ME-SEN: In Maine, a Race About the Issues Has Become a Referendum on Susan Collins
Now Ms. Gideon’s admirers are touting her friendliness, desire for compromise and bipartisan credentials as she seeks to do the once unthinkable: unseat the four-term Senator Susan Collins, one of the last surviving moderate Republicans, and the only Republican from New England, in the U.S. Senate. Not Trumpian enough for many Republicans, too Republican for most Democrats, the once-popular Ms. Collins is unexpectedly vulnerable in this strangest of election years.
Her challenger is a smooth campaigner, fluent and assured about issues like Medicaid expansion, the environment and health care, and skilled in talking about how they affect Mainers. But the country’s partisan divisions are infecting the state, and the local contest is part of a much wider national picture. The race will turn much less on Ms. Gideon’s record, or even her political positions, than on what Maine voters think about Senator Collins. Has she sold her soul to President Trump’s Republican Party?
And so Ms. Gideon is attempting to present herself not just as an effective state politician who is ready for the national stage, but also as the obvious choice for voters alarmed at the president — and, by extension, at Ms. Collins.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/27/us/politics/sara-gideon-susan-collins-maine-senate.html
