BANGOR, Maine—Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Democrat Troy Jackson faced off for their fourth and final debate of the 2026 midterm cycle Thursday night in front of a live audience.
With less than three weeks left before election day, both candidates are trying to gain momentum and win over any remaining undecided voters in the Pine Tree State. Collins is running on her nearly three-decade tenure in the U.S. Senate and her legislative record on both sides of the aisle.
Jackson, who previously served as state Senate president, is running on a progressive platform championing Medicare for all, union support, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and ending arms sales to Israel. After gas prices skyrocketed and inflation has begun climbing again from the Iran war, Jackson has sought to tie Collins to President Donald Trump and his foreign policy agenda.
Hosted by Maine Public at the Gracie Theatre in Bangor on Oct. 15, the debate gave Collins and Jackson a final chance to dig into their respective political records, who is funding their campaigns, and how they plan to respond to the growing affordability crisis.
The race has national implications as Democrats try to wrestle control of the Senate away from the GOP. The party needs to flip four seats while defending four in Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Georgia.
Despite Maine not voting for a Republican president since 1988, the state has remained purple, with Collins successfully fending off a challenge in 2020 from former state Rep. Sara Gideon when Joe Biden won the state by more than 9 percentage points.
Here are three takeaways from the final debate for the high-stakes Maine Senate race.
Candidates’ Political Records
Collins has largely run on her nearly 30-year tenure in the U.S. Senate and her record of voting from within and across the political aisle. She has described Jackson, a logger before he joined the state legislature, as politically inexperienced and ill-equipped to represent the state in Congress.
When moderators asked Collins what she would do to reduce the $40 trillion national debt, she pivoted to accusing Jackson of putting “enormous tax burdens on the people of Maine” during his time in the state Senate.
Jackson hit Collins back over her own legislative record since she was first elected in 1996.
“I don’t know what world Sen. Collins is in. When she started out, we had $4 trillion in debt, and now we have $40 trillion in debt under her watch, and somehow it’s my fault,” he said.
Collins responded by noting that Maine doesn’t currently have a balanced budget, tying it to the state legislature “under Troy’s watch.”
Jackson, who left office in 2024, responded, “I don’t think I’ve been in the legislature for the last two or three years.”
Candidates Allowed to Ask a Question
In a twist from previous debates, the moderators gave each candidate a chance to ask the other a direct question.
Collins went first and asked Jackson about his promise at Tuesday night’s debate to file his first Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing the following morning, and why he claims not to take corporate money if there are super political action committees (PACs) running ads with his name as if they were issued from his campaign.
Jackson defended filing the FEC report a day later than he initially promised, saying he had to make sure the “report was done right” because he has received more than 200,000 small donations from individual backers. As for the ads, he said they were created without his approval.
“Just like you know very well. I mean, Elon Musk is running ads for you,” Jackson said, referring to the multi-million-dollar ad buy from a Musk-aligned super PAC that is supporting the Collins campaign.
When it was Jackson’s turn to ask Collins a question, he confronted the senator’s repeated arguments that he lacks the experience to represent Maine in Congress.
“Growing up as a working-class person, I have all kinds of experience,” Jackson said. “What I’m curious about is it just me that you look down on, or is it working-class people overall?”
Collins replied that her first job was picking potatoes and that she has “enormous respect for all the people of Maine.”
Audience Participation
Each candidate was given a select number of tickets to bring supporters to the Gracie Theatre Thursday evening.
Jackson drew laughs a few times with his criticisms of Collins, particularly after he made a dig about the FBI dropping a probe into the senator after Trump took office last year and leadership changed at the Justice Department.
But at one point, a young man in the audience stood up and directly interrupted Collins to protest artificial intelligence (AI) data centers.
“AI data centers are destroying our climate and water,” the man said loudly as security escorted him out of the room.
Collins said, “So, this is obviously one of Troy’s supporters.”
“Oh, shut up!” Jackson replied. “I don’t even know that kid.”
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