With Graham Platner now the presumptive Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Maine voters are faced with an unprecedented choice. 

Should they choose Platner, 41, an oyster farmer and raging populist, or Susan Collins, 73, a five-term incumbent and champion of the establishment? 

“I struggle to think of a match-up in which you’ve had two more different candidates in the whole country, but certainly in Maine,” said Robert Glover, a political scientist at the University of Maine.

Collins, the last congressional Republican left in New England, is so ingrained in Washington, she’s practically part of the furniture, he said. Platner has only held appointed positions on the planning board and as harbormaster.

Collins is almost always seen wearing neat suits and heeled shoes. Platner appears in hoodies and once took his shirt off in a TV interview. 

She’s measured, careful with her words, and deferential to the rules of the institutions she serves in.

“I don’t know if Susan Collins has ever had a live-mic moment in her history,” said Daniel Shea, professor of government at Colby College and co-author of The Rural Voter about growing political divides. “She doesn’t go off half-baked.”

Platner is known for brash social media posts and passionate speeches about tearing down a system that he says leaves the people of Maine behind.

“Collins is the perfect opponent, because she represents so many of the things he’s railing against,” Glover said.

“She would present these as strengths, bringing home support for the state, and he presents it as what’s wrong with the political system.” 

Shea calls it the perfect contrast in styles, and political watchers say the unusual nature of this race could bring new people into politics. It will certainly bring national money and attention to Maine.

They also say the result will reveal something about the character of the state. Maine will either continue to be a place where, as a point of pride, national trends are slow to gain traction, or voters will show they can no longer separate what’s happening in Washington from what’s happening at home.

Collins is part of a long tradition in Maine of electing pragmatic office-holders to the U.S. Senate. Platner’s ascension is a sign of the political times that Donald Trump helped usher in.

A LEGACY IN MAINE

For half a century or more, Maine voters have elected a certain type of centrist candidate to the U.S. Senate. Political scientists say Collins fits neatly into a line of succession from Margaret Chase Smith to Ed Muskie, George Mitchell, Bill Cohen and Olympia Snowe.

After college, Collins worked in Cohen’s office in Washington and that shaped her outlook on being a senator, said Lance Dutson, a Republican political consultant who has worked for Collins.

“I’m sure she learned, when she went from Aroostook County to Capitol Hill, that you can measure your aptitude for the job as U.S. senator by how many people you help,” Dutson said.

In Collins’ messaging and among constituents, that’s often measured in dollars, which are easier for her to get a hold of as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

On Friday, she spoke at a new law enforcement training facility in York County. On a stage flanked by a fire truck, ambulance and police cruiser, a pipe band played and Collins talked about the $3.4 million in federal funding she secured for the facility.

“I can’t tell you how satisfying it is for me,” she told the several dozen people in attendance, mostly first responders, “to work with county governments, local communities (and) nonprofit organizations.”

Local officials told her they couldn’t have built the facility without her.

“She’d much rather talk about getting money for diabetes research or for Bath Iron Works than she would talk about ideology,” said James Melcher, a political science professor at the University of Maine.

Shea, at Colby College, is also a select board member for the town of Mount Vernon, and said whenever a town needs a new fire station, they call Collins’ office.

Her staff said she’s brought home $1.5 billion in federal earmarks over the past five years.

Her steadiness in office shows up in other ways, too. In a campaign ad released Thursday, Collins started by touting the nearly 10,000 roll call votes she’s taken in office.

“To me, that’s the kid who has perfect attendance and straight A’s,” said Jessica Taylor, Senate analyst at the Cook Political Report in Washington. 

Platner wasn’t that student. He strategically skipped class as a kid to get kicked out of a Connecticut prep school after six months.

He’s been criticized for never having held elected office, which critics say makes him unlikely to deliver results in Washington.

But Platner and his supporters see his outsider status as a strength, not a weakness.

Troy Jackson, a former Maine Senate president who was among a group of labor leaders that helped recruit Platner into politics, said he’s not worried about Platner showing he knows how Washington works. 

“It’s not like you can’t figure it out, and he’s a smart guy,” Jackson said.

He’d rather Platner be out talking to people in Maine, which Platner’s done since he entered the Senate race in August. Jackson asserts that Collins hasn’t held a town hall in Maine for 25 years, though her campaign staff said she’s regularly in touch with constituents in Washington and in ways they find more productive than a big rally, like at Rotary Club meetings and small events. 

CHALLENGING THE SYSTEM

Collins and Platner approach governance from opposite poles, Shea said. Where Collins wants to move public policy incrementally within a system, “Platner wants to rip it down and start over.”

His pitch focuses on the corruption of capitalism and the unaffordability of things like healthcare and housing — many of the same issues that attracted Maine voters to Bernie Sanders and first brought President Donald Trump into office.

“That was about stripping down the system in any direction,” Shea said. “It’s fair to say Platner comes from that camp.”

Jackson, who worked for Sanders’ campaign in Maine, said the crowds that have come out to hear Platner are bigger than anything he saw for Sanders in 2016. Platner’s raw emotion, which is a departure from Collins’ style and is driven in part by his experience in the military, has gotten Mainers riled up.

“When he speaks and he gets it going, there’s a lot of nodding, boy, the heads are just moving up and down,” Shea said. “I think it’s powerful.”

“He’s angry about what’s happening to working class Mainers. And if you’re really angry, it makes sense to work for dramatic changes,” Shea said.

Platner says he wants to build a grassroots movement that can succeed even if he doesn’t make it to the Senate. On Friday, at an event where he accepted the endorsement of labor leaders, he spoke with intensity, punctuating each phrase. He said the political system is functioning as intended.

“It is a system that is built to extract time and labor and wealth out of working people, to put it into the bank accounts and pocketbooks of those who have enough already.”

Politically, Platner has benefited from the Trump era, said Dutson, the Republican strategist. “Trump melted the idea of the moral politician in a very major way,” he said, which has made it possible for Platner to thrive despite controversial things he said and did in the past.

“What’s really interesting about this race is it’s sort of a check on the extent to which Trump politics has transformed Maine politics,” Shea added.

Platner and Collins will be divided in how much they want to talk about Trump during the campaign. Collins has broken with the president at times, notably voting to convict him in his second impeachment. But she’s also supported his biggest policy priorities, casting key votes for his Supreme Court nominees and his One Big Beautiful Bill Act.  

She later voted against the spending bill, an example of how her critics say she has walked a tightrope to assert independence but still hold sway in Trump’s Washington. She expresses concern and votes against Trump largely when it’s assured his priorities will still advance, they say. Her balancing act has made her one of the country’s most unpopular senators, according to at least one poll.

Platner has no such hesitation. He’s itching to investigate Trump and “shut this White House down,” as he told MS NOW on Thursday.

Collins is a centrist in a Senate that has few of them left, and she’s the only incumbent Republican running in a state won by Kamala Harris in 2024. It’s unclear what kind of a senator Platner would be if he’s elected.

Shea said there’s not a lot in his campaign that would suggest he wants to find middle ground. 

In an institution that operates largely on seniority, Platner would be starting at the bottom, though he may start his tenure with an advantage over other freshmen.

“He’s young, he would have time to build seniority,” Taylor said. “He’d bring a national focus to Maine in a way that (Maine’s other senator) Angus King isn’t going to, because (Platner’s) so different.” 

With attention, she and others said, could come power in the Senate.

PRECEDENT-SETTING MATCH-UP

Maine voters have not historically picked “flamethrowers,” Shea said. When he and other political scholars look for a comparison in the state’s electoral history, they suggest Paul LePage, who has considered himself the original Trump.

While their policy positions are different, LePage also ran against an insider and billed himself as a blunt truth-teller, said Melcher. Both LePage and Platner had gotten in political trouble for their rhetoric, and LePage rose to prominence in a similar political moment, when many Americans were unhappy with Washington.

But while LePage was elected twice, Maine’s support for the outsider only went so far. LePage won his first race by a plurality of just 38%.

In Collins’ previous reelection campaigns, she’s never faced a candidate like Platner. Her opponents came from traditional political backgrounds.

“Typically there’s an order to these kinds of things,” said Taylor of the Cook Political Report. “Graham Platner has taken a sledgehammer to that order.”

Glover said that while other opponents focused their campaigns against Collins on policy issues, Platner is more focused on big, moral questions about the direction of the country.

“By definition, that’ll be more confrontational,” Glover said.

Collins’ electoral success in the age of Trump is unmatched around the country, Taylor said, having won in 2020 when Trump lost. Historically, voters have been willing to see Collins as separate from whatever is happening in Washington.

Given the high dissatisfaction with Trump this year and the soaring price of staples like gas, her success will depend on whether she can do that again.

Staff Writer Randy Billings contributed to this report.