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“There’s no doubt that our politics are far more polarized than they used to be. But Maine people are practical, and they want results,” said Senator Susan Collins, a moderate who is seen as the most vulnerable Republican.Credit...Stacey Cramp for The New York Times
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Michael Gold
Michael Gold, who covers Congress, followed Susan Collins’s campaign bus through Palmyra, Newport and Naples, Maine.
Hours before many of her Republican colleagues and those seeking to join their ranks convened in a hulking Dallas arena for a two-day political rally headlined by President Trump, Senator Susan Collins stood in a 10,000-square-foot recreation center in central Maine on Wednesday and examined the ceiling.
Instead of the balloons and klieg lights that adorned the rafters hundreds of miles to the south at Mr. Trump’s extravagant midterm convention, Ms. Collins looked up and saw fluorescent bulbs and water stains that prompted her to ask the town’s manager if the building had a leaky roof.
“We did,” the manager, Dylan Lajoie, told her. But, he said, because of a $935,000 grant Ms. Collins had secured in a federal spending bill for the town of Newport, it had been possible to renovate and “refresh” the facility.
This is how Ms. Collins, at 73 seeking her sixth term in the Senate, is working to defend her job in a state that Mr. Trump lost, at a time when Republicans face strong political headwinds because of his flagging approval ratings.
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To win re-election in November, Ms. Collins, a moderate who has been critical of the president and opposed some elements of his agenda, is deploying the same strategy that has kept her in the Senate for decades. She is keeping her distance from Mr. Trump and her party’s national brand and message, and instead highlighting local issues and how she has used her position in Washington, including as the chairwoman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, to deliver for her tiny state.
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