By SCN News
GORHAM — Republican Senator Susan Collins is asking Maine voters for a sixth term in a state where abortion remains broadly protected, but Democrats are trying to make the election about something larger than access inside Maine: whether voters should hold Collins accountable for helping confirm a Supreme Court justice who later joined the majority that overturned Roe v. Wade.
The strategy places Collins’ 2018 vote for Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the centre of one of the most consequential Senate races of the midterms, even as polling suggests abortion is competing with the economy, healthcare and affordability for voters’ attention. It is Collins’ first election since the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision ended the federal constitutional right to abortion, transforming what Democrats warned might happen during her previous campaign into an established part of her Senate record.
For Collins, the political challenge is unusually complicated because her personal position on abortion differs from that of much of the Republican Party. She has long described herself as supportive of abortion rights, was once among the relatively small number of Republicans endorsed by Planned Parenthood and later co-sponsored legislation intended to establish federal protections for abortion. She also opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe.
Yet Collins continues to stand by the judicial vote Democrats argue helped make that decision possible. Asked again this year whether she regretted supporting Kavanaugh, Collins said she did not, even while maintaining that she disagreed with his subsequent abortion ruling. That distinction — opposition to the outcome but continued defence of the confirmation — has given Democrats a way to challenge the moderate political identity that has helped Collins survive repeated national efforts to defeat her.
Collins supported Kavanaugh after an intense confirmation battle in 2018, saying she believed he regarded Roe as established precedent. Kavanaugh was confirmed by the Senate 50-48 and four years later joined the conservative majority in Dobbs, which overturned Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey and returned broad authority over abortion regulation to the states.
The legal history is more nuanced than simply attributing Dobbs to a single confirmation. Five justices joined the portion of the ruling overturning Roe and Casey, while Chief Justice John Roberts supported upholding Mississippi’s 15-week abortion restriction but argued against going as far as eliminating Roe altogether. The conservative transformation of the court involved several appointments, but Collins’ Kavanaugh vote remains politically distinctive because of the assurances about precedent she discussed before supporting him.
Democrats are therefore building their case less around the arithmetic of one Supreme Court vote and more around Collins’ judgment. Their argument is that Maine voters were asked to trust her assessment that Kavanaugh would respect established abortion precedent, only to see him participate in the decision eliminating it four years later.
Democratic nominee Troy Jackson is trying to turn that history into a direct challenge to Collins’ carefully cultivated independence from the national Republican Party. A former Maine state Senate president and logger, Jackson has secured support from major abortion-rights organisations and is presenting the Kavanaugh confirmation as evidence that consequential Collins votes in Washington have sometimes produced outcomes at odds with the moderate image she presents at home.
The effort has attracted substantial outside money. Democratic-aligned groups have committed tens of millions of dollars to the Maine contest, with abortion rights forming a prominent part of advertising against Collins. Affordable Maine has spent nearly $10 million on advertisements highlighting Collins’ judicial record, while Win Senate has spent roughly $32 million in the race. Planned Parenthood Votes and other reproductive-rights organisations have separately invested in messages aimed particularly at women and former Collins supporters.
The target audience is important. Democrats already have strong support among voters firmly opposed to Collins, so abortion advertising is designed partly to reach independents and moderate Democrats who have supported her in previous elections. Collins has repeatedly survived in a state that votes Democratic for president because enough Mainers have been willing to separate their view of her from their view of the national Republican Party.
That crossover coalition has been central to Collins’ political durability. She has served in the Senate since 1997 and has won reelection despite Maine consistently rejecting Republican presidential nominees since 1988. In 2020, Democrats spent heavily to defeat her, yet Collins secured another term while Joe Biden comfortably carried the state.
Her supporters point to a record that is more complicated than the Kavanaugh confirmation alone. Collins voted to confirm Democratic-appointed Supreme Court justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, both of whom opposed overturning Roe, and she later supported Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation. She has also broken with Republican leaders on several high-profile votes during her Senate career, reinforcing the independent image on which much of her electoral coalition rests.
The 2026 campaign is different because voters no longer have to evaluate warnings about what a more conservative Supreme Court might eventually do. Roe has already been overturned, abortion law has fractured across state lines and Kavanaugh’s position in the decision is known. Democrats are consequently asking Mainers to reassess Collins’ judicial record with the benefit of an outcome that was still hypothetical when she last sought reelection.
But Maine itself creates a significant obstacle to that strategy.
Unlike Republican-controlled states that imposed sweeping abortion restrictions after Dobbs, Maine moved in the opposite direction. Its Democratic-controlled legislature and Gov. Janet Mills strengthened state protections, including legislation allowing abortion after viability when a physician considers it medically necessary and measures protecting providers and patients from certain legal actions originating in states with more restrictive laws.
As a result, abortion access in Maine was not eliminated when Roe fell. Collins herself has pointed to that distinction, arguing that the Supreme Court decision returned abortion policy to states and that Maine subsequently expanded its protections. For voters concerned primarily with whether abortion remains available where they live, the practical consequences of Dobbs therefore look considerably different in Maine than in states where clinics closed or broad bans took effect.
Nationally, however, the consequences have been substantial. By late 2025, more than 20 states had enacted near-total abortion bans or restrictions at 22 weeks or earlier, creating a patchwork in which access depends heavily on geography. Democrats want Maine voters to judge Collins partly on that national transformation rather than solely on whether their own state government protected access.
That is the deeper experiment taking place in the race. Abortion-rights groups are testing whether voters in a state where reproductive rights remain protected will punish a senator for helping shape a Supreme Court that enabled other states to restrict them.
Polling indicates that the answer is not straightforward. Maine voters remain broadly dissatisfied with the overturning of Roe, but abortion does not currently appear to be their dominant concern. In one September survey asking likely voters to identify in their own words the most important issue influencing their congressional vote, almost none volunteered abortion as their first answer.
Economic concerns have instead occupied much of the campaign. Household costs, healthcare and broader dissatisfaction with conditions in Washington compete for attention, reflecting a national midterm environment in which affordability has increasingly overshadowed many of the social issues that dominated campaigning immediately after Dobbs.
That could limit Democrats’ ability to turn Collins’ Kavanaugh vote into the defining issue of the race. A voter may strongly support abortion rights and dislike Dobbs while still casting a Senate ballot primarily on the economy, healthcare, federal spending or another concern. Collins’ challenge is therefore not necessarily to persuade voters that they should approve of Dobbs, but to convince enough of them that disagreement with the ruling should not erase the rest of her Senate record.
Democrats are pursuing a different calculation. They do not necessarily need abortion to become the number-one issue statewide if it changes how moderate voters evaluate Collins personally. For a politician whose electoral strength rests heavily on trust, independence and judgment, the Kavanaugh vote can function as an argument about credibility rather than simply reproductive policy.
That is why campaign advertising frequently returns to Collins’ statements surrounding the 2018 confirmation. The political question being posed is not merely whether voters support abortion rights; polling has long indicated that most Maine voters do. It is whether Collins made a consequential error in judging Kavanaugh and whether her refusal to regret the confirmation should affect how voters assess her now.
Jackson faces his own complications on that argument. He opposed abortion rights earlier in his political career before changing his position and now supports abortion access. Republicans can use that history to argue that Democrats are applying a standard of ideological consistency to Collins that their own nominee cannot meet.
Jackson says his views evolved and points to his later work in Maine politics supporting reproductive protections. His campaign has also established a statewide coalition of women and received endorsements from Planned Parenthood and Reproductive Freedom for All, making abortion rights a clear component of his challenge even if economic issues remain more prominent among voters.
He also entered the Senate contest under unusual circumstances after Graham Platner withdrew from the race during the summer amid controversy over his past relationships with women and a sexual assault allegation that Platner denied. Jackson consequently had less time than a conventional nominee to consolidate Democratic voters, establish a statewide campaign and persuade independents that Collins should be replaced.
Those circumstances help explain why abortion-rights organisations are investing so heavily. Collins represents something larger for the movement than a single Senate seat. Activists spent years warning that Republican Supreme Court appointments could eventually eliminate Roe, and Collins became one of the most visible Republican senators who supported abortion rights while also voting for a justice who ultimately helped overturn it.
If Collins can again assemble her traditional coalition despite Dobbs, it would demonstrate the limits of using Supreme Court accountability as an electoral argument when abortion access remains protected locally and voters are focused on economic concerns. If significant numbers of her previous supporters defect because of Kavanaugh, it would show that a judicial confirmation can remain politically consequential years after the Senate vote itself.
The stakes also extend beyond retrospective accountability. Senators confirm federal judges, meaning the winner of Maine’s election will help determine the balance of power in a chamber responsible for considering future Supreme Court nominees. That gives the race a forward-looking judicial dimension even though much of the campaign argument centres on a confirmation that occurred eight years ago.
Collins’ position within the Republican Party makes that question particularly important. She is one of the relatively few Republican senators who has repeatedly supported abortion rights while voting for conservative judicial nominees. Her career has depended on persuading Maine voters that party affiliation does not fully determine how she exercises power in Washington.
Dobbs gave Democrats their strongest evidence for challenging that distinction.
Yet Maine also demonstrates why national political narratives do not translate automatically into individual elections. The state responded to Roe’s demise by expanding abortion protections, Collins retains a long record of crossover support and voters are confronting economic issues they may regard as more immediate than a Supreme Court decision from four years ago.
The November contest therefore is not simply a referendum on abortion and cannot be reduced to whether Maine voters support or oppose Roe. It is a test of political accountability: how much responsibility voters assign to a senator for the eventual decisions of a Supreme Court justice she helped confirm, particularly when she opposed the ruling that justice later joined.
For Collins, the argument is that one confirmation should be evaluated alongside nearly three decades of Senate votes, bipartisan relationships and her own support for abortion rights. For Jackson and abortion-rights groups, the response is that Supreme Court confirmations are among the most durable decisions senators make precisely because their consequences can outlast individual elections.
That leaves Collins facing a question she did not confront when Maine last voted on her future in 2020. Back then, Democrats warned that the constitutional right to abortion could disappear. Six years later, Roe is gone, Kavanaugh helped overturn it, and Collins continues to say she does not regret voting to put him on the court.
Maine protected abortion access after that decision, insulating many voters from its most immediate consequences. Whether they nevertheless hold Collins politically responsible for helping create the court that made the national change possible may now determine how much of her long-standing moderate coalition remains intact as she seeks another six years in Washington.