The one who was elected the Democratic nominee instead, oyster farmer Graham Platner, probably had the zingers lined up in his brain for these debates long ago. He was forced to drop out after allegations of sexual assault.
Maybe more surprised than anyone is Troy Jackson, who just a few months ago was running for governor but is now the one running for Senate and, on Tuesday, stood for the third time in two weeks next to Collins on the debate stage.
Despite all the drama earlier this year, the race has settled into slow-burn contest that was once full of high-octane energy and massive national attention. Maine was once the most important contest in the entire country, and now the energy has moved on to places like Texas and Kansas. It took some reportedly cajoling even to get Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders – once a loud and proud Platner supporter – to come to Maine last weekend. It’s not even clear that President Trump will bother (Collins seemed to indicate in the second debate she’d rather he not).
If the first debate between Susan Collins and Troy Jackson was a mess, and the second was a mudfight with some substance mixed in, then Tuesday night’s third debate was low energy.
Here are three takeaways
The polls show a race stuck. So did this debate.
Even 13 minutes into the debate, it was so lacking in engagement that it would have been so easy to watch literally anything else. No one can blame the debate hosts or the questions. It was the candidates and the fact that they had already said what they wanted to in the previous two debates.
Fireworks? There was one moment when Collins said, “Troy has repeatedly insulted my integrity all evening long. I just cannot continue to ignore these attacks on my integrity.”
But that was two-thirds of the way through and there wasn’t really much before or after it.
It was chiefly a debate where things got into the weeds quickly, whether on how the federal government works or how the state government works on health care or energy costs. It would be hard for someone just trying to understand who was telling the truth to follow along.
Rarely can someone win a televised debate. Sometimes people can lose them. But most will be forgotten. This was a case in point of a forgotten debate.
Collins hit her points, Jackson mumbled his
If one really paid attention, they could see that Collins laid out what she wanted to do, however softly. She distanced herself from the One Big Beautiful Bill, which she didn’t vote for, unlike her Republican colleagues. On the Iran war, she said, “I agree that the president did not have a good plan.” On tariffs against Canada, she said, “It wasn’t the Canadians that started this problem; it was the Trump administration.”
Collins also repeatedly said she agreed with Jackson on AI data centers, Iran, tariffs and heating oil costs, seeking to minimize the differences in a traditionally Democratic-voting state before offering a small tweak that she would add or do differently.
In this sense, it was a classic case of Susan Collins threading the needle.
Meanwhile, Jackson failed to land a clean hit on Collins. Interspersing his remarks with “you knows” and speaking in almost coded or insider language about a bombshell media report suggesting the FBI was investigating Collins for literal corruption (which Collins denies), he failed to explain the story at all to anyone who didn’t already know about it.
It’s also notable that Jackson didn’t repeat his best line in all of the debates, even though it was sitting on a tee on Tuesday night. Once again Collins bragged that she was able to remove road salt from the list of items subject to a tariff, which could help some small towns in the margins. In the first debate he said, “we can’t eat road salt,” bringing it back to the larger affordability issue.
Collins mentioned road salt again. He didn’t deliver his line.
What is the point of it all?
Both candidates deserve praise for agreeing to participate in four debates for such an important contest that could decide which political party controls the US Senate. But after three of them, it’s obvious that there are too many.
The candidates repeated the same lines for largely the same viewing audience as in the previous two debates last week. The fact that this debate occurred at the same time as a Maine governor’s debate isn’t helping anyone, either.
It’s hard to see how this debate either changed anyone’s opinion or motivated anyone whose mind was already made up.
But we do it again, with a final debate on Thursday.
James Pindell is a Globe political reporter who reports and analyzes American politics, especially in New England.