Latest / Decision Desk HQ Podcast / Episode 46: Can Susan Collins survive in Maine? Can Sherrod Brown flip Ohio?

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Episode 46: Can Susan Collins survive in Maine? Can Sherrod Brown flip Ohio? · Decision Desk HQ Podcast

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to the Decision Desk HQ podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Geoffrey Skelley, the Chief Elections Analyst here at DDHQ.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: Today we're going to do something a little different from how we've done a lot
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: of our past podcasts.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_03: I'm going to split the episode into two parts where we're going to talk
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: about key statewide races in Ohio and Maine.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: So first,
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_03: I chat with Jeremy Pelzer,
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_03: who is the chief politics reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And he's been covering Ohio politics for a long time, since the early 2010s.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to chat with him about what's going on in the Ohio Senate
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: and Ohio governor races.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, very critical contests.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_03: The Senate race will be a pivotal part of the Senate math.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: And the governor's race is in play for the first time really since 2010.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it was in play in 2018, but the first time it could flip.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: It could actually flip.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's been in Republican hands for 16 years, but the Democrats might have a shot at winning it.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_03: And in the second part of the episode,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_03: I chat with Michael Shepherd from Bangor Daily News,
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_03: where he's the political editor and a longtime observer of Pine Tree State Politics.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_03: Great guy to speak to about what's going on in the much watched
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_03: and must watch Maine Senate race where Susan Collins,
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_03: Republican incumbent,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: is trying to overcome Maine's sort of light blue Democratic lean in federal politics
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_03: to win another term and hold off a key state that Democrats really would like to add
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_03: to their Senate tally on election night.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_03: And if they don't win it, they'll have to find it elsewhere.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_03: And that could prove to be very tough in what is very much a toss up race.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: So please check out both parts of these episodes.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_03: We're going to start out talking with Jeremy to dig into what's happening in the Buckeye State.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm excited to welcome in Jeremy Pelzer,
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_03: the chief politics reporter for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: And he's covered Ohio politics and government since 2013.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: Jeremy,
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  SPEAKER_03: you're the perfect person to talk to about what's going on in these very competitive
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: and very interesting Senate and gubernatorial races in Ohio.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess sort of just start out with,
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_03: what's your sort of sense of the lay of the land politically in Ohio?
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  SPEAKER_03: Because that'll apply to both contests, I think.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, thanks so much for having me.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: And as for Ohio, I think there is a skepticism, but also a...
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of nagging feeling that Democrats might win statewide races here for
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: the first time in, what, 16 years?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a healthy skepticism given that how Democrats haven't,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: with the exception of Sherrod Brown, won here since 2006.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: But polls are showing that both Sherrod Brown is leading Jon Husted in
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: the Senate race and that Amy Acton is leading Vivek Ramaswamy in
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: the governor's race.
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  SPEAKER_01: And if those things happen,
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  SPEAKER_01: it stands to reason that a number of down ticket races would go the Democrats way
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  SPEAKER_01: as well.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hey,
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  SPEAKER_03: just to start out with the obviously the Senate race getting quite a lot
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: of attention, understandably nationally, you know, looking at the polling here.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_03: We see that Sherrod Brown and our polling average is up by around four, three or four points.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_03: This is rounded.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_03: So 47% to 43%.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_03: The numbers have bounced around a bit, but Brown has been ahead by varying margins.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_03: And so I guess,
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think an important question with any of these races,
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_03: but particularly with someone like Brown who lost reelection in 2024
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  SPEAKER_03: in Ohio's other Senate seat and is now seeking this one,
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  SPEAKER_03: What do you think may have shifted,
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_03: or is there any particular groups or issues that might be particularly,
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, potentially moving things in his direction?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_03: Is it just sort of the broad malaise of a midterm where the president has
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_03: an approval rating that's just a tick below 40% now from the Republican Party,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_03: so Democrats are benefiting?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's probably a combination of these things,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_03: but I was curious sort of what you make that out to be.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the leading things are the same things driving a number of Senate races around
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: the country, the economy, what voters think of President Trump.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Those national issues are driving the Senate race and the governor's race here to
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: an extent that maybe you wouldn't see 20 years ago.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so in 2024,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: when Bernie Moreno beat Sherrod Brown, it was a presidential election year.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: President Trump won here by double digits.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And you had just a groundswell of people all around the state, especially in more rural areas.
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  SPEAKER_01: There was very high turnout and they voted for Trump.
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  SPEAKER_01: And then in areas like Youngstown,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: more blue collar counties,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Youngstown,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Mahoning County,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And Lorain County, west of Cleveland, you had those counties go for Trump as well.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now the question is whether Republicans can hold on to those votes
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: and get those voters to turn out in a non-presidential election year.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then even if they turn out, do they vote for Husted and Ramaswamy or do they undervote?
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that the undervote might be the story,
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: if I'm writing a post-mortem on November 4th,
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: about how Governor-elect Acton and Senator-elect Brown are coming into office about
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: that undervote,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: about people who turned out,
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  SPEAKER_01: but they left the Senate and the governor's spaces blank
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: when they cast their ballot.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_03: That's fascinating.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know, you know, thinking about...
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of how Sherrod Brown managed to win reelection in 2018,
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_03: which was obviously another favorable Democratic midterm year.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: Part of it was that he did better in some of the places
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_03: that Democrats had already been trending better.
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  SPEAKER_03: Places like Franklin County where Columbus is, the most populous place in the state now.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_03: And he did better in sort of the Cleveland suburbs.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_03: But he also did manage to win some of those counties in the Mahoning Valley
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  SPEAKER_03: that had been trending toward Trump.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: And so I guess that is maybe a key area to watch as we sort of look at the Senate race.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess what sort of what do you make of the temperature there?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Just knowing that that could be,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_03: you can even look at the what the abortion referendum from a couple of years ago
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: to like the that was a place where.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: While that was,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
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  SPEAKER_03: has been trending Republican presidential politics,
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  SPEAKER_03: it kind of broke with sort of the rest of the Republican,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: more Republican leaning areas of the state.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: You know, on a question like that.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know,
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  SPEAKER_03: I would assume that if Brown is going to find a path to victory,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: it's going to involve doing better there than he has,
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: than Democrats have been doing, besides Brown, at least.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: The problem for Democrats in Ohio now is that they have this gap to make up.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been like this for a few years now.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: And in election after high profile election,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: you see There's been a narrative,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: at least,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: of this underperforming Republican candidate
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: and this overperforming Democratic candidate,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: but the Democrat just can't make up the gap.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you have Tim Ryan, who did better than expected in 2022 against JD Vance.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: You had Bernie Moreno against Sherrod Brown in 2024, and Moreno, of course, won that one.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so Democrats go into this election cycle also having to make up that gap.
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  SPEAKER_01: And to make up that gap,
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  SPEAKER_01: at least in my opinion,
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  SPEAKER_01: there's three things Democrats have to do,
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  SPEAKER_01: and they kind of have to do them all in order to win and to make up that gap.
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  SPEAKER_01: The first,
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  SPEAKER_01: as you said,
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  SPEAKER_01: is to stop the bleeding in these blue collar areas such as the Mahoning Valley,
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  SPEAKER_01: Lorraine, places like that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Even if you look in the far upper right corner, you can see Ashtabula County.
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  SPEAKER_01: Which has gone significantly Democrat, or I'm sorry, Republican in recent years.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so it's not that Democrats necessarily have to win that place,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: those places back, but they just have to really stop the bleeding.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: The second is they really need to goose turnout in inner city and
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: in major urban areas, the three Cs: Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: They, especially in Northeast Ohio, turnout in Cleveland in 2024 was 46 percent.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's been a continuing issue for Democrats since 2012,
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  SPEAKER_01: since Obama won the state in 2012,
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: to really get that city, that urban turnout back up.
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  SPEAKER_01: And they've tried a bunch of different things.
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  SPEAKER_01: It hasn't really worked for them.
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  SPEAKER_01: So they really need to do that,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: especially in Northeast Ohio,
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: but also run up the score in Columbus and Dayton and in Cincinnati.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Also, capitalize on the trend of wealthier,
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: more educated suburbs of major cities,
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: which have been trending Democratic, but they really need to capitalize on that.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the poster child for that is Delaware County, which you can see right above Columbus there.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Delaware has not voted.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: I believe it was the last time they voted Democratic was Woodrow Wilson.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: For president, I think that's right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but it's been trending.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Trending.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, anecdotally, I'm hearing that, you know, Sherrod almost won it in 2024.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if he wins on election night,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: it's very likely that Delaware, that county will be a very light shade of blue.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then next to it over,
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: if you go left to it in Union County,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: which is a pretty solid Republican county,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: but also You know, you have more exurbs of Columbus.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then down towards Cincinnati, you have Butler County, which is a pretty Republican county.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if Sherrod and Amy Acton can make inroads there,
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: especially among those wealthier,
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: more educated voters,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: then they need to kind of do all three and bat a thousand to win on election night.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_03: Go, go three for three.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, maybe they drew a walk so their other plate appearance didn't,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: show up, but, uh, sorry,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_03: we're in the midst of the baseball playoffs,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_03: you know, major league baseball playoffs.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess my, my mind also went there.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um, yeah,
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_03: you know, and,
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: and thinking about the Ohio race,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: obviously Jon Husted,
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_03: the appointed Republican incumbent, I, you know, the fact that he, It's interesting.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of talk about like a Texas,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: for example,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: where Ken Paxton has proven to be a problematic candidate for Republicans.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: And Husted does not have the same sort of problems.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: But is it that he is coming off as just very generic Republican?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_03: Is that a potential issue for him?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: And also because there's been so much attention to this,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_03: I really wanted to ask you about The role of data centers in this,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_03: because that seems to be something that Democrats are really hitting Husted on and
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_03: that Husted,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_03: there was some recent legislation actually got stopped in the Senate
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_03: that essentially was sponsored.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_03: I think chief sponsor was Husted,
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: that they were trying to sort of, I think, combat that potential weakness.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: So to your first question,
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think that if there's a knock on Jon Husted,
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: it is sort of that he is more of a,
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: certainly more of a generic Republican than say Ken Paxton,
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: who, you know, love him or dislike him, you know, he's not the generic Republican.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that, I mean,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: if you look at,
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: there was a really perhaps telling, I guess we'll see, New York Times story.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: A few days ago where they were talking to voters
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: and they thought Sherrod Brown was still a senator.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: it was a recent Bowling Green State University poll that came out that showed
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: that one out of every four people polled thought Sherrod Brown was still in office.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that is because Husted hasn't run for Senate before.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: He was, as you said, appointed by Governor Mike DeWine to fill JD
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: Vance's seat last year.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And since then, he's really tied his wagon to national Republicans, to Trump.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: He's just gone by the straight playbook.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And when you tie yourself to that, you're going to just not stand out.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And that has been something that he's really,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: when he's tied his wagon to them, he kind of has to stay on the wagon.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And as far as data centers go, I'm glad you brought that up.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about the national issues earlier,
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: but in terms of the more local Ohio-centric issues,
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Sherrod Brown, as you said, has been hammering Jon Husted on data centers.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: They clearly got some polling and a focus group saying that data centers,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: something that Jon Husted is vulnerable on,
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: and they've been just going after him ever since.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It is an issue in Ohio.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Starting early this year,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: there's been kind of a grassroots movement, especially in more Republican areas.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Again, a backlash against these data centers.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, this isn't unique to Ohio, but it's especially been true in Ohio.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a failed effort,
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: but still an effort to put a referendum,
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: put a ballot issue up this year to ban large data center,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: new data center construction in Ohio altogether.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that is something that Sherrod Brown is trying to tap into.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Jon Husted is traditionally a Chamber of Commerce Republican.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: He has been, as lieutenant governor,
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: certainly he was all for just innovation and bringing jobs and as part of that,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: he touted the arrival of many new data centers,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: as did many other officials from both parties.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't want to say this is just a Jon Husted thing,
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: but now it's something that Sherrod Brown is trying to tie to him.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: And the polling,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, doesn't show how much of it is the economy in Trump versus data centers.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: But it's certainly something that Sherrod Brown's people think is a major, major vulnerability.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_03: I guess the flip side of that in terms of vulnerabilities,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_03: or at least ones that the Husted campaign seems to have run with from the get-go,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: the moment Sherrod Brown got into this race,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_03: is sort of the idea that Sherrod Brown has been around forever.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_03: And that career politicians, that's a pretty tough label.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: To wear these days.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: And Brown has been in office for a very, well, until he lost in reelection in 2024.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think he'd been in office since,
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_03: what, the early 80s or something in some form, maybe even earlier than that.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, late 70s.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: 70s, sorry.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: State legislature, I believe, right?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_03: So he's been around for a very long time.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_03: And so I guess I was curious how that, how that's playing
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_03: as a chief criticism
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_03: of Brown by the Husted campaign,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_03: because it does seem to be something that they've continued to attack him on
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_03: and be like, how can he be a change agent if he's been around forever?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting if you look.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: So while a lot of the anti-Husted ads have been about data centers,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of the anti-Sherrod Brown ads almost treat them like an incumbent.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Say, you know, he voted for kids to have transgender surgeries.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: They talk about his voting record almost as if he's still in office.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And they say, you know, we don't want to go back there.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually a fairly entertaining ad campaign by one group
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: that just has Sherrod Brown at like a kid's birthday party after all the kids left.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, you know, you know, Sherrod Brown needs, you know, he's overstayed his welcome.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's sort of been,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, it's been almost treating him like he's still in office as well.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And like or just like Sherrod Brown, most voters know who he is, unlike Jon Husted.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's funny what a few tens of millions of dollars will do for your name recognition.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: But just about everyone has an opinion of Sherrod Brown, like him or not.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_03: and I guess the interesting thing with sort of what you're pointing out there is
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_03: that Brown is,
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, he's,
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_03: it's just a situation where he has been around for a long time
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_03: and you had polling suggesting that like one in four voters still thought he was
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_03: in office.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know,
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_03: there's clearly something to the,
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: The attempts by the Husted campaign and Republicans writ large to cast Brown as part
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: of the problem.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_03: If Washington is not working, he was in Washington a long time, things aren't working.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: But just to remind people of the importance of this race,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: obviously,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_03: Ohio is a state that President Trump carried by around 11 percentage points in 2024.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_03: It is one of the sort of core red-leaning state targets
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_03: that Democrats essentially need to flip some of in order to win back the Senate
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_03: if they're going to do that.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_03: So Ohio,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_03: on paper at least,
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_03: is the least red of that group if you're sort of looking at Ohio,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_03: Texas, Alaska, and Iowa as sort of the quartet after North Carolina and Maine.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_03: On paper,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: at least,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_03: based on the 2024 presidential results,
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_03: is sort of the next group of seats that Democrats are hoping to flip
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_03: if they're going to actually pull that off.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And just to put some numbers on that in our forecast,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_03: right now, Brown is a very narrow favorite in our forecast.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_03: It's relatively close to 50-50, almost a pure toss-up.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_03: But if Brown were to win,
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_03: our forecast suggests that Democrats would,
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_03: if we didn't know anything else and Ohio went for the Democrats, Uh,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: that we would expect Democrats to win almost four and five times,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: uh, in terms of winning a Senate majority.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously very critical, uh, if,
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_03: if Ohio were to flip,
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: whereas if it doesn't flip, then,
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_03: Republicans do become favored, uh, somewhat at least if we don't know anything else.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_03: About the Senate outcomes because if Democrats aren't able to win in
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: a state like Ohio,
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_03: it might mean they're not able to win in a state like Iowa, another Midwest state.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_03: It might mean that maybe Michigan is gonna be really close and maybe as
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_03: an opportunity for Republicans to flip.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously a lot of moving parts with the Senate,
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: but Ohio is such a critical piece of the picture.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess just to sort of close out on the Senate race before talking a little bit
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: about the gubernatorial contest,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously,
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_03: outside groups are pouring money in,
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: and I guess you noted the potential down-ballot effects,
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_03: and I guess I'm curious about just
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: How that may be influencing sort of just the electoral picture in Ohio,
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: just seeing all this outside spending.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_03: There's also a lot of outside spending,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: I guess, in the gubernatorial race too, but we can talk about that in a second.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_03: But just as sort of a final, the influence of these outside groups.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, like many other states,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: Campaign spending now is dwarfed by outside spending by a variety of groups.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: You have everyone now buying ads from MAGA,
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Inc.'s PAC on Husted’s
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: behalf to a whole slew of liberal groups
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: on Sherrod Brown's behalf.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And Ohioans are going to be begging for a non-political ad on their televisions by November 3rd.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe someone will try- I'm looking forward to seeing a pharmaceutical ad again.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_03: It makes me think of during the primary in California for governor,
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_03: there was this ad that Xavier Becerra ran where it was just like,
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_03: let's take a break from all of Tom Steyer's attack ads.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it was just like a peaceful nature scene or something.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_03: It's like-
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_03: The effectiveness of that is maybe questionable,
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_03: but nonetheless,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: you can see what they were going for and why even in a lot of states,
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_03: there might be some appeal to doing something like that.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_03: Well, let's turn to the gubernatorial race because this is a contest
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_03: where Republicans have held the governorship since 2010 in Ohio
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_03: and Democrats did come close in 2018 and sort of the last wave,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_03: but Mike DeWine won, and then he won re-election pretty easily in 2022.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_03: And now it's an open seat race.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: And you have Vivek Ramaswamy on the Republican side,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_03: the former presidential candidate running against Amy Acton,
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_03: who was the state health director during the COVID pandemic.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_03: And this seems like a real, I mean, it's interesting.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_03: The recent polling in this race has actually been even more favorable for Acton than
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_03: And she actually leads now on her polling average, 50% to 43%.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_03: I think that might be overstating her lead a little bit,
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_03: just in the sense that the polling average bounces around a little bit.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: But she certainly has a real chance of breaking the Republican hold on
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: the governor's office in Columbus.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly to the extent that few people,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: even on Amy Acton's side,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: thought possible when she first entered the race early last year.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: The Democrats,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: the case for Amy Acton,
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: why people who backed Amy Acton early favored her is because she has perhaps
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: the best name ID of just about any Democrat,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: even though she's never held elected office before,
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: because when Governor Mike DeWine held his daily coronavirus briefings in Ohio
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: during the lockdown.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: Everyone would tune in for what they called Wine with DeWine and they would tune
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: in every afternoon and there would be Mike DeWine, Jon Husted, and Amy Acton.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so she got a lot of goodwill from people at the time who thought she was
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: a reassuring, calming presence.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: But then,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: when there was the backlash against the coronavirus restrictions,
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: she sort of became the face of that,
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: even though,
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: as Amy Acton's folks will be quick to tell you,
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: it was Mike DeWine who signed these orders.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were issued under the name of Amy Acton as health director.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: So even though she was only a health director during the pandemic for
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: about three months or so, that,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: either that goodwill or that notoriety, to make a lot of word, has lingered.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And now she's portrayed herself as sort of the affordability candidate.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to lower your costs.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Vivek Ramaswamy, meanwhile, he steamrolled through the field before his name first came up.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: When DeWine had a choice to make about who appointed Senate,
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: and it really came down to Vivek Ramaswamy or Jon Husted,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: and DeWine went with his guy,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Jon Husted, and that led Ramaswamy to enter the governor's race.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: There were a couple of other candidates,
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: then Attorney General Dave Yost and Treasurer Robert Sprague,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: and he just steamrolled him right out of the field,
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: got an early endorsement from Trump and the state party,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: and now it's a lot closer than...
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Then I think just about anyone would have predicted last year.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that can be for a number of reasons.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: One is, of course, as going to keep going back to the national environment.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's some perhaps, I mean,
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I guess we'll see some buyer's remorse about Ramaswamy, given the poll numbers.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that he It's interesting because on the one hand,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: polls overall, the knock on them is that they tend to undercount Republicans.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time,
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: knock on them is also that they tend to not factor in racism or religion
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: as well.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Vivek Ramaswamy, of course, is not white and he is not Christian.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: He's a Hindu.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: Amy Acton, for that matter, is not a white man either, obviously, and she's Jewish.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: So either one of these candidates will be the first non-white man to hold the office
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_01: of Ohio governor.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: But these things are kind of hard then to find as a trend.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like I can go out to, you know, southeast Ohio or, you know, western Ohio.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: And talk to Republicans and kind of get anecdotal evidence of how things are leaning.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: But then, you know, it's kind of hard to say, well, I'm talking to these farmers.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Are they representative of everyone or are these guys just feel the way they do
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: and it's not representative?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we'll see how this works out in November.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I think right now you're seeing Ramaswamy respond to this and his camp respond
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: to this by just attacking, attacking, attacking.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then meanwhile, Amy Acton's acting sort of as a front runner.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: She's declining to debate Ramaswamy.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: She's kind of,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: for the past couple of weeks,
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: started to lay pretty low,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: doing the occasional hit here,
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: but she's certainly not going after Ramaswamy the way she would
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: if polls showed her pretty down in the race.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: And speaking of,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_03: it seems to me that Acton,
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_03: there's been some attention paid to maybe some positions that she's taken
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_03: That would sort of suggest a move toward the center,
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_03: which would maybe make sense in a red-leaning state for the Democrat to try to find
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: a way to win over some voters in the middle.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_03: She has to do that if she's going to win in a red-leaning state, even in a good Democratic year.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: So I was kind of curious what you've seen on that front.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: It seems Amy Acton has a core group of issues that she is solidly Democratic on,
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: mainly abortion in terms of being pro-choice, labor issues being pro-labor.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: But then on a number of other issues,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: especially social issues, she is
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: willing to just make these non-issues.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, she backs Medicaid work requirements.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: She alienated some in her party by endorsing a ban
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: on transgender athletes playing women's sports.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the argument you can see is that it negates Republican attacks on her.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Democrats have long said, hey, well,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: especially, say,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: in the Mahoning Valley,
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: when Hillary Clinton lost in 2016,
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: when Kamala Harris lost in 2024,
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: the knock was, well,
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats are focusing too much on social issues and they're tied
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: to issues like LGBT rights and things like that.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you can see how Amy Acton would try to negate that.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Now, she has to walk the tightrope,
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: of not alienating people within her own party,
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: people on the left,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: enough to not vote for,
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: but they're clearly calculating that the benefit of negating these issues
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: and winning over perhaps more moderate voters outweighs the potential pitfalls
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: of alienating people in her base.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: you mentioned that Ramaswamy and his allies have very much been on sort of attack,
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_03: attack, attack.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it's worth noting that,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_03: sort of like we've seen nationally with some spending in Senate races,
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_03: maybe that's not quite true in Ohio
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: where I know Sherrod Brown has significantly outraised Jon Husted.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it's,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: it's maybe a little closer to even there,
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_03: but Ramaswamy and his allies,
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I saw a piece you'd written a while back that they route spending Acton side six
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: to one.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess I was curious what the potential ramifications of that are.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_03: Is that actually going to allow Ramaswamy to sort of break through to win
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_03: over maybe some base Republicans or Republican-leaning voters who are frustrated by
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: the national environment and other aspects of this race?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: And could that drive Acton's unfavorables up and their favorables down?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that sort of thing is a strategy here.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So one of the reasons that early on Ramaswamy was seen as a clear favorite to win,
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: like last year, was that he would have a financial edge.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that is absolutely proven out to be true.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: So not only has his campaign, well,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: his campaign alone started out real quick out of the gate and raised tons of money,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: far more than Acton.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if at least so far this year, Acton's campaign has actually outraised Ramaswamy.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: However, Ramaswamy's put $30 million of his own money into the race.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: And not only that,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: that's outshadowed by Ramaswamy's super PAC,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: VPAC, which has raised tens of millions of dollars.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: For example,
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Jeff Yass,
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: the Republican megadonor from Philadelphia,
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_01: he's given, I think, what, $30 million of his own money into the super PAC.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk has given $5 million, and that's only a couple of donors.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: So there, Ramaswamy is a clear financial edge.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so they were on TV months before Acton, just knocking her, knocking her, knocking her.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been attack ad after attack ad.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: As the polls show that,
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have any special insight, but it appears that these attacks aren't working.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: It makes sense to go after Acton, you could say, because she hasn't held elected office.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Neither is Ramaswamy for that matter.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the old Political saw about define your candidate before they can define themselves.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: And they've made all sorts of personal attacks against her and her past and in
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: a variety of ways.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And at least if the polls are any indication, it's not working.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: I get the idea that it's perhaps dragging down her favorables.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny what tens of millions of dollars spent will do about that.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_01: But in terms of affecting the race,
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: well, again, if you look at the polls, it doesn't seem to be doing a whole lot.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, just to maybe finish off on that point,
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_03: I do think that polling in Ohio has been
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_03: little bit of a struggle in recent years,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: maybe more so in presidential cycles.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_03: But I guess,
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: are there any sort of thoughts or concerns about polling error,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_03: undershooting Republican support?
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, you mentioned it earlier while we were talking.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously, it's a consideration.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: It's a thing that's out there.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_03: But I didn't know how much people who are following this race are sort
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_03: of considering what that could mean if there is sort of a notable error in
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_03: the Democratic direction once again in Ohio.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's very possible.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: And also, obviously, Election Day is not today.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a lot of time for something to happen.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: Early voting here starts next Tuesday, but it'll trickle in over time.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting if you look at, for example, the Marist poll.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: That came out a few days ago that showed Acton up 50% to 44% over Ramaswamy.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: A majority of those respondents said they thought Ramaswamy would still win.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think that reflects what I said at the top,
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: which is there's this gap that Democrats have to make up.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's this built-in lead that Republicans have in the state.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: And even if Acton overperforms relative to what people thought she would do.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: Will it be enough to make up this pretty sizable deficit that Democrats are in?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't want this to age well.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm certainly not saying that Acton has this in the bag and everything you said
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: about the polling is true.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say right now that it's really hard to predict that there's
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: a healthy skepticism about whether Acton's lead is What the extent of her lead is
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_01: if she has one and what will happen on election day.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly it's going to be close enough that a fairly small difference
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: in turnout can make a pretty big difference in how this turns out.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_03: Well, as always, it comes down to turnout.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_03: It all comes down to turnout.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_03: Well, Jeremy, this has been very helpful.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for helping elucidate what sort of what's going on
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: in these two key races,
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_03: Ohio, definitely one of the sort of centers of attention in the 2026 election.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_03: So I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me about this.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Happy to do it.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And thanks so much for having me.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_03: And again, this is Jeremy Pelzer, the chief politics reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: And you should definitely go check out his stuff over at Cleveland.com.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: And again, Jeremy, thank you so much.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks a lot.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: Meanwhile,
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_03: in Maine,
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_03: we obviously have a really,
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: really competitive Senate race,
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_03: one of the much, you know, the must watch Senate races of the cycle.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm very happy to welcome back Michael Shepherd to talk about Maine.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: Michael is the political editor at the Bangor Daily News and a longtime observer
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: of politics in the Pine Tree State.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: So, Michael, thank you again for joining me on the pod.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, always good to be here.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_03: So obviously the Senate race,
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_03: Susan Collins,
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_03: Republican incumbent facing Troy Jackson,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_03: the Democratic challenger, not Graham Platner.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_03: We've moved a little past that, though I would be curious.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_03: I'll follow up on that in a minute.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_03: But obviously,
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_03: I guess sort of what's your sort of initial read of
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: the political landscape right now in Maine as we get,
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_03: you know, as we're almost a month out?
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's amazingly tight here.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: I think we saw an AARP poll today that had this race pretty much split down the middle.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was 50% to 47% in Jackson's favor with him winning over the base,
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: but Susan Collins winning over a lot of swing voters.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: We've seen this story before back in 2020.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: Going back and looking at those polls, you see some signals that kind of portended her win.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_02: But we weren't seeing at the time in the overall polling.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: So you have this strange situation where Jackson has been polling in front,
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: but Susan Collins is hanging with him really tough in basically
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: the most liberal state on the battleground map.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: So you're seeing states like Texas and Alaska and Ohio, which you're talking about on this show.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: Really tightening up and even going over into the Democrats' favor,
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_02: maybe even more strongly than Maine.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's all about, I think, Susan Collins and how she can stem this tide or be dragged under it.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: And we are really, I think, at 50-50 in terms of where people are seeing that right now.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, very much.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_03: Our polling average now is basically tied.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't round the numbers,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: Jackson,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_03: I think,
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: is ahead by like a half point as we're recording this on Thursday, October 1st.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_03: But the race is effectively tied in the polls at about 47% each.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_03: And then actually in our forecast as of today, they are both at 50%, so a pure toss up.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_03: So it feels about as 50-50 as it can get.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it is worth reminding people,
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_03: you know, this,
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_03: as you said,
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_03: and you noted there,
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: this is the most left-leaning state at the presidential level,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_03: at least, on the ballot that Republicans are defending in 2026 on the Senate map.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_03: Kamala Harris carried it by around 7 percentage points.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_03: And that,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know, on paper,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_03: should make this the most obvious Democratic pickup,
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_03: but instead,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_03: it is sort of positioned as a, as I bring up a list here,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_03: sort of the most competitive seats, it's sort of right in the middle.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_03: And it's now actually, these numbers are a day old, but the race is 50-50 now as of today.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_03: But there's like this middle group of Alaska, Texas, Ohio, Maine, Iowa,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_03: all very,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_03: pretty similar in terms of where the probabilities are in terms of
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_03: which party will win.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_03: But Maine is the outlier because all those other seats are ones
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_03: that President Trump carried by 11 or 13 or 14 points.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_03: And yet here's Collins.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_03: To add to that,
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_03: and what you were really getting at is that she has this history,
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_03: and I have another chart here, of overperformance.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_03: This chart in 2020, the most recent example, she managed to win by close to nine points.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_03: It might have been closer once you went to the ranked choice voting process,
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_03: but they didn't go to it because she won a majority outright,
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_03: so she didn't have to go to it.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's how it works, yeah.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: And then in the presidential race at the same time, Joe Biden was winning the state by nine.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_03: So she was running 18 points ahead, margin-wise, of the Republican top of the ticket.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: And it's crazy because you look at her career right in front of us and,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: oh, it's like, oh, only 17.7 points, right?
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_02: Ahead of the ticket, which is just...
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: Massive when you're talking about anyone else, even over this time.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: You have Joe Manchin and you have some other people certainly a decade ago, but that's it.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: This is rarefied air and this number is going to go down in 2026.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: It is all about
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: How much it goes down.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: And right now she's looking pretty good when you factor in the other candidates on the ballot.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly when you factor in Donald Trump's very poor approval figures here.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: So she's she's a survivor.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: She's she's hanging on and she's firmly in this race.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's just it's such a bad year for her party that that's going to be the thing
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: that drags her down, if anything.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and to that point,
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_03: right now in our projected vote share, most of the country is swinging left.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: It's just kind of by varying margins.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: This is from a couple of days ago.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_03: I published this in our Monday newsletter.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_03: So the numbers are very slightly different now, but not notably in any way.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_03: And so Collins is averaging about,
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_03: doing about seven or eight points better in margin than
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_03: the 2024 presidential result.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_03: Which again, was Harris by about seven, Kamala Harris by about seven.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_03: Whereas the next closest of sort of the Republican held seats in terms of swing is
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_03: a seven point swing to the left in Florida.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know,
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_03: Collins is really showing the fact that this race is 50-50 is obviously a sign
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_03: of Collins' strength,
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_03: the ability she's had to win over voters,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_03: even if they are Somewhat democratic leaning and presidential politics
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_03: and maybe down ballot to and some house races,
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_03: although Maine also just has just seemed to have a lot of ticket splitters.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, that's how does Jared Golden get elected so many times in the second district?
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: You know, he's like the Democratic counterpart to Collins in that way.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_03: So I guess.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_03: Looking at some of the factors that are playing that, obviously Collins has this appeal.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_03: I saw she ran an ad the other day where she was talking about the Red Sox or something.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't go well.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it was maybe poorly timed because the Red Sox lost, I think.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: But the idea was like, you know, there's like this Yankees-Red Sox thing.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_03: But she highlighted the point of like,
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_03: she's viewed as the most like,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_03: Moderate, most bipartisan senator, this very core part of her appeal.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems like that is still obviously holding a lot of sway.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: That profile is firmly built.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we're talking about 30 years in office that she's going on here and a lot
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_02: of fire stations and a lot of projects and a lot of funding at the university,
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: right?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: And all sorts of things.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: So she's got her, she is just buried deep in these communities.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: And, um,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: I think that that's going to be,
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: that is the thing you see,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: that ad got a lot of attention because,
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: she called, you know, Chuck Schumer a Yankee super fan, which he is.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I, I wish I was after that, those performances by the Red Sox this week, but, um.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: But no, I think it also that's that's about Susan Collins and Chuck Schumer as well.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_02: She has long thought they don't like each other.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: No secret.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: She thinks that because she works with Democrats more than just
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: about any other Republican that he should he should be looking in other places.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, Maine just fits right into the middle of this map.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: So Chuck Schumer,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: as long as he's leader,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: which may not be much longer, he's going to be trying to trying to take her out.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that'll be a fun question for after the election if Democrats do actually get
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_03: the majority.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: There are a lot more twists and turns in that path even after the election result if
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_02: that does come to pass because of the possibility of,
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know,
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: John Fetterman shenanigans,
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_03: potentially getting coaxed into becoming an independent or something.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's just a lot, especially if it's 51-49 or something, a lot of possibilities.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: Thinking about the Maine race,
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_03: it does seem to me that something that's been going on,
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: and I think we've seen Troy Jackson even running some ads basically saying like,
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_03: I'm getting vastly outspent and out advertised.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: And so I got this data from Ad Impact.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: They just published this a couple hours ago.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's sort of the number of spots being run,
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: ad spots being run by either the candidate, This campaign or groups supporting it.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_03: And Maine is is right now one of the largest Republican advantages in terms of
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_03: the percentage difference between and among the most significant states,
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_03: the biggest difference where Collins is basically the pro Collins side is running
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_03: about 22%, you know, almost a quarter more ad spots.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously all that costs money and Collins has raised a ton and has a ton of outside help.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_03: And Jackson's getting help because it's a critical seat.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_03: But this obviously is also, I would think, helping Collins.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a wicked imbalance right now between just the number of groups
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: that are coming in.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you have SLF PAC doing one thing,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: One Nation doing a mostly positive thing,
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_02: a PAC called Pine Tree Results,
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: which has been in the news because of the ProPublic article and the sort of links
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: to...
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_02: Collins and her circle.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: So those groups right there have spent $38, $34, and $28 million.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: And the only sort of rivaling group is Win Senate,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: which is the official super PAC of the Senate Democrat side.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right now it's $144 million reserved all in throughout the race, $97 on the Democrat side.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: You have to keep in mind that Platner makes up some of that.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: So a lot of that is sunk cost at this point.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_02: It does tighten up a little bit when you look down the road a little bit,
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: at least on gross rating points.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_02: So what people are actually burning into the electorate,
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: which is the best way to look at ads better than, better than dollars, certainly.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's tightening up.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: This week, the Republicans have, I think it's 54% of GRPs.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: So again, the Democrats are fighting back.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's scheduled to go up for the Republicans, though, through Election Day.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: I think the Democrats certainly should be throwing a little bit more money on
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_02: the air and getting Troy Jackson some extra help for this last month,
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: which is when all the debates are, when fresh things can hit.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's pretty crucial for Democrats to rush a little bit of money in down
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: the stretch here.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so I guess that brings,
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know, to sort of laid out the situation in Maine, broadly speaking.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: But I guess,
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_03: you know, for me,
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: a question is, what are some of the sort of challenges that each candidate faces?
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, for Jackson, it's maybe a money thing.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_03: For Collins, it's the national environment.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, I think the more national this race becomes, the better it is for Jackson.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: The more local it is,
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_03: the better for Collins because of all that she has built
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: in her political career there.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_03: But I was curious about some of the just on the ground issues that have popped up.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know,
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_03: whether it's sort of our kind of ongoing war of words and tariffs and stuff
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: with Canada.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: Is it is it,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_03: this talk about Susan Collins is the ProPublica article and sort of fall from that
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: and talking about like,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: Maybe connecting Collins to some of this corruption chatter that has become
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_03: an increasingly big part of what's been talked about in the,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: I don't know, the political ether, if you will.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm curious how that actually is playing out on the ground there,
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_03: how people are talking about it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, of course, I think you start at the top level.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's environment, you know, on environment.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: we're talking a very small group of unpersuaded voters that were 3% undecided
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: a month out in the AARP poll today.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's just a massive share of voters.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_02: So they're fighting right now for absolute crumbs in the middle of this electorate.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, I think that what's interesting is you take a lot of the big issues case by case.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: Collins is trying to separate from Trump on it.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_02: You want to talk about the Iran war.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: You want to talk about tariffs.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_02: She's always been an opponent of tariffs.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: So you can the one big, beautiful bill like we we can just go issue by issue.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: And Collins is trying to distance herself.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: The thing about Susan Collins, though,
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: is she keeps herself close enough to Republicans because that's
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_02: where she sees her well of power for the state.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_02: She's in a leadership position on the Appropriations Committee,
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: and that is the pinnacle of career.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's her bread and butter.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's what she talks about when she goes into communities.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: So that tension between the national environment and her unique place in politics,
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: it was the same thing that defined the 2020 campaign.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think the issues that are changing,
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_02: and I think that you alluded to the ProPublica article,
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_02: So no one's really laid a glove on Susan Collins,
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: the person,
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_02: there's been a lot of talk about how she,
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: on her votes versus her disposition and how she's navigated the Trump era,
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_02: but nothing that lands on kind of her personally.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: there's a lot of,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: you have to give that story a very close read,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: but the idea that Washington is a place where people feel like they can pay
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: for influence and get it.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: That cynical attitude is pervading American politics and the idea
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: that Susan Collins is a part of it.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that that may be sinking in for some some people.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: And of course,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: she denies, you know, she denies any pay for play allegation that's made in there.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_02: But but I think that this that sort of cynicism is something that's very dangerous
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: and does cut against the image that Susan Collins has worked very hard to cultivate
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: over the years here.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, sort of the I mean, this, you know, the tagline on her signs, right?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_03: Our senator.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that would seemingly be a potential problem.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it seems like Jackson, of course, has seized upon it, as you would expect.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_03: Now, I was curious, though,
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_03: for the Collins team and for Republicans,
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_03: and just broadly speaking,
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_03: what at this point,
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_03: for Jackson coming in as a replacement candidate, he's had a long political career.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_03: He's had some votes in the past that maybe don't align as much with
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_03: where he's positioned himself on issues.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_03: Now, does he have any,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_03: some of these personal issues that, you know, something might be tied up in?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I know that there's been chatter about some,
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_03: you know, like a physical altercation he had in like the late 80s or something.
• 49:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's sort of like,
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_03: what are the things that I guess Jackson's opponents are bringing to bear on him?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's one of the things we reported on a police report from 1988.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: This was when he was 19.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_02: And he went into a house and assaulted someone.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_02: And the police report said he pushed around the woman who is now his partner,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: has been essentially since then and before then.
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: She denies that,
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: but he's a hot-tempered guy, and there are examples of that in the legislature.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's a guy who's sort of at his best and at his worst sometimes out in the public eye.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_02: I've often compared him over the years to former Governor Paul LePage,
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: someone whose supporters love him, whose detractors really don't like him.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_02: There's not much in the middle.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of the opposite of how it's been for Susan Collins throughout most
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: of her political career.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: Her opponents have generally begrudgingly respected her.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: And as things have sort of gotten more partisan around her, that has changed.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I think he's a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: There is a little bit of that.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_02: His son was a lobbyist intersecting with his service.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that's something else to keep in mind.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_02: And And I think that both of these campaigns have sort of used at least
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: the soft word of corruption,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: or at least use that word softly and now maybe a little more firmly to try to affix
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: that label to each other.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_02: So it's the coarsening of politics.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Politics hasn't always been so coarse here in Maine, but it certainly is this time around.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know,
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_03: actually that raises a question because I know there was some polling that suggested
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_03: that Jackson's favorability is a little underwater too, which,
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: Collins,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_03: there have been some polling that showed she was close to 50-50 or
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_03: a little underwater herself.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously,
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_03: different polls disagree slightly on some of these things,
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_03: but the fact that Jackson coming in as,
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_03: the challenging candidate, if,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_03: it would seem to be a potential problem for him and maybe an effect of some
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_03: of this advertising that he would be viewed.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_03: A little more negatively,
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: even if people at the end of the day are just not going to be as familiar with him
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_03: as they are Collins.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we got to keep in mind that he's, and you talked about Graham Platner at the top.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you got to,
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: in all this analysis,
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: we have to keep in mind, this is a 100-day campaign, almost to the digit.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_02: So he has, I guess there are advantages and disadvantages that come out of that.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: You have to build up a team really quickly, and you have to go as fast as you can.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_02: And that probably keeps the electorate from knowing as much about you in
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: the long term as we were all scrambling,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_02: right, to figure out things that we hadn't dug on in the past about him.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in the media, the national media was catching up to, you know, who is this guy?
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: Starting from there, at least we had some familiarity here.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: But no, you have to start a campaign like this.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Not only do you have to speed your campaign up,
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: but the other campaign has to speed their campaign up.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: And account for you.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that everyone's dealing with this and he's certainly a better challenger
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: than late stage Graham Platner, but he's someone who, that's not hard.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's a low bar though.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: But no, we do see candidates who are about as weak though
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: as late stage Graham Platner still on the ballot.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, there is in other places.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_02: So there is...
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_02: He's not generating the excitement that Graham Platner did,
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_02: but then again, nobody else is either.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a lot to account for here,
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: but I think Jackson has acquitted himself reasonably well in a short period of time
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: for someone who has never really been on the national stage.
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a real campaign under really difficult circumstances.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_03: I guess just thinking,
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_03: because I think it's worth talking a little bit about and maybe just
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_03: because people will be interested in sort of the geography of Maine's electorate.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_03: And I thought it'd be cool to bring up,
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_03: I don't,
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_03: the challenging thing for a lot of us who cover elections is that New England,
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_03: you know, it's more about the towns.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, the counties exist, but it's like things are reported by town more so.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_03: And so, you know,
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_03: if I bring up like a map of the 2020 election,
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_03: it's like instead of just seeing a bunch of counties, I'm seeing hundreds of towns.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_03: But obviously like Maine, this is from Susan Collins' 51%-42% win over Sarah Gideon in 2020.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Looks like a lot more on the map, yeah.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and obviously because there are all these little,
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_03: very small towns that have 50 votes and whatnot that Susan Collins carried.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_03: But obviously,
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_03: for Jackson,
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_03: I guess the big question is,
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_03: Jackson has this background as a logger, kind of working class background.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_03: He talks up this protest he helped was a part of back in the 90s on the border
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_03: with Canada, labor protest.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm curious...
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_03: They always talked about Graham Platner being able to make inroads or something,
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_03: or that being like the hope early on when people were talking
• 54:47
  SPEAKER_03: about Graham Platner amongst some Democratic candidates,
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_03: keeping the margins down in some more Republican places in upstate Maine or what,
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_03: North Country, I
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: forget what you guys call it.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just Northern Maine.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_03: Northern Maine, okay.
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_03: I was trying to remember if there was a, I was like, is there a name I'm forgetting?
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: But nonetheless,
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_03: the point is that obviously Jackson will be doing best along the coast,
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: and then Collins will be doing better in the interior,
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_03: but obviously the margins in each of these places will be very important.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: And you look at like the VoteHub,
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_02: town by town projections,
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: which I don't think anyone should read it, read it as gospel.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you look at, you know, like a 2.5%, you know, a two and a half point win for checks.
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it relies on some Some difficult results to replicate,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_02: particularly up in northern Maine and on the margins and outside of Portland
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_02: and things like that.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: If you look at just an overperformance map of Collins versus Trump in 2020,
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: there's really two places that stand out,
• 55:51
  SPEAKER_02: and it's northern Maine and greater Portland.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want to start in northern Maine, I mean,
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: Troy Jackson is from that little appendage there on the left,
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_02: Allagash,
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_02: which is actually Maine's biggest town by area, only has about 230 people in it.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the end of the road, the end of the paved road, at least.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: Collins is from the other end of the county,
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_02: which, you know, the other side of the county, which is just in Detroit.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_02: Jackson's old legislative district.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_02: And Jackson actually won this the last time he ran for it back in 2022 after
• 56:25
  SPEAKER_02: a really kind of contested campaign.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's a classic.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_03: Is that Caribou?
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_02: That's Caribou.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's Caribou, right?
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: yeah, yeah.
• 56:33
  SPEAKER_02: So these are two Aroostook County candidates.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's really kind of core to their identity.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think that something's got to give there.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_02: Both Jackson and Collins have been really successful there.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_02: I have to think Collins probably has the edge there.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is a blue to red place that is very ancestrally democratic, but has changed a lot.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that she'll still do well up there.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think that her advantage up there will probably outdo his,
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_02: but he should do better up there than a Sara Gideon.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_02: So he just has to kind of stem the tide.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then he had a really interesting primary campaign with four credible candidates in it.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he ran for governor.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's worth reminding people that he was running for governor,
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_03: lost in a very crowded governor's race,
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_03: and then became the substitute nominee for Senate to replace Platner.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: And what we saw with him was really interesting in the primary.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_02: He won Portland, but he really fell off when you got just outside of Portland.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the towns immediately outside of it.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_02: So those are richer places.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: Those are places that are a little more establishment than Portland,
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_02: which is Maine's most progressive place, essentially.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly parts of it.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that...
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: You've seen Susan Collins do really well outside of cities or at least lose by less
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_02: than Republicans typically do in those places.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: And we're going to have to see if the sort of Democratic wave comes for those places
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit more than it did in 2020.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_02: That seems to be the case right now when you look at national polling and all
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_02: the signals we have.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_02: Again, got to play the game.
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_02: But this is where I think the central tension of the race is going to be.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: Because, I mean, look,
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_03: if you're sort of thinking about the presidential race at the same time,
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_03: you know, Joe Biden was carrying more of these places along the coast and by more.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_03: And the places that even were blue, they were a darker blue.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: Because he was winning the state by like nine while she was winning by about nine.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_03: So it's sort of like,
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_03: well, do you as Troy Jackson, are you able to win some of these towns by a bit more?
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_03: You're going to win Portland, but can you win it by a little bit more?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: And then it's a margins game.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_03: if the polling averages are close,
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_03: I guess a big question would be,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_03: Colin's trailed in polls ahead of the 2020 election.
• 59:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now, by the end,
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_03: it did get a little tighter in some of the final polls,
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_03: but she still was generally down in them.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so I guess a big question would be,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_03: are is I mean,
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_03: this is the question with so many things,
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: but is there a reason to think that like that could be the case again?
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_03: Obviously, guessing polling error ahead of time is like fool's errand, fool's errand.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_03: But given that she has had this success at winning over sort of crossover voters
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: and whatnot,
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_03: it seems like she would be primed to be a candidate where it would not shock anyone
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_03: if that happened again.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think that a lot, I mean,
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_02: a lot of people that I talked to in Maine,
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_02: Republicans, Democrats, I mean, build in some sort of Susan Collins bonus.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if that's a wise thing to do.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, we'll speak very certainly about it after the election.
• 1:00:07
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that there is at least that attitude in Maine politics
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_02: that you just can't really count her out.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of the signals we're getting,
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, She, in late 2020, you go back and look at the polls.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_02: There was actually one poll that really sticks in my head from 2020.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_02: It came out on the Sunday before the election.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was from Emerson [College].
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_02: And it showed her winning every single, I forget what it was.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_02: I should have boned up on this.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_02: But I think that every undecided voter in the poll was leaning her way.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_02: And every single one in the poll.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and it was a very small group.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're talking maybe 25 people.
• 1:00:46
  SPEAKER_02: But you look back at it and you're like, damn, maybe we all missed something here.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_02: And the AARP poll today made me think that way because they looked at this group
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: of swing voters,
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: meaning those who didn't land the same way in the Senate race,
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_02: the governor's race, and the generic congressional ballot.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_02: And she's winning 70% of those.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_02: So in Maine,
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_02: sometimes I think there's like this,
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_02: there's this like karma effect with certain segments of the population that tend
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_02: to decide things.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: I just, I see that.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know,
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_02: my mind goes back to some of the signals that we didn't quite read in 2020,
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: but ended up deciding the race.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_02: So look,
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_02: I'm You'd be a fool to try to predict this election right now,
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_02: but there's just a lot of little things on either side of this that are kind
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: of niggling at me right now.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no,
• 1:01:43
  SPEAKER_03: that's a really great point and helpful from just thinking about sort of what are
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_03: the polls suggesting right now.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_03: I don't want to take too much more of your time,
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_03: but I did want to ask,
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_03: because in my Ohio conversation, I asked about the governor's race.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_03: The Maine race doesn't seem as competitive in the realm of states
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: that have notable Senate governor's races.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_03: The governor's race in Maine is kind of likely Democratic from the looks of things,
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_03: but you have Hannah Pingree,
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_03: former State House Speaker,
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_03: and you have Bobby Charles,
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_03: who I believe is like an attorney,
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: former lobbyist, kind of, in terms of backgrounds, the Republican nominee.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I guess,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_03: what is that looking like,
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_03: especially in the context of an election cycle where it does seem
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_03: to be Democratic leaning on the whole?
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_03: Is it just sort of like, everything is Democratic leaning,
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_03: but there's Susan Collins, is maybe the vibe?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's interesting.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_02: Our set of races up here is a little weird this year.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're losing Jared Golden,
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: who is kind of the Susan Collins of the Democratic Party,
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_02: lost a little bit more of a grip on his party,
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: though, than Susan Collins ever has, and kind of ended up not deciding to run.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_02: So you have the northern part of the state,
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_02: which you look on this map, and it's pretty Republican.
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we have former Governor Paul LePage running in that seat against State Auditor Matt Dunlap.
• 1:03:03
  SPEAKER_02: LePage probably has the edge here, although services are pulling it a little bit back toward
• 1:03:11
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's like a lean R race, I think, in our forecast right now.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, it might lean R, but it's certainly not out of the question.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_02: We're talking in the 60s [%] or something like that.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_02: I think the prevailing attitude up here certainly is a LePage win,
• 1:03:26
  SPEAKER_02: albeit narrow in this environment.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_02: And if Jared Golden were running, I don't think that would be the case at all.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think that most people would be throwing their money on him.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_02: So that race, so we have that, we have Susan Collins with a very credible chance to win.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: LePage pretty clearly favored.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then Hannah Pingree is basically the runaway favorite right now in the governor's race.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_02: She's led polls within an 8% to 13% margin today.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was 13% in the AARP poll.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_02: And within that,
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: you have to remember that
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_02: The state level races here typically get credible independent candidates.
• 1:04:03
  SPEAKER_02: We have one running in state Sen. Rick Bennett, who's a former Maine Republican Party chair.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_02: So he's a very credible independent challenger,
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_02: only pulling about in the single digits right now.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_02: So not really changing that race in the way that Republicans would need to be kind
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_02: of dragged up into that position,
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_02: which is how Paul LePage won and how members of both parties actually won.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_02: Before him.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_02: So Maine always has these three way splits.
• 1:04:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that's part of the story on that front.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_02: Hannah Pingree is sitting right there at about 50%.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_02: She's pretty broadly popular among Democrats.
• 1:04:38
  SPEAKER_02: Republicans generally like her, even if they don't support her policy.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_02: She's a little more progressive than our current governor.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_02: Janet Mills.
• 1:04:44
  SPEAKER_02: So she just drew a good challenger.
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_02: She drew an easy challenger,
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think,
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_02: in Bobby Charles,
• 1:04:52
  SPEAKER_02: who ran kind of a MAGA primary campaign that he's trying to distance himself from
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_02: a little bit, but doesn't really have resources, no national help to speak of.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_02: So you're seeing that race kind of languish in the vacuum that the Senate race creates as well.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think it would have been a hard road for anybody to Just given the fundamentals of this year.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that race is a little sleepy.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_02: But the thing to keep watch of there is that we'll have a good group of Pingree-Collins voters.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how many that will be,
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_02: but Pingree's total will certainly be a little inflated because she's running
• 1:05:26
  SPEAKER_02: against a weaker Republican.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll get a chance to see what that overlap looks like in the polls and obviously
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_03: on Election Day.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_03: That's a great point.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_03: That'll be something to really look at in terms of after the fact.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_03: We'll be looking at places where there were the most sort of split ticket voters
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_03: for governor or the biggest gap between the two races and what that might say about
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_03: the final result in each of them.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_03: Well, hey, Michael, this was fabulous.
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me about this.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_03: Again, this is Michael Shepherd, who heads political coverage at the Bangor Daily News.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_03: And you should definitely go check out, is it BDN.com?
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_02: bangordailynews.com.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, sorry, sorry.
• 1:06:09
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody knows this.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_02: We always abbreviate it to BDN.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm just like, yeah, you know, bangordailynews.com.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_03: You should definitely go check out their coverage.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_03: It's great of all the things happening in Maine.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_03: And obviously with such a hot Senate race, there's plenty, plenty to cover.
• 1:06:24
  SPEAKER_03: So Michael, thank you so much again for taking the time.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_03: Thanks so much, Geoffrey.