{"id":213,"date":"2026-06-16T10:36:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=213"},"modified":"2026-06-16T10:36:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:36:44","slug":"the-legend-of-susan-collins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"The Legend of Susan Collins"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The 2020 election made Maine Sen. Susan Collins a political legend.<\/p>\n

National Democrats, who\u2019d effectively let Collins walk to victory in 2014, wanted her seat in the worst way this time. The Democratic candidate, state House Speaker Sara Gideon, and her outside affiliates raised more money than could even be spent on a political campaign in Maine. Democrats\u2019 heavy-handed assault seemed to be working: Collins did not lead in a single public poll for the entirety of 2020. While not celebrating prematurely, Democrats had reason to be cautiously optimistic that they might finally catch their white whale.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSara was leading every private poll that she had,\u201d too, former Rep. Tom Allen, who lost to Collins in 2008 and is a friend of Gideon\u2019s, told me.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 team didn\u2019t know what was coming, either. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody had a firm bead on what the result was going to be,\u201d Lance Dutson, a Maine Republican strategist who worked on Collins\u2019 2008, 2014, and 2020 campaigns, told me. \u201cThere was definitely some concern.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Among those watching the returns on election night with Collins was Bill Green, a household name in Maine local broadcasting who had dropped his long-standing apolitical image to endorse Collins in a campaign ad. Both sides of the race agreed that Green\u2019s ad had a significant impact on the contest, but Green himself wasn\u2019t sure it would be enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started the night thinking she was going to lose,\u201d Green told me. \u201cVery early in that evening, the returns from a town called Etna came in. It was like 520 to 170, and I thought, \u2018that\u2019s not 60\u201340, that\u2019s 3-to-1.\u2019 \u201d More towns in Collins\u2019 base, the small-town, northern parts of Maine, came in with similarly lopsided margins. An hour after thinking she would lose, Green felt comfortable. I asked him if Collins showed any roller coaster of emotions as she watched the returns next to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s calm. She\u2019s the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collins beat Gideon by 9 points among the same Maine electorate that selected Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump by 9 points. It was a night of many surprises nationally in a year of trash polling. But no outcome left as many jaws on the floor as the Maine Senate race. That included Gideon\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was stunned. She was stunned<\/em>,\u201d Allen told me. Gideon didn\u2019t respond to inquiries for this article and, since the release of her prerecorded concession speech, has all but disappeared from political life.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 dramatic upset gave her an aura of invincibility. She was already known to be a difficult opponent. In 2008, for example\u2014admittedly in an era when ticket-splitting was more common\u2014Collins defeated Allen by 23 points even as Barack Obama carried Maine by 17. But when she sent the full brunt and largesse of the national Democratic Party packing, she showed a new sort of grit. Her fellow Senate Republicans bowed before her. Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton declared her \u201cthe greatest that\u2019s ever been.\u201d Texas Sen. John Cornyn shared a meme of Collins sitting on a throne of skulls.<\/p>\n

Six years later, Collins again is in a competitive election\u2014albeit against a very different kind of opponent\u2014in a bad political environment for Republicans. National Democrats, again, have their sights trained on flipping her seat. Collins has led in only a few polls this year. Here we go again.<\/p>\n

How, then, does Susan Collins do it? How, in a state that hasn\u2019t voted for a Republican for president since 1988, has she been able to survive the ever-closing-in walls of nationalized politics and polarization, where the quality of individual senators matters less to voters than which party controls the Senate? And, despite it being perhaps the worst political environment for Republicans that she\u2019s ever run in, can she do it again?<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve tried to watch a YouTube video in Maine over the past few months, you have probably been asked to thank Susan Collins.<\/p>\n

The millions of dollars in ads run by a dark money group tied to Senate Republican leaders follow a similar structure. You like water? Collins secured millions to protect Maine\u2019s water. Hospitals? Millions to expand them. You hate diabetes? She has a long and thorough career securing money for diabetes research. The ads, for a while, encouraged viewers to \u201ccall and thank Senator Collins\u201d and \u201ctell her you appreciate all she is doing for Maine.\u201d Perhaps recognizing that it was a bit tin-eared to encourage voters to call and thank<\/em> their public servants for doing their jobs, the more recent ads now encourage viewers to \u201ccall and tell\u201d Collins to keep fighting for these interests.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 reelection strategy is simple: maintain her well-regarded constituent services operation. In each and every campaign she\u2019s run, \u201cit\u2019s always been about what she can do for Maine,\u201d as Tom Allen put it. It is about using her leverage in Congress, both as a swing vote and, now, as the top appropriator in the Senate, to bring money back home, not only in the months before reelection, but every minute of every term. Instead of doing big rallies, she\u2019s doing ribbon-cuttings and groundbreakings on projects for which she has claimed credit. She\u2019s visiting medical research centers she\u2019s helped fund. Her website puts on vivid display, in map and list form, the specific earmarks she has landed.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe quantifies her work to the voters as her primary reelection strategy,\u201d Dutson said.<\/p>\n

It works because it\u2019s not just that she\u2019s cutting checks and helicopter-dumping cash across the Maine countryside. She\u2019s forming long-term relationships with nonpartisan interests and groups\u2014firefighters, diabetics, healthcare researchers, Alzheimer\u2019s research advocacy groups\u2014that lock into her coalition. \u201cThat\u2019s something that I don\u2019t think you can put together in an 18-month campaign, or even in one term in the Senate,\u201d former Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, who served with Collins on the Appropriations Committee, told me. \u201cIt almost transfers from generation to generation in a career like Susan has had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats will concede the point here.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe spent 30 years building relationships that matter with voters,\u201d David Farmer, a Maine Democratic strategist and columnist, told me. He mentioned one of the YouTube ads about how Collins had led efforts to increase funding for diabetes research. \u201cYou know, it\u2019s not like the Democratic side is pro<\/em>-diabetes,\u201d Farmer said. \u201cBut she has shown up for those groups and worked hard in that regard on these constituent service issues that have mattered. And that\u2019s real. You can\u2019t take that away from what she\u2019s done.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s just in the past year that the real money started rolling in.<\/p>\n

In 2020, Collins emphasized during her campaign that she was in line to be the next chair of the Appropriations Committee, a title she assumed at the beginning of 2025. While congressional appropriators\u2019 authority has been harmed by the Trump administration\u2019s disregard for congressional spending mandates, there\u2019s still plenty of earmark money for members to spread around. And for the chair, it\u2019s orders of magnitude more money.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you really get as appropriations chair is hundreds<\/em> of millions of dollars in earmarks,\u201d a fellow congressional appropriator told me, \u201cnot what everybody else gets.\u201d In Collins\u2019 case, for the current fiscal year, the sum total\u2014as she proudly boasted in a press release\u2014was \u201c$428,643,000\u201d for 158 projects \u201cacross each of Maine\u2019s 16 counties.\u201d Maine\u2019s smallness, too, ensures that she can fulfill her home state\u2019s dreams while also being magnanimous with her colleagues. Another appropriator, South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds, noted that she\u2019s still been \u201cpretty judicious\u201d in spreading the pot around the committee, noting that \u201cthere have been appropriations chairmen in the past that have perhaps been more overt in the interest for their own state.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a fine line,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Collins is not just touting the money she\u2019s already brought in for Maine. She is unsubtly telling Maine voters that this gravy train has only just left the station. As she regularly notes, she is the \u201cfirst Maine senator to chair the Senate Appropriations Committee in 92 years,\u201d describing the moment of her chairmanship as \u201ctruly a once-in-a-century opportunity for our state.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project Collins chose to champion in her first television advertisement in May was the Eastport breakwater, a pier in Eastport, Maine, that collapsed in 2014. In the ad, Eastport\u2019s Port Authority director celebrates Collins for her role in helping to secure federal grant money that allowed the breakwater to be rebuilt.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks after the ad came out, I spoke with Brian Schuth, the city manager of Eastport\u2014a nonpartisan, unelected position. While he\u2019s only been in the job a couple of years, he spoke to how these grants to small-town or rural areas, particularly in Collins\u2019 political base to the north, are the only way that such projects can be undertaken. He noted that the federal contribution to rebuild the breakwater, which creates the inner harbor that allows fishermen and lobstermen to work, was $6 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy total taxation in Eastport is $4 million,\u201d he said. He also described work Collins\u2019 office had done to help the city\u2019s small airport build a new terminal and runway. (\u201cAs a matter of fact,\u201d he noted, \u201cthat\u2019s how Susan and the other congressional people can get here for the Fourth of July parade.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe total amount that she may bring to our corner of Maine,\u201d Schuth said, \u201cmay not be huge, but we\u2019re not huge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eastport is small and remote, like much of northern Maine. Eastport is in Washington County, which is bigger in area than Delaware but has a total population of only 31,200. Collins is originally from Caribou (population 7,300) in Aroostook County, the largest county in the state by area, with nearly all of its 67,000-person population hugging Route 1 along the state\u2019s eastern border. These are all towns and areas that, with their small tax bases, have limited means for public investment\u2014whether that\u2019s for a major pier, an executive airport, or a fire station. It makes the state, overall, dependent on federal dollars, a net \u201ctaker\u201d state.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 message is that with her, and her seniority, they have an opportunity to take like never before.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just that Susan Collins is good at bringing money to Maine. She\u2019s also great at taking\u2014and getting\u2014credit for bringing money to Maine.<\/p>\n

Brian Schuth told me that when he\u2019s putting in an earmark request, he has been advised to take it to Collins\u2019 office first among the Maine delegation \u201cbecause she\u2019s got the most seniority and she\u2019s the chair of the Appropriations Committee.\u201d Straightforward enough.<\/p>\n

Another source in Maine politics, though, told me of a better strategy. This source was advising a Maine foundation on how to request an earmark. When the group said they planned to go to Collins first, the source recommended they start with Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree, also an appropriator, in the House. \u201cI told the board chair\u201d that whatever Pingree could get in the House, \u201cSusan will up that by a million dollars. Whatever<\/em> the congresswoman could get, Susan would put another million dollars when it came through the Senate. And that\u2019s exactly what she did.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s very attuned to figuring out how she can be seen as the champion for particular projects in Maine,\u201d the source said, noting that it\u2019s \u201cnot a bad thing.\u201d It does highlight how central I can do more for Maine<\/em> is to her campaigns, though.<\/p>\n

Senators get higher earmark allocations, so for bigger requests, Pingree and Collins\u2014who, decades after Collins defeated Pingree in her first reelection race in 2002, have a good working relationship\u2014might tag-team with each other to secure the funding. But, as another longtime observer of Collins in Maine politics put it to me, Collins \u201chas a remarkable way of using \u2018I\u2019 more than \u2018we\u2019 in statements.\u201d<\/p>\n

In other words, Collins is more than just the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee: She\u2019s a politician. And she guards her reputation closely.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my view, she\u2019s the most intensely competitive person in the Senate,\u201d former Sen. Roy Blunt told me. \u201cShe\u2019s competitive about the work, and she\u2019s also competitive about the politics. In both places, that allows her to get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are other ways to put it.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe holds a grudge like nobody\u2019s business,\u201d David Farmer, the Maine Democratic strategist and columnist, told me. \u201cSo if you cross her,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\u2019s a price to be paid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf somebody endorses against her, somebody works against her, or someone says something that\u2019s unkind, someone writes an editorial that disagrees with her, a reporter writes a story that is negatively inclined against her,\u201d he said, \u201cthey hear about it.\u201d He mentioned that she had tried to get him fired on two distinct occasions.<\/p>\n

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That means that Collins\u2019 position atop the Appropriations Committee, and the hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks that come with it, is both a carrot and a stick.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a price to be paid for people who may be thinking about different issues,\u201d Farmer said, \u201cbut maybe you\u2019ve got an appropriations request in and you don\u2019t want to risk burning that bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve covered a lot of politicians over 40 years now,\u201d journalist Steve Collins, who\u2019s been covering Maine for a decade, told me, \u201cand her office is the most persnickety that I have ever run across.\u201d He describes it as them \u201ccalling and having lots of little questions and points about pretty much everything that gets written about her.\u201d He said he found it a little \u201codd\u201d and \u201cextreme,\u201d but didn\u2019t think she held grudges<\/em>, necessarily.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve said some pretty horrible things about her,\u201d he said about writing columns critical of her, \u201cand she\u2019s always nice enough when I talk to her.\u201d It\u2019s similar, he said, to how Susan Collins\u2019 staffers talk about working for her. \u201cShe\u2019s very exacting.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a more diplomatic interpretation of the way Farmer put it: \u201cShe is a hard-ass. And she\u2019s a hard-ass on her staff. And they\u2019re hard-asses.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut,\u201d Farmer said, \u201cthey\u2019re very good.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time is a flat circle in Susan Collins\u2019 campaigns. Whenever she has been up for reelection, her opponents have tried to persuade Mainers that she\u2019s not a \u201cmoderate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t get to call yourself a moderate if you voted against the minimum wage,\u201d Chellie Pingree told Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman in 2002. \u201cYou don\u2019t get to call yourself a moderate if you voted for the biggest tax cut for the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2008, then-Sen. Sherrod Brown did a campaign stop on Tom Allen\u2019s behalf. The Bangor Daily News quoted Brown talking about how Susan Collins voted with George W. Bush 81 percent of the time: \u201cThen, when she comes back to Bangor, she brags about the other 19 percent of the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her 2014 opponent, Shenna Bellows, made the same argument in 2014. She lost by 37 points. Gideon tried a variation, arguing that Collins had changed from the person she was when first elected. It didn\u2019t work\u2014at least, well enough. Flash-forward to 2026, pick any day of the week, and now it\u2019s Graham Platner\u2019s turn. \u201cWe are going to beat someone who, for years, has tried to trick us all into thinking that she\u2019s a moderate,\u201d Graham Platner said on the trail in early June.<\/p>\n

Is Susan Collins a moderate? Her success certainly depends on convincing voters that she is. But if you would like to set a social media thread ablaze with ferocious debate, this question will never let you down.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because,as strongly as people feel <\/em>like there is an objective answer, it\u2019s a subjective question. Yes, she is one of the, if not the, most bipartisan senators in the body year in and year out. Yes, she also votes with her party the vast majority of the time\u2014just less than most of the others do, and sometimes on high-profile occasions. She has voted for some signature pieces of Republican legislation, controversial nominations, and impeachments of Republican presidents\u2014and voted against other signature pieces of Republican legislation, controversial nominations, and impeachments of that same Republican president. The closest thing to an objective answer we have is the verdict from Maine swing voters, who so far have decided every six years that, whatever she is, she\u2019s worth sending back to the Senate.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s more to moderation than votes, and there\u2019s more to politics than policy positions right now. At a time when President Trump is pushing executive power past its legal limits\u2014and, by the way, attempting to neuter the Senate along the way\u2014something\u2019s a little off when you only want to talk about money for new fire stations.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t new ground. In a 2008 Associated Press story, Allen\u2019s campaign argued that Collins \u201chas been dodging the big issues like Iraq, health care, and the economy while trumpeting her work on constituent services.\u201d Allen still expresses these frustrations today.<\/p>\n

\u201c \u2018Bold\u2019 is not an adjective that\u2019s ever been applied to her,\u201d Allen told me. \u201cShe\u2019s a decent person. But I would say she\u2019s very, very cautious. Timid, even. What she typically says about difficult issues is that she\u2019s \u2018concerned,\u2019 she\u2019s always \u2018concerned.\u2019 And then maybe she does something, maybe she doesn\u2019t. She\u2019s not Lisa Murkowski.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no surprise that this comparison would be top of mind for a Maine Democrat like Allen.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against proceeding to Brett Kavanaugh\u2019s Supreme Court nomination. I was in the chamber for that vote, and I will never forget it. You could only hear her offer a hushed \u201cno\u201d because the room had never been more silent.<\/p>\n

A couple of months earlier, I had been in a press scrum with Collins when she reported that Kavanaugh had just told her, in a private meeting, that he believed Roe<\/em> was \u201csettled law.\u201d Four years later, when Kavanaugh voted to unsettle Roe<\/em>, Collins wrote in a statement that the Dobbs <\/em>decision was \u201cinconsistent\u201d with what Kavanaugh had told her. One of the anchors of Collins\u2019 moderate image is that she supports the right to an abortion. The 2026 election will be the first time she\u2019s been on the ballot since the Supreme Court, with Kavanaugh as a swing vote, eliminated that right.<\/p>\n

Moderation alone, though, won\u2019t do it. Collins will also need every right-leaning vote she can get in the state\u2014and this cycle, without Trump on the ballot, there\u2019s no guarantee they\u2019ll turn out.<\/p>\n

So at the same time Collins has been running her usual campaign of skipping to and from ribbon-cuttings on fire stations and hospital wings, she\u2019s reestablished some ties with the right. She\u2019s formed an alliance with former Gov. Paul LePage, the cantankerous proto-MAGA former governor who is now running for the more GOP-friendly of Maine\u2019s two House seats. The two have had a poor relationship in the past, but this year, they need each other. She has supported the SAVE America Act, the GOP\u2019s strict voter verification and voter ID law which Democrats lambaste as a cloaked effort at disenfranchisement.<\/p>\n

Collins has also leaned into the debate over trans issues. She\u2019s supported an effort to put a question on the November ballot that would require public school sports, bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms to segregate by the sex assigned at birth. A benefit of such a question being on the ballot would be to ensure MAGA turnout in the fall; billionaire Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, who is not from Maine but prefers to have a Senate Republican majority, financed the effort. Bellows, now Maine\u2019s secretary of state and a gubernatorial candidate, recently struck the question from the ballot due to invalid signatures, a decision that\u2019s now in court.<\/p>\n

And as far as Trump goes, though, it appears that they\u2019ve agreed to stay out of each other\u2019s way. His name barely ever comes out of her mouth. And someone seems, against all odds, to have successfully drilled it into Trump\u2019s head that it would be best to leave alone this senator who once voted to convict him on impeachment charges if he wants to maintain control of the Senate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope she wins\u2014she\u2019s a good person actually\u2014but we have to win,\u201d Trump said in a February interview on Fox News. \u201cWe have to keep the majority, otherwise all of the things we\u2019ve done are going to go down the tubes.\u201d<\/p>\n

You may have noticed that I am several thousand words into this piece and have barely mentioned Graham Platner, Collins\u2019 Democratic opponent. The last few weeks of news, with Platner\u2019s history of sexting and volatile relationships, have left Democrats everywhere wondering what\u2019s next to drop. Platner\u2019s nomination could leave the question this piece seeks to answer\u2014how does Susan Collins do it?\u2014with a simple answer for 2026: By drawing a deeply damaged opponent.<\/p>\n

But is Platner a deeply damaged opponent? He\u2019s already demonstrated a Teflon-like quality in the face of earlier negative stories about his inappropriate Reddit posts and his Nazi tattoo. Just as the Collins team believes Maine\u2019s resistance to national trends will carry her to a sixth term, Platner\u2019s team is emphasizing the state\u2019s independence to ward off a deluge of punishing stories: that these are national stories by national publications with their own agendas that will be greeted more skeptically by the free-thinking people of Maine. As some of Platner\u2019s campaign signs read, \u201cThey Don\u2019t Know Maine.\u201d<\/p>\n

The immediate aftermath of Susan Collins\u2019 2020 win had an air of finality to it. National Democrats had finally thrown the kitchen sink at Collins and not come particularly close.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like that was the last time anyone would bother trying to knock her off,\u201d Lance Dutson, the former consultant for Collins, told me. \u201cShe had succeeded in so many allegedly difficult situations that there\u2019s not too much more you could throw at her. But six years is an eternity in politics. So here we are again.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re here again not just because Democrats can\u2019t resist another shot. There are two legends surrounding her endurance that, by 2026, may have been outrun by the facts. The 2020 election results, while an unquestionably impressive political feat, did not demonstrate that Collins is invincible. And while many Mainers may believe they practice a form of political exceptionalism\u2014that there\u2019s a \u201clong-standing sense of Maine voters as being insulated from the vicissitudes of Washington, D.C.,\u201d as Dutson put it\u2014it\u2019s not clear that Maine is as divorced from our national politics as either candidate would have you believe.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 51 percent vote share in 2020 was her worst Senate election performance\u2014it was 17 percentage points less than what she received in 2014. Her 9-point margin over Sara Gideon, too, was more complicated than it appears. Lisa Savage, the Green-aligned independent candidate, earned 5 percent of the vote, and was instructing her supporters to rank Gideon second. The race never reached a second round of counting since Collins\u2014barely\u2014cleared 50 percent in the first. The final margin between those who did want Collins to be their senator for another six years and those who didn\u2019t might have been a lot closer than 9 points.<\/p>\n

And this time, Susan Collins will be running in what could be the worst national environment for Republicans since 2018, or even 2006.<\/p>\n

But is Collins impervious to national trends, as the story goes? About that.<\/p>\n

Everyone I spoke with in Maine for this story was uncommonly nice. Everyone shared phone numbers of people they felt I should talk to. Several offered to host me or take me out for a beer. Bill Green offered to take me out on his boat and show me a cool lighthouse. (Here\u2019s the full list of interviewees for any story who have ever offered to take me on their boat or <\/em>to show me a cool lighthouse: Bill Green.) I admired the way they spoke with pride about their state and its independent, contrarian, small-c conservative character, the way they like politicians who think for themselves, and their resistance to national political trends, and that this distinctive character could be responsible for Collins\u2019 endurance.<\/p>\n

And so I was dreading having to editorialize about this, but fortunately a pollster did it for me.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery state says that,\u201d said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which runs the Pine Tree State Poll. \u201cI think if you went to every state in the country and asked, \u2018Are you guys more independent or do you just follow the party line?,\u2019 \u201d he said, of course they\u2019d call themselves independent. He noted that the number of \u201ctrue\u201d independents is quite limited, most people are locked into their sides, and ticket-splitting is almost completely gone from politics. Longtime incumbents, especially strong ones like Collins, are shielded from the full effects of the great national polarization.<\/p>\n

Until they aren\u2019t. As much as Collins may wish there were and Mainers may believe there is, there\u2019s no force field around the state protecting it from this nationalized politics in the long run\u2014and there\u2019s no force field protecting Platner from a pile of bad stories in the short run. But Maine is a light-blue state, in a pro-Democrat national environment, in which Democrats everywhere are on fire about what\u2019s happening to the country. It would be foolish to say Susan Collins can\u2019t win again. But it also would be foolish to say she can\u2019t lose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Trump Says the Deal With Iran Is Complete. Not So Fast.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats have been trying for three decades to take this Senate seat. 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