Collins Ads Feature Former Staffers, Corporate Lobbyists, GOP Operatives & Kooks
Over the past several months, Mainers have been barraged with dark money-funded ads asking us to thank Susan Collins for all of the things she’s done for us. One of the more annoying pro-Collins ads running constantly features corporate lobbyist, former House Republican Leader and Collins staffer Ellie Espling talking about how Collins cured her cancer or something. The ad is paid for by the One Nation PAC, which focuses on appointing right-wing justices to the Supreme Court and cutting taxes for rich people at the expense of the working class.
One Nation has accepted millions of dollars from Judicial Crisis Network, which is the far-right group partially responsible for giving us a pro-Trump Supreme Court. A reliable Republican foot soldier, Collins played a key role in turning the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp for Trump, notably voting to confirm accused sexual abuser Brett Kavanaugh. If you live in Maine, you’ve probably seen the One Nation’s ad:
The ad refers to Collins securing some funding for biomedical research at Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor, but are we supposed to forget that DOGE slashed cancer research funding by a third at the beginning of last year? I guess we’re supposed to thank Collins for writing a sternly worded letter criticizing the Trump administration for the DOGE cancer research cuts. I mean, it’s not like she’s the chair of the Appropriations Committee and could have any influence on the budget. Oh wait.
I served with Ellie Espling in the Maine House and she was one of the most extreme members of her caucus. She was virulently anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion. She repeatedly voted against expanding Medicaid to 91,000 low-income Mainers. She voted against requiring health insurance plans in Maine to continue covering preventative care in the case of a repeal of the Affordable Care Act. And she even voted against a bill prohibiting “lunch shaming.” This is when schools punish and stigmatize students for being unable to afford a meal or being behind on payments.
It’s funny how almost all of the “everyday Mainers” in pro-Collins ads are Republican operatives with ghoulish politics. Collins 2026 reelection ad features such ordinary Mainers as lobbyist Lauren LePage (daughter of our racist former Governor Paul LePage), former Republican legislator Gary Plummer, former Republican House member MaryAnne Kinney all profusely thanking Collins.
“I also want to think [Collins] for her unbelievable constituent services,” says anti-vaccine activist and former State Rep. Heidi Sampson, who has held events with anti-semitic QAnon influencer Christiane Northrup and the late Holocaust denier Robert David Steele. In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League denounced Sampson for comparing Governor Mills and her sister to Nazi doctors who performed experiments on Jews during the Holocaust.
The ad also featured Christian Nationalist State Senator Stacey Guerin and her husband calling Collins “Maine’s small business superhero!” Guerin is a hardcore anti-abortion lawmaker, who has led anti-abortion protests and spread unhinged election denial conspiracies. In September 2020, Guerin suggested that the biblical “rapture” “could be soon,” referencing the “‘mark of the beast,’ microchips, no cash/just plastic, marshall [sic] law, total government dependency/control.” After the 2020 election, she called on Maine’s attorney general to join a Texas lawsuit seeking to overturn results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Here’s Guerin’s bizarre rant in 2020 about the rapture being right around the corner.
Back in the day, Susan Collins was able to fool Mainers into thinking she supported reproductive rights, once even receiving Planned Parenthood’s endorsement and honored by the group in 2017 with its Barry Goldwater Award. She was also endorsed by the pro-LGBTQ group Human Rights Campaign in 2014. But after her vote to confirm Kavanaugh, she gave up the ruse and cozied up to the anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion Maine Christian League. In an interview with CCL in 2020, Collins characterized herself as a “firewall” against progress on reproductive rights and anti-discrimination efforts in the Senate.
One of my biggest frustrations with Maine’s legacy media is it’s reluctance to cover all of the far-right CHUDs Collins supports and donates to. Collins previously endorsed and helped fund the campaign of white supremacist Larry Lockman, who spent years campaigning against gay rights.
Larry is most famous on the internet for his comments about abortion and “legitimate rape.”
I should point out that Collins’ unendorsed Lockman after I exposed Tom Kawczynski, the former town manager of Jackman, as a Neo Nazi seeking to form a white supremacist community in Maine called “New Albion” in 2018. At the time, I pointed out to the press that mainstream Republican politicians like Susan Collins openly supported white supremacists like Larry Lockman.
Shortly after, I received a text from a Collins staffer telling me Collins was about to make an announcement in Jackman. Sure enough, nine days after the select board fired Kawczynski, Collins showed up in the remote border town to “offer her support” and withdraw her support for Lockman.
“I am very disappointed in many of the comments he has made. He has every right to make them and we believe in free speech but he certainly will not be getting my support,” she told Maine Public. Larry didn’t care because he hates Collins anyway.
Of course, Collins knew Lockman was a notorious racist and a vicious anti-gay bigot, but the story gave her the opportunity to promote her moderate brand. Then two years later, my pal Nathan Bernard and I revealed that Collins donated to the campaigns of two nutty QAnon candidates for the Maine State House:
Kevin Bushey and Brian Redmond, the QAnon believers supported by Collins, are both military veterans who eagerly anticipate a political bloodbath will soon erupt nationwide, ultimately leading to arrests, military trials, and “God-declared executions” for “traitors” like top Democratic politicians and donors, socialists, Planned Parenthood, and Black Lives Matter and Sunrise Movement activists.
My wife and I made the cartoon below to draw attention to Collins’ support for extremists, but a lot of people, even Democrats, thought the whole story was too far-fetched. “Oh c’mon,” they said, “Collins would never knowingly do something like that!” Sigh.
When mainstream media outlets reached out to Collins about her donating to Bushey and Redmond, her campaign spokesperson denounced QAnon and said, "Dirigo PAC makes contributions at the state level based on the recommendation of the Maine Republican Caucus. It was not aware of the activities of these individuals at the time these two donations were made. Dirigo PAC will likely reconsider its vetting process in the future."
Well, of course Collins didn’t learn her lesson and continued donating to a rogue’s gallery of election deniers, homophobes and racists. Most recently, Collin gave her full throated support for Paul “People of Color are the Enemy” LePage for the Second Congressional District, telling Republicans “to work as hard as we can to counter the very organized threat from the radical left.”
UPDATE
Right after I posted this, I received another Collins mailer telling me to thank Our Senator® for curing his ‘betes. As usual, the ordinary Mainer in the ad is a MAGA dude with a son who worked in Collins’ office.
The Good News
If Democrats can unite this coming election, I really do feel like we have a much better chance of taking out Collins than in 2020. First off, Trump has the worst polling numbers of any president since polling began and Collins is one of the least popular Senators in the nation with a whopping 60 percent disapproval among Maine voters, according to a recent poll. The other reason I think she is in John Tester territory is because of what I call the the Great Lib Migration.
Since 2020 Maine’s total net migration was about 78,000 people, with 2025 ranking 7th nationally in net domestic migration, largely from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, California, Florida and New York. A survey of some of these 78,000 transplants found that respondents had higher levels of educational attainment and well above the state median. Three-fourths of respondents reported holding a bachelor’s degree or higher and more than half reported income of $100,000 or more, much higher than the state median income income of $75,000. I would imagine many of these people came up during the pandemic because they could telecommute to better paying jobs than what are available locally. This migration has caused our housing costs to skyrocket, making it nearly impossible for working-class people to buy a home here. But this migration will also likely alter the political direction of our state, which has been trending bluer in recent years.
Education is one of the biggest predictors for how someone votes. As polls have found, Democrats are overwhelmingly winning with college educated voters while Trump kills it with voters without college degrees. That’s why he loves the “poorly educated.” Collins defeated Sara Gideon in 2020 by 70,000 votes and the margin probably would have been much narrower if third party and independent votes were tabulated in a second round of rank choice voting. I’m not in the prediction game after badly misjudging the Maine electorate in the 2020 Senate election, but I do think those new 78,000 voters could play a critical a role in getting rid of Collins for good.
I have a new sign. Don't S.A.V.E. Susan…Vote Her OUT
“And ye shall know her by the company she keeps.” I’ve lived here for 25 years and honestly did not know Collins had/has this flock of MAGA loonies orbiting her.