FREEPORT, Maine — Bob Masciarelli has split his ticket to back Republicans before.
The 70-year-old Democrat from Yarmouth is the kind of voter U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has counted on to outrun her party in Maine’s liberal-leaning Portland suburbs. But he isn’t sure she can do it now against Troy Jackson, the former Maine Senate president from Allagash he sees as a working-class alternative to scandal-plagued former nominee Graham Platner.
“He’s a union guy, he’s the candidate [Democrats] need,” he said near the Freeport Farmers Market on Friday. “We need to do something to change direction.”
Freeport sits on the edge of the suburbs in which Collins has built her career by outrunning the top of her own ticket. It is also the hometown of 2020 nominee Sara Gideon, whose lopsided loss is the cautionary tale Jackson’s campaign is trying not to repeat. His path is to put Democrats back in their party’s column, but that has been elusive against the five-term senator.
Jackson and Maine Democrats have tied Collins to President Donald Trump and his agenda, from the Iran war to high prices squeezing consumers. Polls show a diminishing group of Democrats in her coalition in a polarized era. But the race is still close and 2020’s race echoes over the landscape after polls then greatly underestimated her swing support.
Collins easily beat Trump’s statewide vote share six years ago, running strongest in the suburbs and in Aroostook County, her and Jackson’s home turf. She’s the only Republican senator seeking reelection this year in a state Kamala Harris carried in 2024.
Many Maine voters “tend to vote with who they’re familiar with and comfortable with, and that’s an area she’s done well,” Lance Dutson, a Republican consultant and former Collins strategist, said. He argued Jackson’s record on the party’s left makes him a hard sell to moderates, even in a tough year for Republicans nationally.
“It is a more difficult environment to get swing voters across the aisle for both candidates,” he said. “But even among people turned off by the polarization, there’s a big chunk of voters for whom it’s hard to appeal to them by being bombastic. She has a natural advantage there.”
A poll released by CNN this week found a small Jackson lead with self-described moderates splitting evenly and independents narrowly favoring Jackson. Collins just drew 4% of Democrats, the same share of Republicans crossing for Jackson, and 46% of voters call their Senate vote a message opposing Trump, versus 17% who call it support for him.
Both signal less crossover room than Collins has had before. The Jackson campaign cites former Collins voters shifting sides and counts her as overwhelmingly voting with Trump. Democratic ads in the race are trying to drive this message home, with one that began running on Saturday featuring a woman who says she voted for Collins in the past.
“More and more former Collins voters are supporting Troy Jackson, who will always fight for them and put Maine first,” campaign spokesperson Cheyenne Gallivan said.
Collins’ campaign counters by citing her perch as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and record of securing federal funding, while tying Jackson to Platner and the left.
Spokesperson Blake Kernen said Jackson has “never held a moderate position,” saying his campaign is aligned with the “democratic socialist playbook” while pointing to early-career votes against abortion rights and same-sex marriage. Jackson now has conventional Democratic positions on those issues as well as gun control after past gun-rights endorsements.
“Centrist voters are going to have a clear choice this fall between Troy Jackson, a partisan who has spent more than 20 years as a partisan Augusta insider, and Susan Collins, a proven independent leader who works with people from both sides of the aisle to consistently get things done,” she said.
Both have been campaigning on friendly turf. Jackson has launched town halls and he has done several events in the past few weeks with his base in organized labor. Collins has toured the state on a campaign-branded bus packed with supporters carrying signs, collecting endorsements from business and sportsman groups.
In Hampden, a Bangor suburb where Collins outran Trump by 11 points in 2020, 37-year-old Josh VanSantvoord said he expects older Democrats and moderates to back her on name recognition alone, though he considers her moderate reputation more image than substance.
He pointed to her votes for two of Trump’s three Supreme Court justices, both of whom voted to overturn federal abortion rights, calling many of her breaks with Republicans “hall passes.” But he saw Jackson’s town halls as no match yet for heavy Republican advertising for Collins.
“I haven’t been annoyed by enough of his ads yet,” he said.