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.
Corrupt? That is apparently a ringing endorsement for the American political system!
She took a 150,000 bribe to vote. She was literally purchased to vote:
“Might be” doing some heavy lifting there, dont you put that evil on me Ricky Booby.
This is why Canadians have no faith in Americans to elect a responsible government. A state like Maine begging Canadians to come back, get fucked. Never going to the states again.
Don’t say never, Germany went from enemy of the Western world to respected ally in like 20 years. So who knows
sure , after being bombed to the Stone age, their leader was killed and they were invaded.
and now the Nazi’s in Germany are back again
Perhaps not never, but not now or any time soon.
The state of Maine, aka the chamber of commerce, aka all the well to do people that sell you overpriced shit while you’re here. Us poor people hate all the tourist equally, and most of us are glad you’re gone, and appreciate the economic damage your boycott is causing because again, its of no benefit to the average mainer. Fist time in a decade i can afford a hotel and lobster roll in my own state. Please keep up the boycotts.
I GOT BONES IN THE GROUND AND I WILL BUY EXTRA LOBSTER ROLLS JUST TO FEED THEM TO HUNGRY DOGS EXPECT ME
as long as the dogs are happy im happy
I for one am happier without you guys as well tbh, you’re not great visitors and you were buying up vacation properties faster than Blackrock so good riddance?
I have noticed a significant decrease in Canadian license plates I see in Washington State. Makes sense. I just wish we could get annexed by Canada and kick out all the California tech workers that moved here.
your californians are my canadians lol
Mainer here. I hope I’m wrong, but I have a feeling she’ll still be voted back in. My wife said today that there has been barely anything on local news about Collins.
I have been voting against her for 30 years!
and a genuine thank you for trying!
Corruption is now a good thing to platform for the GOP. It’s the “honesty” platform.
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 the center’s fault that leftists just refuse to run against them? You have to actually run to win.
Yeah, but you can’t win every battle on every front. DSA had an amazing primary season in NYC by picking their battles. There were plenty of people who were pissed that they didn’t primary Jefferies, but instead of pouring all there money into unseating the minority speaker, they focused on several smaller races, and took three congressional seats and four state rep seats.
It’s important to remember that, when we’re talking about centrists, we’re talking about the Democratic establishment, which has functionally unlimited financial resources, and when talking about leftists, we referring to candidates that are either backed by small organizations or completely independent. There actually was a leftists alternative to Platner in the race; her name was Andrea LaFlamme, and you probably didn’t hear about her because she didn’t qualify for the ballot and had to run as a write-in. So why would the DSA throw their limited money into splitting the leftist vote three ways against Mills, when instead they could focus on the governors racd?
It’s a broken america nowadays. Corruption is what qualifies you to be a success.
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.
Obstensibly, the people who are voting for the establishment corpo Democrats in the primary.
Yea lol Janet Mills had like 30% turn out in the primary. So 30% of democrats were willing to send in a losing candidate because she was old and familiar. Thats my read anyway. Its not that maine has a ton of republicans, we have a ton of independents and a lot of divisive democrats who break into factions any time they can. Much like the rest of the country. “how do these evil incompetent assholes keep winning??” idk guys who are they running against and how are they being presented. What platforms are you losing on. So many questions, if only there was a political organization with billions of dollars at its disposal to organize better cadidates and platforms! We could call it the DNC
They need a campaign on how she’s changed throughout the years and her voting record with Trump. You can’t just say corrupt and expect long time voters to change.
You can’t expect Collins voters to see facts, read, and understand them either. Lie round the world, truth puts on pants.
The woman is a blight
