By the time James Cox was first permitted to enter the polling station, Susan Collins had been his senator for a decade.
Cox, now 38, voted for the veteran Republican several times – swayed by her pledge to fight for the rights of her Maine constituents.
He is thinking of doing so again.
'Susan Collins is more of a familiar face to me,' he told the Daily Mail, standing in his flannel jacket in the windswept street of Bangor – tiny Maine's third-largest city, with a mere 32,000 residents.
But he's heard word of a 'new' kid on the block.
'It was brought to my attention that Troy Jackson's actually been involved in the Senate and politics for over 20 years,' he said.
Does he know enough about him to trust him with his vote? Probably not.
Cox's comments, with a week to go until the midterms, will sink like a stone in the Jackson camp.
GOP incumbent Senator Susan Collins is running for a sixth consecutive term against Democrat Troy Jackson, a former logger and longtime local Maine lawmaker
James Cox, 38, a Bangor resident, told the Daily Mail he supports Collins because she's a familiar face and he does not know much about Jackson, although his top concern was ending the US war in Iran
The Daily Mail interviewed half a dozen Bangor residents the week before Election Day. Voters in the area consistently gravitated towards Collins over Jackson, sighting their unfamiliarity with the Democrat whose run a truncated campaign after his predecessor dropped out
Jackson, the 58-year-old Democrat logger-turned-politician, is hoping to unseat 73-year-old Collins, the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history.
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Collins, campaigning for her sixth term, is hoping that the majority of Mainers feel, like Cox, that she is a safe, well-known bet.
Jackson's team, meanwhile, are wracked by concerns that his late entry to the race has hobbled him – especially because, in running against such a well-known politician, he needed all the time possible to get his name on everyone's lips.
'Jackson served six years as the head of the state Senate, but he's not terribly well known by a lot of Maine voters, especially in the southern part of the state,' said Ronald Schmidt, professor of political science at the University of Southern Maine. 'He needed every opportunity he could to introduce himself - before Senator Collins and the PACs supporting her began to do that introduction on their own.'
Jackson was not confirmed as the Democrat candidate until July 25, after the previous nominee, Graham Platner, was forced to pull out amid allegations of sexual misconduct.
Platner had launched his election bid in August 2025, meaning that Jackson effectively lost a year of campaign time.
'There was a lag in terms of organizing and in terms of finding the right tone,' said Schmidt. 'That being said, I think he still has a decent chance of winning, in part because of exhaustion with the Trump administration and the Republicans in Washington.
'But in terms of the strengths of his campaign, that slow start definitely did hurt.'
Graham Platner, 42, was the Democratic candidate for Maine's Senate race until July. He dropped out after being the subject of rape and sexual misconduct accusations. He has denied all wrongdoing
Platner faced intense scrutiny after reports revealed an active profile on the anonymous messaging app Kik and a scandal involving extramarital and sexually explicit texts. Platner's Kik profile picture, viewed by the Daily Mail, showed the Democratic candidate posing shirtless and in only a towel
After Platner dropped out, Democratic candidate Troy Jackson, 58, a former logger and president of the Maine state Senate launched his campaign in late July
For some Maine Democrats, it's all agonizingly familiar.
Like Kamala Harris's supporters in 2024, Jackson's fans feel he has not been given time to establish himself.
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And, with the crucial contest currently too close to call, Jackson needed all the help he could get.
Certainly, he has the Maine bona fides.
Born in the far north of the state to a 16-year-old teacher and her logger husband, Jackson's parents did not want their son to follow his father, grandfather and great-grandfather into logging.
But age 11, in 1981, he went with his father to support striking loggers, only to see them forced to return to work or be fired and replaced by Canadians. It had a profound impact on the youngster, who vividly recalled earlier this year the powerlessness his father Joe felt.
'He couldn't say anything,' said Jackson, speaking to a reporter before meeting with electricians at their union building in Lewiston. 'You lose your sense of pride, your sense of dignity.'
By the age of 19, Jackson was working full time as a logger – waking at 2am for 18-hour days in the woods, and leading protests for better working conditions. When the protests failed, he entered politics – initially as a Republican, knowing that the Bush family had ties to the state, before switching in 2004 to run as a Democrat.
A statue of the legendary North American lumberjack Paul Bunyan stands proudly in Bangor. The area has deep ties to the logging industry
Jackson camapaigned alongside Senator Elizabeth Warren on Monday in Waterville, Maine. At the event he spoke out about growing corporate power undermining working class families and noted how he is against 'for-profit' higher education, two progressive platforms
In a state which prides itself as fiercely independent – one-third of voters refuse to declare themselves a member of either party – his switching sides has not concerned people.
And indeed, independence is something his Republican rival is desperate to play up.
Donald Trump's approval ratings are at record lows, and so Collins is now doing her utmost to distance herself from her party's leader. She voted to impeach him in January 2021, and voted against some of his Cabinet members in both terms – notably Pete Hegseth and Kash Patel. But she did vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
She supported Trump's policies 95 percent of the time in 2025, according to CQ Roll Call analysis, and voted to advance the Big Beautiful Bill in the Senate, but then rejected it in the final vote – a classic, performative Collins move, her critics say. Her campaign insists it shows her independent streak.
Is it working?
'That's a great question, and in many ways the answer to it might be the biggest driver of the outcome,' said Professor Mark Brewer, chair of the University of Maine's department of political science.
'Collins has done a pretty good job of making the case, as she always does, for the benefits she brings to the state.
'Jackson has made a relatively strong case that Collins has changed over time, that she's become less bipartisan and less moderate.
Along Maine's coast in Bar Harbor, many residents were more supportive of Jackson. Voters along the coastal regions interviewed by the Daily Mail expressed more interest in Democrats than Republicans
'On the question of whether she's Trump's lackey, as Jackson wants to claim, or whether, as Collins claims, she's an independent voice who sometimes votes with the president when it's good for Maine and against him when it isn't, I don't know who's been more credible. But the answer to that would go a long way towards telling us who wins.'
Collins agreed to an unusual four debates with Jackson, in the hope that she could press home her independence, and stress her track record of using her powerful Senate appropriations committee position to help her constituents.
But her October 6 debate against Jackson saw her hand him perhaps the most powerful campaign slogan of the season.
'I have been strongly voting against the tariffs with Canada, but I've also been working behind the scenes,' said Collins. 'Troy mocked it, but I was successful in getting concrete pulp and road salt removed from the tariff list and if you ask towns in Northern Maine and Eastern Maine, they get all of their road salt from Canada.'
Jackson retorted: 'We can't eat road salt.'
His supporters have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the line.
So does the ghost of Graham Platner haunt Jackson's campaign? Or is it simply a referendum on Collins's five terms, and Trump's two?
Mike Hurley has lived in central Maine's Waldo County, a stone's throw from Platner's Blue Hill hometown, for over 50 years.
A man fills his ballot during early midterm voting in the town hall in Bangor, Maine, on October 16, 2026
He told the Daily Mail that Platner's forced departure was 'painful' – but he was still supporting the Democrats.
'Susan Collins is on Team Trump,' he said, adding that he disagreed with the administration on 'a plethora of issues'.
Maine, sharing a 600-mile border with Canada, is hard hit by tariffs: only Alaska and Michigan share a longer landline with the northern neighbor.
Furthermore, it is a state strongly dependent on heating oil for homes – and the Iran war has sent costs rocketing. This time last year an average Mainer would spend $907 to fill their tank for the winter; today, the cost is $1,660.
'The tariffs and the war with Iran are huge issues for me,' said Hurley. 'And Trump turning on Ukraine is a terrible, terrible thing - and I don't hear Susan Collins saying anything about it. The country is going in the wrong direction, and I hope this turns it back.'
Mike Hurley has lived in central Maine's Waldo County, a stone's throw from Platner's Blue Hill hometown, for over 50 years. He is backing Jackson and admits Platner's dropping out was a 'painful' process
Steve, a 40-year-old chef who has lived in the picturesque Bar Harbor area for ten years, is also voting Jackson, but is infuriated by the missteps that led to Platner's ouster.
'The Democrats are always trying to do the right thing, but they keep shooting themselves in the foot,' said Steve, dressed for work in his black chef's 'whites'.
He said he was dismayed by the 'clown show' of the Trump administration and Republican party, adding: 'These guys shouldn't be hard to beat.'
Indeed, this race is widely seen as the toughest of Collins's 30-year political career, and gives the Democrats their biggest chance in a generation of at long last turning New England entirely blue.
Collins is the last Republican standing in the region: the other 11 are all Democrat, except for the independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine.
And yet Collins has, time and time again, proved herself to be remarkably resilient.
'I would never predict that Susan Collins is going to lose this race, because the Collins brand runs so deep in people's minds,' said Dr Brian Duff, an associate professor of political science at the University of New England in Maine.
'Collins has this brand in Maine that she's a moderate, that she's pragmatic, and that she works hard to deliver government contracts to Mainers and those sorts of benefits. She has been working to build that brand for a long, long time.
'But this president is the least popular any president has been going into a midterm in almost a century. It is really hard to run in that environment, even for someone like Susan Collins.'
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