Susan Collins should never be underestimated. She won her first Senate election 30 years ago, and her sheer tenacity in staying in power is formidable, especially since, over the course of her political career, Maine hasn’t been hospitable ground for Republicans (the state last gave the popular vote to a GOP president in 1988).
But Collins’s undeniable gift for pork-barrel spending could now come back to haunt her, thanks to a new pay-for-play scandal broken on Tuesday by ProPublica. The ProPublica story focuses on Collins’s links to Martin Kao, the former CEO of a defense contractor called Navatek. Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison for bank fraud and Covid relief fraud.
ProPublica’s reporting shows that Kao’s operation was almost comically corrupt. Despite the denials of Collins’s office, the ProPublica report is damning. It’s also being picked up by local media in Maine. Troy Jackson, the Democratic candidate in the Senate race, put out a punchy ad quoting the reporting and labelling his rival “Corrupt Collins.”
I thought for a brief moment this post was about Suzanne collins, writer of the hunger games.
I’ve been canvassing for Troy Jackson in Maine. I’ve had a lot of good conversations with former Collins supporters voting blue for the first time. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Thank you for helping Maine, the country - and really - the entire world.
You’re awesome.
OP, I guess you didn’t get the memo. There are two justice systems in america. One for the poors and one for the wealthy. Guess which one slime ball Susan collins is in.
“Might be” doing some heavy lifting there, dont you put that evil on me Ricky Booby.
You know how the left correctly blames the center Democrats for picking bad corpo candidates, eg against Trump (Clinton, Harris) that end up losing? The American left should also do a bit of introspection and self-criticism for picking a bad candidate in Maine. The whole saga of how he ended up stepping down was very demobilizing. This magat should not have it this easy…
Troy Jackson is a great candidate, and he’s more progressive than anyone we’ve thrown at the seat. Maine is a retirement community for fox news boomers. I still hope we can win the election. 2020 was a corporate candidate. The center democrats wanted Janet Mills to run against susan collins and that was a 100% losing situation. There plans were foiled by populism.
The only reason that Graham Platner got as far as he did was because the centrists pushed Janet Mills. Once Mills was in the race, leftists who were actually properly vetted by organizations like the DSA decided it wasn’t worth competing against a DNC funded candidate (of course, they didn’t know she’d implode spectacularly). That’s why you had a two person senate primary and a five person gubernatorial primary. There’s an alternate timeline where Schumer doesn’t meddle in the race, there’s a competitive primary field, and Platner’s voters switch to Troy Jackson after the Nazi tattoo story breaks.
It’s a broken america nowadays. Corruption is what qualifies you to be a success.
Corrupt? That is apparently a ringing endorsement for the American political system!
Reelected again. We knew enough about her the first time after Trump.
But Maine went and fucked it up again. Just like Kentucky and South Carolina.
Stupid complacent american voters.
extremely concerning
Who are the fucking nonces electing her?
Unfortunately there are still a lot of signs out. It’s a funny break down, lotta trailer parks and water front homes. People who would never occupy the same space with each other. I know its a lot of the transplants. Old people from the southern states who have moved here… I don’t think she has a great chance at winning. My auntie was dick riding republicans this spring and when i saw her last week she was cursing them and sounded pretty stressed economically.
Most of america are morons… we just gotta hope the high gas prices are hitting harder than egg prices, and that gets capitalized on.
…but don’t ever blame the voters! Oh no, this must be the fault of the DNC, or “shitlibs”, or…
Yea its not like the Dems went out of their way to shit all over the progressive candidate in the primary and spread rumors and mudsling. Its not like they wasted all their money trying to get Janet Mills through the primary. And its certainly not due to the fact they can’t get independent voters to vote for them! Stupid voters how dare they not have the time, education or resources to make good political decisions. Anywhoo lets spend $100 million dollars on campaigning and shut down a couple hospitals.
You’re not going to believe this, but she’s not the only one
Right… quid pro-quo with law makers and the military industrial complex!? Wasnt there some dude who said something about that???
