Overview
- The two campaigns debuted sharply different TV spots Thursday, with Susan Collins touting funding she helped secure to rebuild Eastport’s collapsed breakwater and Graham Platner casting the senator’s record as “performative politics” and declaring “Susan Collins’s charade is over.”
- Booking data shows nearly $138 million in TV and digital time reserved through November, and Collins enters the stretch with about $10 million cash on hand.
- Republican allies are already airing attack ads highlighting Platner’s old Reddit posts about women and a chest tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol; Platner has apologized for the comments and says he covered the tattoo after learning its meaning.
- Platner became the presumptive Democratic nominee after Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign on April 30, and Chuck Schumer and the Senate Democratic campaign arm say they will work with him in the general election.
- The showdown mirrors a broader 2026 pattern of outsider candidates challenging party establishments and of national money and messages overwhelming traditional local politics.