Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson faced each other on Tuesday in their first debate, giving voters their first direct look at the two candidates on the same stage. The encounter landed at a moment when the race has already been reshaped by Graham Platner’s withdrawal and by a campaign in which Collins has held the seat since 1996.
That made the Maine Senate Debate an important marker in a contest Democrats have wanted for years. Most polls show Jackson ahead of Collins, but Collins has been outspending him on the airwaves, so the debate offered one of the few chances for both sides to reach the same audience without a commercial break in between.
The exchange moved quickly to the questions likely to define the campaign. The debate was expected to focus on the cost of living, the Iran War, President Donald Trump and Collins’ recent spate of negative national press, and Collins used the stage to defend her approach to health care. She said she does not support Medicare for All because it is too expensive and would force people off private plans, and she cited an unnamed study that she said showed England’s publicly funded health system has caused thousands of preventable deaths.
Jackson hit back by saying Collins has had publicly funded healthcare all her life, a line she then disputed, and argued that the private insurance market often leaves people delaying care because it costs too much. He also pressed Collins on her vote for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, asking what it would take for her to admit she was wrong. Collins replied that she has always been pro-choice and said Jackson has not always been pro-choice, adding, “I clearly don’t agree with how Brett Kavanaugh voted on Roe v. Wade,”
The debate also exposed a familiar fault line between the two candidates: not just policy, but legitimacy. Collins asked Jackson why he had struggled at times to get bills passed in Augusta, while Jackson answered that she misunderstands the state legislative process. It was the kind of exchange that can only happen when candidates stop talking about each other and start talking to each other, and it gave voters a sharper sense of how each would argue under pressure.
For Collins, the first debate offered a chance to reset a race that has been battered by outside headlines and by a rival who arrived on the ballot only after Graham Platner withdrew from the campaign after a woman credibly accused him of sexual assault. For Jackson, who was nominated to replace Platner at a convention later that month, it was the first chance to translate early polling strength into a face-to-face case against a senator who has built a long career on surviving difficult campaigns. What comes next is less about whether either candidate has an opening line and more about whether Jackson can turn his polling edge into momentum while Collins uses money and familiarity to close the gap.
