Collins Spars With Jackson Over Healthcare, Campaign Finances in 3rd Maine Senate Debate

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and her Democratic challenger Troy Jackson clashed over healthcare affordability, rising heating costs, and campaign financing in the third debate in the high-stakes race for Maine’s U.S. Senate seat.

Moderators opened the Oct. 13 debate by asking the candidates how they would lower heating costs after estimates suggested Mainers will spend an additional $725 this year to heat their homes compared to the previous winter.

Collins blamed Jackson’s leadership in the Maine Senate for the state’s higher heating costs and touted her work in Congress to provide access to the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP).

Jackson retorted that heating oil costs have risen roughly 80 percent in Maine from last year, based on data from the state’s Department of Energy Resources. He called LIHEAP a “short-term band-aid” for Mainers struggling with increased energy costs from the Iran war.

“The biggest factor that we have right now is the Iran War, and I would get us out of the Iran War. Unlike Senator Collins, who voted five times to put us in that war, because she does whatever Donald Trump wants,” Jackson said.

Collins said she voted nine times to end the Iran war. Jackson called these votes “too late” after President Donald Trump had pushed forward with his plan and suggested the senator should have used her influence as chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations to cut off funding to the war if she wanted it to end.

When it came to healthcare, Collins championed her bipartisan efforts to lower healthcare costs and prescription drug prices. Jackson criticized the senator for advancing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which cut federal spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program by $1 trillion.

Jackson said he supports Medicare for All and claimed it would fuel the economy by cutting costs for employers and allow them to hire more workers without needing to provide employee healthcare.

Collins said she would support expanding access to Medicare, but suggested the federal government needs to clean up fraud in both that program and Medicaid.

The debate heated up when Jackson derided Collins for her long list of billionaire donors, including X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Super political action committees (PACs) associated with Musk have donated more than $100 million to the senator’s campaign.

Collins responded by criticizing Jackson for not yet submitting a Federal Election Commission (FEC) filing and suggested the public doesn’t know who is funding the progressive Democrat’s campaign.

“He’s yet to tell us. He promised to be completely transparent, yet he has not filed a single report,” Collins said.

Jackson responded that he would release the report “tomorrow.”

“So she didn’t deny that 90 billionaires are funding her. But look, I’ll give you the report tomorrow morning. How about that?” he said.

“Because we see yours, and I know that there’s no billionaires funding me. So we’ll look. I’ll give you the report tomorrow, and then we’ll talk about it on Thursday,” Jackson added, referring to the candidates’ fourth and final debate on Oct. 15.

Campaign Heats Up

Networks WABI-TV and WAGM hosted a debate for the closely watched race on Tuesday in Bangor, bringing Collins and Jackson together onstage for a third time as the two candidates vied for Mainers’ support in the final weeks ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Collins, 73, is seeking a sixth term in the U.S. Senate and is largely running on her track record and voting history in Congress’s upper chamber. She has highlighted her Senate tenure and chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee as key assets over her opponent, a relative newcomer to national politics.

Jackson, 58, was a logger before entering the Maine Legislature and rising to state Senate president as a Democrat. A progressive, he supports Medicare for All, abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), raising lodging taxes for out-of-state visitors, expanding worker rights, and ceasing arms sales to Israel.

Jackson became the Democratic candidate in the race in late July after Graham Platner withdrew amid swirling allegations of physical and sexual abuse. Platner denied the allegations.

After failing to oust Collins in 2020 when then-candidate Joe Biden swept Maine by more than 9 percentage points, Democrats are looking for an opening this year as polls increasingly give the party a generous generic ballot advantage nationally, and as Jackson builds a small lead in polling averages.

Collins and Jackson met for their first debate in the race on Oct. 6, clashing over President Donald Trump’s war in Iran, the growing affordability crisis, tariffs, abortion, and Medicaid cuts in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Their second debate two days later rehashed many of these issues, with Jackson claiming that Collins and her husband were profiting off the war in Iran. Outraged, the senator told Jackson he owed her an apology, spurring Jackson to say, “No, you owe me an apology.”

The two candidates were also asked about their views on term limits in Congress. Jackson said he “absolutely” supports them as “they work well” in Maine.

Collins, now the longest-serving Republican woman in the upper chamber’s history, said she does not support term limits.

“That’s what you have elections for,” she said.

Jackson currently holds a modest 1.2-percentage-point lead over Collins in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

Out of all the states then-Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024, Maine is the only one with a Republican senator.

Chase Smith contributed to this report.