The eyes of the politically obsessed are on Michigan today, where Democratic primary voters are casting ballots in the state’s open U.S. Senate race.
Does the result of this race matter here in Maine? You bet, especially for Team Collins as it fleshes out the lines of attack the campaign will use against Troy Jackson in the three-month sprint to Election Day.
Facing off in the Michigan primary are Representative Haley Stevens, a moderate backed by party leadership and endorsed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive public health leader who most recently ran the Department of Health, Human and Veterans Services in Wayne County.
The race has become a national bellwether for the internal battle, within the Democratic Party, between a more centrist, establishment-oriented politics and a progressive agenda that opponents (Democrat and Republican) and some media are quick to label as socialism—even in cases where there is little evidence of any direct coordination between a candidate and the Democratic Socialists of America.
In my recent piece, The Aroostook County Cage Match, I noted that the story of the year continues to be the collapse of President Trump and his party’s political standing and voters’ desire for big changes in November. The internal schisms in the Democratic Party, while real and unresolved, are a longer-term story with greater implications for 2028, in my opinion, than for this fall’s campaigns. Republicans, of course, would like to do everything in their power to have this become the 2026 narrative. And as we sit here in early August, with few people paying attention to political news or any news at all for that matter, the national press would also love nothing more than to see some stories that rev up a sense of siege in the Democratic Party and spice up the overall storyline heading into the fall campaign—which brings us back to Michigan and Maine.
If El-Sayed wins the Michigan Senate primary, it will be an earthquake result in a major swing state, one that will replace Trump’s “mountain of woes” in the news cycle for a few days at least. The headlines will become something along the lines of “Are the radicals taking over the Democratic Party” and you better believe Team Collins will be thrilled.
Despite her clear financial advantage, Susan Collins faces a tough path to reelection in the current political environment. To have a chance, she has to find a way to rapidly define Troy Jackson as out of the mainstream. It’s no coincidence that her first reaction to Jackson’s ascendance as the nominee was to label him a Bernie Bro. I think Collins is likely to lean into this argument further, regardless of who wins Michigan. But if El-Sayed triumphs, expect to see extra effort from her campaign to capitalize on the surge of national coverage that will follow.