Susan Collins facing massive ad buy attacking tax vote
Susan Collins hasn’t even announced she’s running for reelection yet. But she’s coming under vicious attack over the airwaves in Maine as she prepares to launch her bid for a fifth term.
The outside group Maine Momentum is dramatically escalating its bombardment of Collins over the last weeks of December, homing in on the second anniversary of the GOP’s tax reform law that Collins supported in 2017, which Democrats believe is a vulnerability in her likely race against statehouse Speaker Sara Gideon.
The group planned to run $60,000 in ads over the next three weeks focusing on the law. But the group behind the buy is tripling its investment over the end of the year: Now, instead of $180,000 over a three-week period, the group will spend $540,000 on the ads, punctuating the edge Democrats currently have on the airwaves in the state.
In the ad, an Ogunquit lobsterman says he voted for Collins in the past but that the tax bill she voted for “didn’t help regular Mainers.”
"The number one thing we hear from Mainers about Senator Collins is how disappointed they are in her vote on the tax bill. They think the tax bill was a windfall for her special interest donors and didn’t do anything for average Mainers — and they are right,” said Willy Ritch, a spokesman for Maine Momentum.
Kevin Kelley, a spokesman for the Collins campaign, dinged Maine Momentum as “a dark money group that refuses to disclose its donors and that the Washington Post’s independent fact-checker has already said has a history of making false claims.”
“I doubt that misleading and untruthful political ads are on any Mainers’ holiday wish list,” Kelley said. “The truth is nearly 9 out of 10 Maine families who owe federal income taxes received a tax cut.”
The massive ad buy will go far in Maine, a state with a relatively cheap media market. But it’s also got plenty of competition: The state has now seen $7 million in spending for TV, radio and digital ads for a race that’s almost certain to be the most expensive in the state’s history. At this early stage, it’s the most expensive Senate race in the country.
Currently, the edge in spending goes to Democrats. With this buy, Maine Momentum will near $2 million in spending, nearly matching Gideon’s $2 million in ad buys, while Majority Forward spent more than $200,000 just this week and is over $750,000.
Collins has spent more than $1 million and her biggest outside backers, 1820 PAC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have each put in more than $500,000, according to media statistics.
James Arkin contributed to this report.
