2020 United States Senate election in Maine

Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins ran for a fifth term.^[1] Collins had won each election to this seat by a greater victory margin than the one before it. Observers did not expect this election to continue that trend.^[2]

Collins was criticized for her decision to vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court despite his anti-abortion stances (Collins is pro-choice) and allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse against him,^{[citation needed]} though she gave a highly publicized speech on the Senate floor explaining her reasoning.^{[3][failed verification]} She also faced criticism for her stance on the impeachment of President Donald Trump.^{[citation needed]} Collins voted in favor of allowing witness testimony in the Senate trial, and was the first Republican to do so,^[4] and she voted to acquit Trump on both charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.^[5] She said she voted to acquit because "impeachment of a president should be reserved for conduct that poses such a serious threat to our governmental institutions as to warrant the extreme step of immediate removal from office."^[6] She initially claimed that Trump "learned a pretty big lesson" from the impeachment,^[7] but later said that she thought he had not learned from it after all.^[8] She was also criticized for running for third, fourth, and fifth Senate terms despite vowing to serve no more than two terms during her 1996 campaign, though she has explained this as a product of having learned the value of seniority in the Senate. The emphasis on seniority became a key theme of her campaign.^[9] Collins was widely considered one of the two least conservative Republican U.S. senators (the other being Lisa Murkowski).^[1]

During Trump's presidency, Collins's stance on Trump waffled, as he did not share her moderate politics but had a strong base in Maine's sprawling, rural 2nd congressional district. Collins voted against the Affordable Care Act repeal, but for the GOP's 2017 tax bill and to acquit Trump in his first impeachment. She voted to confirm Trump's nominees Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court but against the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett just days before the 2020 election, citing disagreement with process.^[10]

The Democratic nominee, Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives Sara Gideon, supported criminal justice reforms, expansion of the Affordable Care Act, rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, and imposing universal background checks on gun sales to combat gun violence. In 2019, Gideon faced an election ethics complaint for accepting reimbursements for her political donations from her own PAC. Gideon apologized for the violation, reimbursed the federal government a total of $3,250, and closed the PAC.^[11] Gideon was also criticized for keeping the Maine House of Representatives adjourned for most of the year (neighboring New Hampshire had reconvened its sizably larger legislature by late spring) and for allegedly turning a blind eye to a legislative colleague accused of molesting underage girls until she was forced to acknowledge the scandal.^[12][13]

Lisa Savage, an antiwar activist and schoolteacher from Solon, initially sought the Maine Green Independent Party nomination, but in late February, she announced her intention to instead qualify for the ballot as an independent due to Maine's ballot access measures.^[14][15]

Max Linn, a financial planner and conservative activist from Bar Harbor, was a Trump supporter and former candidate of the Republican and Reform parties. In July 2020, he qualified for the ballot as an independent. Former Republican state senator Mary Small challenged the signatures on his petition, but the secretary of state found that he had enough and he was placed on the ballot.^[16] Later that month, he announced his intention to drop out of the race to support Collins. But days later, he decided not to drop out unless Collins agreed to a list of policies, which she did not.^[17]

Party primaries were initially scheduled to take place on June 9, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the state, Governor Janet Mills rescheduled them for July 14. Mills's executive order also expanded voters' ability to request absentee ballots, which could then be done up to and on election day.^[18] The primaries were conducted with ranked choice voting.^{[citation needed]} Parties qualified to participate in the 2020 primary election were the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, and the Maine Green Independent Party.

On April 20, 2019, attorney and activist Bre Kidman became the first person to announce their candidacy for the Democratic nomination. If elected, they would have been the first ever non-binary U.S. Senator.^[28] On June 13, 2019, former Maine gubernatorial candidate Betsy Sweet declared her candidacy.^[29] Eleven days later, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon announced her candidacy, receiving widespread media coverage.^[30][31] General Jon Treacy had previously announced his candidacy before withdrawing. Former Google executive and political aide Ross LaJeunesse, who would have been the first openly gay man elected to the Senate, announced his candidacy in November 2019. He received the endorsement of the national political group The Victory Fund in January 2020. LaJeunesse eventually withdrew from the race in March 2020, citing the inability to continue his strategy of campaigning in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and endorsed Gideon. Two debates were held with all three candidates, while one hosted by WCSH was attended only by Sweet and Kidman.^[32]

Results

More information Party, Candidate ...

Democratic primary results^[55]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%
	Democratic	Sara Gideon	116,264	71.47%
	Democratic	Betsy Sweet	37,327	22.94%
	Democratic	Bre Kidman	9,090	5.59%
Total votes			162,681	100.0%

Close

According to AP News, "Collins defied prognostications of doom from Washington's consultant class to score perhaps the most unexpected victory of the 2020 cycle, hanging a lopsided loss on a Democratic challenger despite a pile of outside Democratic money and open hostility from the leader of her party, President Donald Trump".^[160]

The hotly contested race became the most expensive in Maine history, with Collins spending $23 million and Gideon nearly $48 million.^[161] The race also had national implications, as defeating Collins was a key part of the Democrats' strategy to achieve a Senate majority. Collins defeated Gideon despite trailing in nearly every public poll. Like many Republican Senate candidates in 2020, Collins did much better on Election Day than the polls predicted.^[162] She positioned herself as an underdog candidate running against an opponent who was not a Maine native and who received extensive support from out-of-staters.^[160][163]

Following her first election to the Senate in 1996, Collins had won her previous re-election campaigns easily.^[160] She had received over 68% of the vote in 2014.^[164] In this election, Collins outperformed Republican U.S. President Donald Trump, who lost the state to Democratic nominee Joe Biden^[160] by more than nine percent.^[165] Maine was the only state to elect a senator of a different party than the winner of its presidential contest in the November 3 election.^[166][167]

Gideon underperformed winning Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden by 10.6%. Her performance was the second-worst underperformance by a Democratic Senate candidate in the country.^[166] In the coastal town of Wells,^[168] Biden won by 14% and Collins by 6%.^[169]

• 2020 Maine elections

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