WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance urged Republicans to support his “very independent friend” Sen. Susan Collins during his Monday visit to Maine — as Collins skipped his rally citing an unspecified scheduling conflict.
Vance stumped for her anyways, saying that he appreciated her emphasis on delivering for constituents — with the unspoken subtext that the Democratic-leaning state’s voters could determine control of the upper chamber for the final two years of the Trump administration.
“Whenever I’m in Maine, I give Susan a little bit of crap because, as you know, Susan is the most independent member of the United States Senate,” Vance said in Brewer — across the Penobscot River from Bangor.
“As the president of the United States Senate, she sometimes makes my jobs a little harder,” Vance said.
“But she makes it harder because she is coming to work every single day and fighting not for a political party or not for any abstraction. She comes to work every single day and she fights for the great people of Maine. And I’ve seen it.”
Vance described Collins, 73, who has held office since 1997, as a frequent guest at his Naval Observatory residence in DC.
“She’s been in my house probably a half dozen times,” Vance said.
“I’ve never seen a person who is more attuned to the details of every single thing. She’s always asking, “What does this do for Maine? How is this good for Maine? How is this bad for Maine? And she tries to get as much good for the state out of Washington and as little bad out of Washington for the state, which by the way, is a very hard job.”
He called for the audience to applaud her, saying: “She does an amazing job, and so please give it up to our very independent friend, Susan Collins.”
Collins told a reporter over the weekend that “I am already scheduled on Monday, so I will not be able to join the vice president.”
Her race is one of the tightest this year and Republicans leaders have accepted the need to distance herself from Trump, whom she voted to convict in his 2021 impeachment trial.
If Republicans lose control of the Senate, Trump will have a much more difficult time making executive-branch and judicial appointments and Democrats would likely work to block his legislative agenda and investigate his actions in office.
Her office did not immediately provide The Post with information on the precise scheduling conflict, but she gave a local news interview to knock Trump’s new tariffs on Canada as “a mistake.”
“We produce a lot in Maine — our blueberries, our potatoes, our lobster, our lumber — that is processed across the border,” Collins told News Center Maine. “If it comes back with a huge tariff on it, perhaps as much as 50 percent, that increases the cost of eating, building homes and merch[andising] our best-known products.”
Collins previously skipped Vance’s visit to Bangor in May, when the Senate was in session. It is currently in its annual August recess.
Democrats last month nominated Troy Jackson, former state lawmaker, to challenge Collins after the party’s prior nominee, Graham Platner, was forced to give up the nomination following a litany of scandals, including sexual misconduct allegations and scrutiny of a Nazi tattoo.
