A Bangor woman who once left abortion rights messages written in sidewalk chalk outside U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ Bangor home now wants to challenge the Republican for her Senate seat.
Andrea LaFlamme filed to run in Maine’s U.S. Senate race back in June 2025, according to the Federal Elections Commission, which didn’t have fundraising data available for her Monday morning.
In an interview with the Portland Press Herald, LaFlamme, 37, for the first time publicly identified herself as the anonymous author of chalk messages left on the sidewalk outside Collins’ former West Broadway home in May 2022.
“Chalking on a sidewalk is not a big thing, but she made it a big thing with her response,” LaFlamme told the Press Herald. “And I think ironically by doing that she gave me the voice I need to take her seat.”
Back in May 2022, LaFlamme was inspired to write an abortion rights message in sidewalk chalk to Collins after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked to Politico. That decision was officially released a few weeks later.
“Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess,” the message read. That was a reference to the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified the right to abortion into law and ban restrictions on abortion access. Collins voted against advancing that bill because it didn’t provide religious exemptions for doctors who oppose abortion.
Collins reported the messages to the Bangor Police Department, which then had Bangor Public Works erase them. But the messages reappeared the next day.
That summer Collins and her husband, Tom Daffron, sold their West Broadway home and moved into a ranch-style home near the cityline with Glenburn.
LaFlamme told the Press Herald that she is preparing to launch a website and to begin fundraising.
The Democrat is an adjunct professor at Eastern Maine Community College in Bangor and the University of Maine in Orono, lecturing on public health and nutrition, according to the newspaper.
LaFlamme joins an already competitive Democratic primary featuring Gov. Janet Mills and Sullivan oyster farmer Graham Platner.
The U.S. Senate race is shaping up to be an expensive one, with the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, pledging last month to spend at least $42 million to help Collins defend her seat. If Collins is successful in winning a sixth term, she would be Maine’s longest-serving U.S. senator.
Collins has handily beaten back challengers, including in 2020 when she defied polls and expectations to secure a fifth term in the Senate. But Collins, once ranked the country’s most bipartisan senator, has seen her popularity slump since Trump’s first term in the White House.