Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic challenger Troy Jackson accused each other of corruption during a heated debate Thursday in the Maine Senate race, one of the most closely watched midterm contests and one that could determine control of the upper chamber next year.
Both candidates found themselves on the defensive as they repeatedly lodged misconduct allegations against each other. Accusations of untrustworthiness dominated the hour-long debate.
ProPublica reported last week that the FBI had proposed investigating bribery claims against Ms. Collins, but President Trump derailed the inquiry.
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In the run-up to Ms. Collins’ successful bid for a fifth term in 2020, the head of a Super PAC solicited a campaign donation from contracting firm Navatek, which demanded assurances that it would get federal contracts in return, according to the outlet.
Using a shell company, Navatek CEO Martin Kao sent $150,000 to the Super PAC and then told other executives that he had been informed Ms. Collins would guarantee the company would win $32 million in federal contracts, ProPublica said. In late 2024, the FBI was moving towards investigating the allegations, but the agents leading the case were pushed out by Mr. Trump as part of his purge of the bureau.
On Thursday night, Ms. Collins called the allegations “absolutely false.” She said the claims had been investigated by the Biden-era Justice Department, the FBI and the Federal Election Commission and each concluded they were meritless.
Ms. Collins also blasted Kao, who is currently serving an 87-month sentence for COVID-19 relief fraud, “a crook,” who “belongs” in jail.
“He has alleged that he couldn’t get a meeting with me and the University of Maine unless he contributed funds. That is provably false. We have a picture of us meeting … a year and half before there was any contributions from this crook, and, of course, we gave away the money and today he’s in jail.”
But Mr. Jackson didn’t let it go.
“The type of power and corruption that we’re seeing with Susan Collins every day,” he said.
“There are payments, there are emails, there’s meetings and then Donald Trump got elected, he made the investigation go away. Now Senator Collins is voting with Donald Trump 96% of the time.”
Mr. Jackson predicted more stories of alleged corruption would emerge about Ms. Collins, noting that the stuff that has come out has been fact-checked by media outlets.
But Ms. Collins had plenty of her own ammunition.
She hammered Mr. Jackson over accusations that while in the Maine Senate, he championed a bill that sent millions of dollars to his son’s lobbying firm.
She also depicted him as a hypocrite. As a candidate for the U.S. Senate, Mr. Jackson has insisted that he will not accept money from corporations. However, the Washington Post reported this week that just two years ago, Mr. Jackson led a PAC that received tens of thousands of dollars from tobacco firms, gambling companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
“Troy was head of this PAC. He set the rules…and for him to pretend that he had no idea what the contributions were to his leadership back when it was big tobacco, it was pharmaceutical companies, it was many other companies just defies belief.”
Mr. Jackson didn’t directly rebut the accusations against his son but said that Ms. Collins was “deflecting because she doesn’t want to talk about her record.”
He also insisted he didn’t know where the money was coming from, that the checks came in before he took control of the PAC and he was the one who stopped the practice.
“There’s nothing there, but Sen. Collins would like to confuse the voters because she is in a system where she’s taking money from corporations almost daily to make sure that they get the contracts they want,” he said.
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