive politically this fall if those tariffs aren't at least altered, right? Is that fair to say? 

No, I don't think —

It makes your job harder?

It makes the job harder; I'd agree with that. But I don't think there's any one issue. The people of Maine know me well. They have voted for me for many years. They know I've worked very hard for them, and that regardless of who the president is, I'm going to agree with them on some issues and not on others.

I want to come back to Canada in a minute, but this has been such a wild campaign, and folks who aren't from Maine who are watching this — which is the majority of our viewers and our listeners — have been paying attention to this race because it really is a Senate campaign like no other. You had a Democrat in Graham Platner, who caught fire last year, became a sort of national sensation on the left, and obviously was forced out of the race after reporting by my colleagues. Tell me how the race changed, and do you think that your campaign and your reelection got harder the day that Platner dropped out? 

Not really. I will say that I think I have the craziest race in the country. When we first started out, I thought the governor would likely be my opponent.

Janet Mills, who you've known for decades. 

I've known her forever. She's a two-term governor. She's term-limited, and I just assumed that she would be the opponent after Chuck Schumer recruited her. Then Graham Platner is recruited by the same people who recruited Mamdani in New York. It's part of the Democratic Socialists of America group. And he is exciting to some people, and having big rallies with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, despite the fact that he's had a Nazi tattoo for 18 years and is not truthful about that. And he's made fun of a soldier who's been shot four times and had 28 surgeries. And believe me, that soldier came to me and said, "I want to come to Maine for you." And he has all of these posts where he's been so disrespectful to women and saying that women who are raped shouldn't drink too much. I mean, it's just phenomenal.

It was a thick oppo file. There's no doubt about it, but that kind of gets to my point, which is: Wouldn't he have been an easier candidate for you to beat, given that paper trail, than running against a Democrat from the county where you hail from, in northern Maine, in Troy Jackson? It just seems like Platner would have been easier for you to beat, and it got harder with Jackson. 

Well, they have different vulnerabilities; they really do. Under Troy Jackson's leadership in Augusta, electric rates have skyrocketed. Maine’s are the fourth highest in the country, and he voted against a bill recommended by the independent public advocate that would have helped to lower rates. So that's a huge vulnerability. Anyone who has a record has vulnerabilities that a person without a record, like Graham Platner, does not have.

But you've been in a lot of campaigns. You worked as a staffer on the Hill. If you were offered the chance to run against somebody who had a Nazi tattoo and a paper trail of sexual assault accusations versus a conventional politician who voted to increase utility rates… 

I would suggest that they have different strengths and different weaknesses, and that Troy has changed his position on a whole lot of issues. He started out as a very conservative Republican, now he's essentially a democratic socialist.

Should the circumstances of his personal life and the mother of his children be relevant to this campaign? Is that fair game, do you think? 

I'm not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don't know whether people know that or not.

I think you just mentioned it. 

Well, in Aroostook County, you know it.

Where you're from, too, right? 

We're both from the county.

Right, because there's an effort among a lot of folks in D.C. Republicans to bring that up over and over again, right? But to you, that's not salient, necessarily? 

It's up to people to decide. It's not something that I'm going to be emphasizing.

You famously have never voted for Donald Trump in three campaigns. Who did you vote for in 2016 and ’20 and ’24? Was there writing for somebody named Tom Daffron maybe?

I'll tell you who I voted for this last campaign because I made a public endorsement. It was Nikki Haley. I endorsed her publicly in the primary and wrote her name in.

Okay, in ’16 to ’20, who got your vote? Bill Cohen, maybe? 

Yeah, I think I'll stick with the most recent one: Nikki Haley.

When was the last time you talked to President Trump? Do you recall? 

It was either at the signing ceremony on the appropriations bills that we got passed, 11 out of 12, at the White House, or it was when he called me on the phone very unhappy about my vote on the War Powers Act.

So Trump isn't on your speed dial necessarily then. You're not talking to him day to day. 

I talk more often with Cabinet members. Chris Wright, the Energy secretary, was just up here.

You can get stuff done that way. 

Yes, absolutely.

Would it be helpful if he were to come campaign here for you? 

If President Trump were to?

Yeah.

There are people who think he is wonderful, and there are people who think he is terrible. So I don't know how that breaks down.

But do you want him to be here with you in the fall? 

I've always campaigned on my own. I've never brought in an awful lot of people to campaign for me. That's never been my style. Since I am very independent in the way I vote, George and Laura Bush have supported me, which I was very happy with.

They've had events for you down at Walker’s Point and Kennebunkport, haven't they? 

George Herbert Walker Bush had one at Walker’s Point. Yes, that was lovely.

So you don't want, necessarily, President Trump to come here? 

Well, I don't think he would want to come, to tell the truth.

But he's been pretty friendly, though. I mean, gentle.

He's been fine. He's fine.

Somebody got to him, I think. 

I've run my own races. I always have.

You come from the old school. Your father was a mayor, longtime legislator. You worked — I mentioned Bill Cohen a minute ago — you worked for Sen. Cohen on the Hill for years. You kind of know what traditional political leadership is; he's such a break from that tradition. Has it been hard for you dealing with somebody who acts the way he does? 

It is hard for me that he often does not consult at all with Congress before taking positions. For example, Canadian tariffs. I think it would have been great if he took those of us who represent border states and said, "What does this mean to you?"

If his staff even did too, right?

Right.

It didn't happen. 

No.

But I mean, from a personal comportment standpoint, do you think he's a good man? 

The president and I have very different styles. And I believe in working with any president, and I've worked with five of them. I haven't agreed with any of them on every issue. And there are things that the president, actions that he's taken, that have affected him personally that I think are unwise and break the precedent that most presidents have fought.

Well, you voted to convict him of impeachment. 

Right. On the second one.

After Jan. 6, right?

Yes.

Which would suggest that you didn't think he was fit for office then. Do you think he's fit for office now? 

Well, as I said to you, my candidate was Nikki Haley, and I would have liked to have seen her win, but she didn't. And I respect the fact that the people of this country made a different choice than I did.

This is something I actually want to drill down on because this is a really salient question, and even more so in the months since the tragic passing of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who I know was a close friend of yours. 

He was.

You guys shared the same views, certainly on national security issues, and traveled overseas quite a bit. Which is really the question of the hour, the question of the age for Republicans, which is: Which approach do you take?

On the one hand, there's the Liz Cheney approach, which is, you stand on principle, since the man is not fit for office, and if that means the end of my career, so be it. 

Then there’s the Lindsey Graham approach — the approach of a lot of folks that you currently serve with who privately have profound misgivings about the president — but who say, "If I stand on principle, I can't get stuff done. In fact, I'm not going to be here anymore if I stay on principle. I'm going to lose. I'm gonna be forced out, and I'll have to retire, resign or I'm going to lose my next reelection. So I'd rather find a way to navigate the Trump era so I can keep my job and also keep working on behalf of issues that I care about." Isn't that really the choice? And where do you find yourself between those two poles? 

I would say that I don't fit either of those models. With the case of Liz Cheney, what influence does she have today? Really none. And you can respect the work that she did on the Jan. 6 commission. And as you pointed out, after listening to the evidence and being there on Jan. 6 myself, I felt that the president had, many months before, started to build up an insurrection, essentially, that justified, that met the high standard in the Constitution for his removal. Believe me, the president brings up that vote almost every single time that I see him. So he has not forgotten.

It's personal for him. 

It is very personal, and I understand that. How could it not be? But Liz Cheney, it's not just that she lost her seat; it's that she has no impact, in my view.

But you're not Lindsey Graham either.

Lindsey was very close to the president. It was almost a father-son relationship, in my opinion. He called him up all the time. He gave him advice. He was constantly over at the White House. That's not my style either.

Is there room for a middle ground, I guess, is the question?

I think there is, and that's the only way that I can do my job.

When we were here six years ago, over in Bangor, when I was covering your last reelection, against an opponent who I think may still have like a million dollars in the bank, Sara Gideon, even though she lost six years ago — I asked you if you had ever considered going independent, and you said that you had thought about it briefly but that you were a traditional New Englander, a Republican. You said, "It crossed my mind." Has it crossed your mind again in the six years since? 

Not really.

It hasn't? Because wouldn't it be even more appealing now? 

The problem with being an independent is you can have a lot of power if the margins in the Senate are very close, the way it was when Joe Manchin was there, for example. But if they're not, you're really giving away the opportunity to be a committee chair. And when I became chair of the Appropriations Committee, I was the first Maine senator in 92 years to hold that position. So I've had this once-in-a-century opportunity to really make a difference for my state. If I were an independent, there's no way I would be chair of Appropriations.

So that's the price, is that party loyalty does demand something, but it also returns something. It gives you that gavel. 

Right. You're not going to be able to have the leadership positions.

Let me ask you about the Canadian issue, because it's so personal here. I was in Bangor this morning, and there was a sign there on the coffee shop that said, ‘Canadians welcome.’ And it said it in both languages — it said in French and English. Tourism here, trade, it's central to the U.S.-Canadian relationship in this state. So what do you say to Canadians who don't want to come to their camps here anymore? They don't wanna come shopping here. They don't wanna buy the lobsters here, frankly. What do you tell them? 

First of all, this is very personal for me. My younger brother, Sam, is married to a French-Canadian. I have four nieces who are dual citizens. I grew up literally 20 minutes from the Canadian border. I just can't stress enough how intertwined Maine and Canada are, particularly in the border areas. Every year, I go to the sled dog races in Fort Kent that are called the Can-Am, because we have teams from Canada and from all over the United States. And you hear on the streets in northern Maine a patois that is a mixture of English and French — very common. So we're so close; they're family.

What would you tell President Trump about this issue with the Canadians? What would you tell him to do? 

I would remind him that Canada is our friend, our closest ally, and our biggest trading partner. This is not China that we're talking about. This is an adversarial country, and that our economies are so linked that if you try to hurt one, you end up hurting me and other border states.

I had a very shrewd student of Maine politics tell me he was skeptical that you could ever lose because of the record you have here and the connection with voters, but that the environment's gotten so forbidding that it has gotten more difficult: Strike one was the overturning of Roe v. Wade. You support abortion rights, but obviously you confirmed Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who voted with the majority on that issue. Strike two was the tragedy with ICE down in Biddeford, in southern Maine, and this Canadian challenge could be strike three, in large part because this is not something that necessarily energizes liberals or folks on the left in southern Maine near Portland, which is obviously very different from the rest of Maine.

But this Canadian issue is something that's so personal for lobstermen out here. I was just talking to them when we got here, and they're complaining about the price of gas as is, and then they say we have this tariff issue now with the Canadians. Is that just one rock too many in your load, do you think? 

I've always had tough races. Think how outspent I was when-

’20.

It was huge in 2020. And when Sara Gideon, the speaker, was running, all the polls were showing that she was ahead. I ended up winning by 9 points in a state carried by Joe Biden by 9 points. Only place in the country that that happened in a Senate race — 18-point spread.

You know what they don't tell you when they make those three points is, first of all, I am the only Republican senator to have voted for three Democratic Supreme Court nominees: Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. And they all voted to sustain Roe v. Wade. So you can't predict, with certainty, how Supreme Court justices are going to vote.

Did you feel betrayed by Kavanaugh's vote on Roe?

I was very surprised by it because he told me he considered Roe to be settled law. If you consider Roe to be settled law, I don't think you overturn it. Having said that, I agree with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said at her hearing that you can't ask a Supreme Court nominee or any judicial nominee how they're going to vote, nor can they tell you. But the other thing I would point out is just last year, Planned Parenthood put out this glowing press release talking about my pro-choice record over the years. So I think what has happened is they really have just linked up with the Democratic Party. I've always been pro-choice. They're supporting a guy who was strongly anti-choice until 2013, when he ran in the Democratic primary for Congress.

The issue of ICE and this tragedy in southern Maine, though, it sort of brings up the challenge you have with President Trump, because you have a good relationship with Markwayne Mullin, the DHS secretary. You get him on the phone almost immediately and you get policy change, as far as I can see it, pretty damn fast, in terms of ICE's policy toward motorists. But then President Trump watches the news or sees a headline and overturns it. So, I guess that raises the question of, you're using your relationships and your seniority only to have President Trump undo it. 

Well, that is what happened in that case, but I did make progress in response to this horrific shooting, what appears to be just an awful shooting. I made progress in expediting the delivery of body-worn cameras. I met with the acting director of ICE and asked him to prioritize Maine. He did that, and by mid-August, all of the ICE agents involved in enforcement have body-worn cameras now and have been trained in their use. That is progress, and it also would not have happened without my position on appropriations, because I'm the one who put into the bill the $20 million to purchase body-worn cameras.

Can your party hold the Senate without you winning your seat? 

I think it's more difficult, but yes. These races, they're ones that are on the bubble one day and not the next. I think that it's very hard to predict.

My former colleague, somebody that you know, Carl Hulse at The New York Times, wrote a story about how reminiscent of 2006 this is. Which was probably the hardest cycle for your party, at least in modern times. Does it remind you of 2006 or something different? 

I think every election is different, I really do.

Yeah. 

I mean, we didn't have President Trump in 2006.

He just transforms everything, doesn't he? 

He does.

You're the last senator, I think, the last Senator in either party of 100 who has won a state that the other party carried the last three times in a presidential election, right? 

Very good, you've done your reads.

Is that accurate?

That is accurate.

Okay. If that doesn't continue, is that sort of the end of an era? I mean, it does feel like this race has got significance in terms of the control of the Senate, but also significance in terms of the nature of our politics too. And can localism still carry the day? Isn't that the question that we're dealing with here? 

The question is whether voters are still going to look at the record, the experience, the integrity, the whole approach of members of Congress — or have we come to a stage where parties are so polarized that the middle has shrunk to very little? What we've seen on the far left and the far right are these groups that have sprung up, and they demand absolute fidelity to all of their views 100 percent of the time and woe to anyone who does not follow them. And we've also seen interest groups that used to be bipartisan now affiliating with one party or the other, regardless of your record.

Two final things for you. The first is: Margaret Chase Smith, I know, is a personal heroine of yours. Of course, she was the main Republican senator here for years, who made her name nationally by condemning Joe McCarthy. If you did the Declaration of Conscience now, it'd be a Declaration of Retirement because you probably couldn't survive a primary the next time, and Trump wouldn't be so quiet. 

But I want to ask you about her history because you know what happened. You were around. She ran a final time, and she lost. And it wasn't necessarily because of her record. It was because she got hurt by national issues, the Vietnam War. Did you think about that and deciding to run — the symmetry of her running one last time and losing, not because of record but because of national issues, and that risk for you? Was that on your mind? 

Not really. What always amazes me is when people who never voted or would have voted for Margaret Chase Smith say, ‘Why don't you be more like Margaret Chase Smith?’ Because they never would have voted for her. She was very conservative. And she did some wonderful-

You hear that, it kind of ticks you off, doesn't it? 

Well, I just find it typical of people who don't know their history. And Bill Hathaway beat her pretty easily.

’72.

Even though she was an extraordinary senator, from my perspective. And one thing that she doesn't get enough credit for is writing the law that made women full-fledged members of the military. And so everyone remembers her taking on Joseph McCarthy, but I think another huge accomplishment was opening the doors of the army to women.

I just raised that because you can control a lot, but you can't control everything. You can't control the national environment. And you can't control President Trump, right? And you're at the mercy of both those things, aren't you here? 

I believe that the people of Maine still take an independent approach and look at the individual. They know me. I know them. And I'm all over the state, all of the time, not just in election year.

But it does kind of bother you that like — "I got all this money for all these towns, I know the state like the back of my hand." You've probably met a quarter of the state's voters at some point over the course of your life. But the challenge is that politics has gotten national, and you can maybe pull this off, but it's harder because of factors you can't control. That's what I'm saying, and that's the similarity with Smith. 

It is, I would agree with that. But I've always had hard races.

Tom Allen. 

That's just who I was going to mention! Tom Allen: Rhodes Scholar, attorney, sixth-term congressman, old Maine family — in fact, our parents were friends.

In 2008! Wasn't a great year for Republicans, as I recall. 

Exactly, and if you look at that history…

You're going to defy gravity again. 

I hope to.

Last question. I was talking to a lobsterman down there earlier, and I asked him about you. Warm words — he said, "She's been great for the lobster industry." In fact, your campaign is probably gonna try to grab our video here afterwards and smuggle it out, because it was like a testimonial. It was really positive about your leadership on the lobster issue. But he said, generally speaking, lobster prices are down, gas is up: "Lobster down, gas up." And I thought that's a pretty tough combination for Maine — lobster down, gas up. That's the hand you've been dealt this time around. 

Yeah, it is. Which is why having tariffs on top of that is terrible.