A Republican super PAC sent at least $20,000 to Portland, Oregon, in support of Susan Collins, even though the money was meant to help the Maine senator in her own race. The commercial was placed in the wrong Portland, then corrected after the mistake came to light.
Sarah Chamberlain said on Monday that she was “absolutely furious” about the error and blamed Cross Screen Media for what she called a “ridiculous” mistake. She said the ad is now running in Portland, Maine, after the placement was fixed.
That matters because Portland, Oregon, is not part of Collins’s election. Viewers there could not vote in Maine’s race, which turns the misplaced buy into a blunt waste of political money even before the campaign’s final stretch begins.
The commercial itself was aimed at Troy Jackson, Collins’s Democratic opponent, and called him “taxin’ Troy Jackson.” Chamberlain insisted the mistake had nothing to do with her side and said she would never have run an ad in Portland, Oregon, for Collins “for Christ’s sake.”
Her anger also points to a larger problem inside the buy. Defending Main Street Super PAC Inc was responsible for the ad, but the error sent it to the wrong city anyway, raising the basic question of how a placement meant for Maine landed in Oregon in the first place. Chamberlain has not explained that part, only that the buyers made the mistake and that the ad has been moved.
The timing makes the slip harder to ignore. Multiple polls showed Collins slightly behind Jackson in the upcoming November election, so every dollar was supposed to count. Instead, at least some of it was directed at an audience with no say in the result, and the ad’s value depended on reaching voters who could actually cast ballots in Maine.
For now, the fix is simple: the spot is down in Portland, Oregon, and running in Portland, Maine. What remains unresolved is whether the error was a one-off buy-room blunder or a sign of a deeper problem in how the ad was placed at all.
