Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins — the last GOP senator left in all of New England — is trailing Democrat Troy Jackson in the polls, and the race is laying bare a fault line Republican voters know well: three decades of bipartisan compromise that mostly runs one direction.
Jackson, the former Maine Senate president, holds a slight lead over Collins, Fox News reported. For a senator who has survived by branding herself as a centrist dealmaker, the polling tells the story — Republican voters are tired of electing people who cave to the left and call it governance.
The race has turned personal. The New York Post reported that Ronnie Pelletier, a firefighter from Jackson's hometown of Allagash — population 234 — is starring in an attack ad against Jackson even though Jackson officiated his wedding during the pandemic. Pelletier claims Jackson steered a cell tower away from a town-owned schoolhouse lot and onto property belonging to Jackson's de facto in-laws.
"The gentleman from the cell phone tower company had told me that the best reception and coverage would be from the schoolhouse lot that the town owns," Pelletier says in the ad. Then Jackson showed up. "He was riding them around, showing them the sites." The tower ended up on family land. "Make of it what you will."
Cell tower leases can pay landowners $500 to $1,000 a month. Jackson's longtime partner, Lana Pelletier, is also his second cousin — they share great-grandparents, the Maine Wire reported. Her parents, Louis and Patricia, own the property where the tower was built.
Robert Parsloe, owner of Wireless Partners LLC, which installed the tower, strongly disputed any favoritism. "We found this area … we knew nothing about landowners at that point," he told the Post. "We found a willing landowner. God forbid!" Parsloe acknowledged the company looked at the schoolhouse lot but said carriers make their own long-term financial decisions. Jackson's allies also rejected Pelletier's characterization.
On policy, Republican State House Rep. Laurel Libby attacked Jackson's record in Augusta, telling Fox News Digital that during Jackson's time in the state Senate, "he is responsible for our electricity costs going up 70%" and "supported a budget that went up 50%."
A Vietnam veteran in Bangor identified as Don put it plainly: "All those Democrats south of Augusta, they just think everyone is made of money, and it's really hurting normal folks."
Collins campaigned this week with former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin while Jackson barnstormed with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Libby called the contrast "absolutely representative of what they both [would] bring to the Senate." Collins brings bipartisanship; Jackson brings the left. For a lot of Republican voters, the question is what, exactly, Collins's bipartisanship has ever gotten them.
