The Collins Media Industrial Complex Strikes Again

Maine’s legacy media props up Collins while national media goes after Troy

Collins supporters at Casco Days in Casco on July 26. Courtesy of Collins campaign.

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As I wrote back in April, Senator Susan Collins aggressively polices Maine’s local media to paint her in the best possible light. This has been an open secret for years among political reporters in Maine. She once took former Portland Press Herald owner Reade Brower out to lunch to try to convince him to change the paper’s coverage of her vote on Planned Parenthood funding. When I was the managing editor of The Free Press, one of her comms bros even once sent me a copy of my own editorial marked up in red ink like a term paper and asked for corrections. I put the marked-up piece on the front page of The Free Press and I never heard from Collins’ people again.

Earlier this week Dan Aibel, who writes the Substack Collins Watch, reported that Collins had the Press Herald change a headline to paint her in a more favorable light. The story by reporter Randy Billings noted that Collins “set aside concerns about the legality” of Trump’s war with Iran during a budget hearing on the President’s request for $33 billion in additional funding for the unpopular war that has killed 18 U.S. soldiers and thousands of Iranians. Collins argued that more funding is needed for the war to support the troops and restore their dwindling stockpile of munitions because otherwise they will have to fight the war with sticks and rocks or something.

“Our men, women in uniform, do not decide where they are sent or the missions to which they are assigned,” Collins said, according to the Press Herald. “Congress has the responsibility to ensure that they have the tools, the training, and the support that they need to accomplish their mission.”

It used to drive me nuts when Republicans and Democrats would make this argument to continue funding the Iraq War. How about just ending it and sending the troops home?

Of course Collins supports Trump’s war, but in typical Collins fashion, she also voted for a purely symbolic war powers resolution “directing” Trump to get congressional approve to continue the war (except it wouldn’t because it’s non-binding!) In other words, she continues supporting more funding for a bloody war that is driving up the cost of living for her voters, but she is very concerned!

The article’s url slug shows that the original headline for Billings’ story was “Susan Collins signals support for Trump’s $33 Billion Ask for Iran War.” But then the editor changed the article’s headline to “Susan Collins calls oversight hearing over Trump’s $33B ask for Iran war.” URL slugs are generated from the headline at publication and normally freeze, so a divergence between the slug and displayed headline marks a headline that changed after the story was published.

For the 60% to 75% of people who only read the headlines while scrolling through their social media feeds, it sure looks like Collins was scrutinizing Trump’s war budget request and holding him accountable. Wow, Collins is finally showing some backbone and standing up to Trump! Not. Collins never met a war she didn’t like and she hasn’t held a single oversight hearing since she became Senate Appropriations Committee Chair during the second Trump administration!

So why did the Press Herald change the headline to make it less accurate? Well, Maine Trust for Local News political editor Kirby Wilson admitted to Aibel that Team Collins got him to change the headline and gave him the idea to call it an “oversight hearing.” The Collins Media Industrial Complex strikes again! This is yet another reason why we need an actual independent progressive media outlet in Maine.

This isn’t the first time the Press Herald has changed a headline to make Collins look better, but it is the first time an editor has acknowledged that Collins insisted on the edits. On July 1, 2025, the Press Herald ran a story by Randy Billing about Collins’ vote against the One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut $1 trillion in health care and food assistance for poor folks while supercharging Trump’s secret police force (ICE) and giving the wealthy a nice tax cut. The original article’s headline was “Senate blocks Susan Collins’ changes to Trump budget bill,” which makes it clear how useless Collins’ symbolic vote was. It then changed the headline to read “Susan Collins votes ‘no’ as Senate approves Trump spending cuts and tax breaks.”

Reading the second headline, a casual social media scroller would probably deduce that Collins had nothing to do with this Hunger Games budget even though she is the Appropriations Committee Chair! If they actually clicked on the story and got beyond the paywall, they would see that way down in the article, Billings quotes a Maine Democratic Party spokesman pointing out that Collins cast a crucial procedural vote to advance the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to the Senate floor on a narrow passed 51–49. Once again, Collins voted for the terrible thing when it mattered (right after receiving $2 million from a private equity billionaire) and voted against it when her vote didn’t matter.

Collins and Her K-Street Lobbyist Husband

Collins Watch reported another scoop this week that Maine’s legacy media has ignored about Collins and her lobbyist husband Tom Daffron. As I have previously reported, Collins carried on an affair for several years with Daffron while he was married, according to multiple sources I spoke to who worked for Collins. Aibel reported that in 2003 Collins took Daffron as her date to a black-tie White House gala while he was a registered lobbyist and still married to his former wife. The two would marry nine years later, after Daffron’s wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Aibel stumbled upon the guest list for the state dinner while researching Daffron’s links to Scott Reed, the chairman of the lobbing firm Chesapeake Enterprises and chairman of the private equity-funded pro-Collins SuperPAC Pine Tree Results, which has been flooding our screens with nasty attack ads against Platner and Troy since last spring. Daffron worked for Reed’s lobbying firm Chesapeake Enterprises as recently as last year. As Aibel noted:

“It’s remarkable that a registered lobbyist could escort a sitting US senator to a government gala without the pairing attracting media attention. But isn’t it just as stunning that, 23 years later, that lobbyist could go back to work for his old lobbying firm — now as the husband of that same senator — and receive scant press scrutiny for having done so? Even though his old firm is run by the chairman of the super PAC fueling his wife’s candidacy, which she’s legally barred from coordinating with? Yet that’s exactly what has happened.

Collins backed policies that benefited Tom Daffron’s K-Street lobbying firm Jefferson Consulting Group, which landed nearly $60 million in government contracts for its clients from 2006 to 2016. During that time Collins took two actions that benefited Daffron’s firm. She voted to repeal a 3 percent withholding tax on government contractors and led a push to stop President Barack Obama’s administration from implementing a rule requiring government contractors to disclose their political contributions. Collins’ also opposed to bipartisan legislation that would have banned lawmakers from trading stocks. Daffron owns $1.5 million in shares in Amazon, Microsoft and UnitedHealth, a stock profile that rose by nearly 78 percent in 2024.

As the blog Dirigo Blue reported in 2011, before Collins and Daffron were married they purchased a Washington D.C. townhouse while Daffron was head of Jefferson Consulting Group. The Maine and national media largely ignored the story aside from a 75-word article in the Press Herald, which oddly described it as both an “investment property” and a “home-away-from-home,” while failing to mention that Daffron was a registered lobbyist with business before Collins’ committee.

“Even as reporters dig into Troy Jackson’s background searching for controversy, the plain truth is that beltway and Maine outlets have a long history of what might be called ‘aggressive incuriosity’ about Susan Collins’s past,” wrote Aibel. “And they’ve been downright averse to covering her personal affairs — even when her nominally private conduct raises important questions about her public role.”

While Maine’s legacy media is doing its damndest to prop up Collins, national Republicans are emptying their Troy opposition files to national media outlets in order to distract voters from Collins’ record and shit that matters to actual voters. CNN ran a hit piece about Troy’s Jackson’s old, anonymous burner account “Canadians for LePage” that he used to troll Republicans in the BDN comment section in 2012. Compared to Graham Platner’s notorious Reddit posts, Troy’s comments were pretty quaint.

“You are no more a woodsman than LePage is a Governor,” Jackson wrote in one exchange commenting on an article on the state’s budget. In an interview with Aaron Parnas on the Meidas Touch News Network, Troy coyly smiled and admitted he ran the account.

“The thing about it is that I fight for workers and during that time me and Governor LePage were having quite a time and he wasn’t helping workers and I’m interested in fighting for workers,” Troy replied to a question about the account. Stop CNN! I already support Troy – I don’t need to be persuaded!

Troy ran the account around the same time Governor Paul LePage called him a “dumb logger” who “claims to be for the people, but he is the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” Speaking of LePage, as Mike Tipping wrote in his book “As Maine Went: Governor Paul LePage and the Tea Party Takeover of Maine,” LePage also ran a sock puppet account using the pseudonym ForThePeople to promote himself on right-wing message boards.

Collins donor Leonard Leo’s smear merchants at the Maine Wire have been scouring the St. John Valley to dig up any dirt they can find on Troy. This week, the NY Post picked up a particularly nasty Maine Wire story that Troy and his partner Lana Pelletier share the same great-grandparents. While the story has predictably caused a stir among the orcan hordes on the right I noticed a lot of rural Maine conservatives thought the it was way out of line and urged the Maine Wire to focus on actual issues.

It’s estimated that second cousins share just 3.13 percent of their DNA and it does not pose a medical risk. The risk for genetic health issues in future children is very close to that of the general population. If we’re honest, second-cousin marriages are not uncommon in Maine, especially in remote rural regions, and it is perfectly legal in 48 states. In fact, first-cousin marriages are fully or partially legal in 25 states. I grew up with kids whose parents were even more closely related. If I went back in my family tree, the roots of which go back to the 1630s in Maine, I would probably some similar pairings.

In a desperate act to keep Troy off the ballot, State Rep. James White (R-Guilford) called for an investigation into his eligibility to run for Senate in a July 24 letter to the secretary of state’s office because he previously ran for Governor. Maine law does not bar Troy from running for Senate. Clearly, they are getting nervous after seeing the polls.

News outlets also reported this week that Governor Janet Mills has so far declined to endorse Troy, but believed Collins “should be defeated.” There’s certainly no love lost between Troy and Janet Mills. As Troy told an audience in March, Governor Paul LePage vetoed 60 of his bills and Mills vetoed 40 of them, including legislation to lower prescription drug prices, strengthen collective bargaining rights for teachers and firefighters, ban aerial spraying of glyphosate pesticides and many more.

It’s pretty surreal to have the shoe on the other foot where centrist Democrats are withholding their support for progressive candidates after years of being browbeaten into supporting centrist nominees from Clinton to Biden and Harris. Now it’s lefties telling centrists to “vote blue no matter who.” The difference is that progressives have always had certain demands like Medicare for All, forgiving student loans, abolishing ICE and ending foreign wars and the genocide in Gaza. But it’s unclear what centrists like Mills actually want out of progressive Democratic nominees like Troy. I do believe it would help shore up support among older voters if Mills endorsed Troy.

Four in 10 Mainers Dig Socialism

Collins and Republicans would loving nothing more than voters to get distracted by the smears and petty intra-party squabbles because then we’re talking about Troy’s popular political positions and record in the Legislature.

A new University of New Hampshire poll released this week found nearly four in 10 Mainers hold a positive view of socialism, a term that was once considered radioactive in national politics. So, while Collins attempts to brand Troy with the S-word, it’s becoming less and less a liability than in previous generations weaned on Red Scare propaganda. 37 percent of Mainers viewed capitalism negatively while 48 percent viewed it positively in the same poll. The fact that capitalism doesn’t enjoy majority support in Maine should tell us something.

Even Nate Cohn at the NY Times had to begrudgingly acknowledge that Graham Platner’s positions, which Troy also holds, are politically popular. A New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll found that only 13 percent of Maine Democrats said Platner was “too far to the left.” He led Mills among self-identified moderate voters, 52 percent to 32 percent, in a University of New Hampshire poll taken before he dropped out of the race. As Cohen noted, Platners “ progressive, populist message — anti-corporate, anti-establishment and opposing military aid to Israel” found a middle ground in the Democratic primary electorate. More from Cohen:

“There have been many successful progressive primary candidates in recent cycles, but not many have been able to win like this. Most have faced a wall of determined opposition from moderates. The opposition to Zohran Mamdani in New York, for instance, propelled a viable independent candidacy (Andrew Cuomo) and split Democrats in last year’s general election. Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign was stymied as soon as moderate rank-and-file Democrats could coalesce behind an alternative (Joe Biden). As a consequence, progressive breakthroughs have often been limited to highly educated, heavily Democratic urban areas with many young voters.

“Mr. Platner was opposed just as vigorously by the moderate Democratic establishment, which backed Ms. Mills. Moderate voters, on the other hand, treated Mr. Platner quite differently. The usually stubborn ideologically-grounded resistance simply didn’t materialize. Ms. Mills never gained a footing in the race, and she scrambled toward the left on taxing millionaires and opposing data centers under certain conditions.

“It’s hard to think of many examples of such a decisive victory over a well-known establishment-backed candidate in a recent Democratic primary. Even Mr. Cuomo — who was viewed significantly less favorably among New York City Democrats than Ms. Mills among Maine Democrats in Times/Siena polling — managed to win 44 percent of the vote in the Democratic mayoral primary.

“Our last poll offered striking evidence that Mr. Platner’s views weren’t putting him at a particular disadvantage: Fewer Maine voters thought he was “too far to the left” than said the same of the Democratic Party in general. Let that sink in: A candidate recruited and elevated by the activist left wasn’t necessarily perceived as farther left than the Democratic Party.

“How could this be? One important part of the explanation is that the voters are right: Mr. Platner really wasn’t far to the left of the Democratic Party, even though he was a factional candidate backed and promoted by progressive activists.”

Cohen also acknowledged that Platner’s presentation as masculine dude likely influenced voters to perceive him as more moderate. Dropsite News reporter Ryan Grim also astutely observed progressive economic policies are popular. It’s the culturally liberal stuff that is more divisive. I’ve long believed that corporate Democrats have sold us a bill of goods in making us believe that issues like Medicare for All, workers’ rights, forgiving student loan debt and strengthening Social Security turn off moderate voters and aren’t “realistic.”

Meanwhile, Elon Musk has pledged to spend an additional $100 to $120 million to influence the Senate elections in Maine and other states this week. That’s on top the eye-popping $100 million Collins and her rich benefactors are set to spend in this election. We can’t let these billionaire fascists buy our elections. The only way we will be able to break through the bullshit will be through grassroots organizing because it’s pretty clear Democrats are going to get outspent in this race.

Last night, I attended a statewide organizing call with Troy Jackson supporters and former Platner supporters to learn about the canvassing operation the Troy campaign will carry on throughout the fall. In order to finally retire Collins, it will take as many people as possible to get out of comfort zones and canvass the state to persuade our fellow Mainers to send a good, salt o’ the earth County boy to Washington to fight fascism and build a new political program for the nation rooted in solidarity instead of fear.