共和党人昨晚聚集在缅因州班戈一家酒店的宴会厅里，慢慢意识到苏珊·柯林斯竞选第六个参议员任务的努力将以失败告终。民主党人在东海岸各地接连获胜，这股浪潮迅速蔓延至堪萨斯州、得克萨斯州以及更西边的地区。但柯林斯以前曾让悲观论者大跌眼镜。这里的共和党人坚信她无疑会再次做到。“她肯定会赢，”保守派活动家汤姆·伯皮在晚上9点刚过时向我断言。
The realization that Susan Collins would lose her bid for a sixth Senate term dawned slowly on the Republicans gathered last night in a hotel ballroom in Bangor, Maine. Democrats were notching victories up and down the Eastern Seaboard, and the wave was quickly spreading to Kansas, Texas, and points west. But Collins had confounded the doomsayers before. Republicans here believed she would undoubtedly do it again. “She’s sure to win,” a conservative activist, Tom Burpee, proclaimed to me shortly after 9 p.m.
几分钟前，另一位共和党人大步穿过宴会厅，做出了同样自信的预测：“缅因州，”他对我说，“没那么蠢。”柯林斯自己也丝毫不露担忧神色。晚上9点40分左右，她满面春风地在聚会上绕了一大圈。随着乐队Journey的《Don't Stop Believin'》响彻全场，柯林斯接受了拥抱和握手、小礼物和鼓励的话语。她凑近一位共和党助理的笔记本电脑屏幕，查看对方展示的最新计票结果的乐观分析。
A few minutes earlier, another Republican had marched through the ballroom with a similarly confident prediction: “Maine,” he told me, “isn’t that stupid.”Collins, too, betrayed no hint of concern. Around 9:40 p.m., she made a long, beaming pass through the party. As Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” filled the room, Collins accepted hugs and handshakes, small gifts and words of encouragement. She peered at the laptop screen of a Republican staffer who showed her a rosy analysis of the latest returns.
缅因州清点选票的速度令人煎熬，当柯林斯在人群中周旋时，共和党人仍有理由相信她或许能再一次挑战命运、力挽狂澜。
Maine counts its votes at an agonizing pace, and as Collins worked the crowd, it was still possible for Republicans to believe she might defy the odds one more time.
事后看来，柯林斯在宴会厅的这一圈漫步，不是凯旋庆祝，而是告别。她再也没有回到聚会上。午夜刚过，她给民主党人特洛伊·杰克逊打电话，祝贺他获胜。到那个深夜，宴会厅里的人群已稀稀拉拉只剩几十人，柯林斯没有发表认输演说。她是昨晚竞选连任失败的在任时间最长的共和党现任议员。截至今天上午，随着近90%的选票完成统计，杰克逊领先近8个百分点。“能为缅因州人民在美国参议院服务，是我一生的荣幸，”柯林斯在一份简短声明中说。
Collins’s stroll around the ballroom was, in retrospect, not a victory lap but a farewell. She would not return to the party. Shortly after midnight, she called the Democrat Troy Jackson to congratulate him on his win. By that late hour, the ballroom throng had thinned to just a few dozen people, and Collins made no concession speech. She was the longest-serving Republican incumbent to lose a reelection bid last night. With almost 90 percent of votes counted this morning, Jackson was up by nearly eight points. “It has been the honor of my life to serve the people of Maine in the United States Senate,” Collins said in a brief statement.
缅因州民主党人对终于击败这位最顽强的共和党参议员，也仅仅是感到略微惊讶。随着杰克逊在竞选最后几周的民调中超越柯林斯，许多民主党人的乐观情绪被上一次试图击败她的记忆所冲淡。进入2020年大选日时，柯林斯被预测将败给资金充裕的前州立法领袖萨拉·吉迪恩。但柯林斯获胜了，以近乎相同的优势——约九个百分点——击败了吉迪恩，而那一年乔·拜登在缅因州战胜唐纳德·特朗普的优势也大约是九个百分点。
Democrats in Maine were only slightly less surprised to have finally ousted the most resilient of Republican senators. As Jackson pulled ahead of Collins in the polls during the closing weeks of the race, many Democrats found their optimism tempered by memories of the last time they tried to defeat her. Heading into Election Day in 2020, Collins was projected to lose to Sara Gideon, a well-funded former legislative leader in Maine. But Collins won, defeating Gideon by nearly the same margin—about nine points—that Joe Biden had when he prevailed over Donald Trump in Maine that year.
今年的竞选对民主党人来说动荡得多，杰克逊也并非他们以为——或希望——会对阵柯林斯的候选人。这位前伐木工人在过去二十年里大多时间担任州议员，曾竞选州长并在初选中获得第三名。但在格雷厄姆·普拉特纳的参议员竞选因性侵指控（他予以否认）而崩溃后，杰克逊成为潜在替代人选，并于7月在一个快速召开的提名大会上获胜。
This year’s campaign was far more tumultuous for Democrats, and Jackson was not the candidate they thought—or hoped—they’d be running against Collins. A former logger who spent most of the past two decades in the state legislature, Jackson had campaigned for governor and finished third in the primary. But after Graham Platner’s Senate candidacy collapsed following allegations of sexual assault (which he denied), Jackson emerged as a potential replacement, and he won a quick-fire nominating convention in July.
杰克逊和普拉特纳一样，是伯尼·桑德斯那种模式的进步派。他以“全民医保”为竞选纲领，并誓言反对查克·舒默连任民主党参议院领袖。但杰克逊此前持有的立场让他的竞选比党派希望的更为复杂。民主党人猛烈抨击柯林斯支持大法官布雷特·卡瓦诺和尼尔·戈萨奇，这两位特朗普提名的最高法院大法官投票推翻了“罗诉韦德案”。
Jackson, like Platner, is a progressive in the mold of Bernie Sanders. He campaigned on Medicare for All and vowed to oppose another term for Chuck Schumer as the Democratic Senate leader. But Jackson also previously held positions that made his campaign more complicated than the party would have liked. Democrats have assailed Collins for her support for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, Trump appointees to the Supreme Court who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
然而，柯林斯长期声称支持堕胎权，而杰克逊职业生涯初期却是合法堕胎的反对者。“特洛伊进化了，苏珊·柯林斯退化了，”堕胎权倡导组织“生殖自由为所有人”首席执行官米尼·蒂马拉朱周一在为杰克逊助选时对记者说。30年后，缅因州也进化了。
Yet whereas Collins has long claimed to support abortion rights, Jackson was an opponent of legal abortion at the beginning of his career. “Troy evolved. Susan Collins devolved,” Mini Timmaraju, CEO of the abortion-rights advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All, told reporters as she campaigned for Jackson on Monday. After 30 years, Maine has evolved as well.
柯林斯重现了2020年助她赢得第五个任期的竞选信息。她以缅因州在华盛顿的守护者身份参选，依托自己作为跨越党派分歧的温和派声誉，以及她作为参议院拨款委员会主席为家乡争取数十亿美元联邦资金的能力。
Collins reprised the message that won her a fifth term in 2020. She ran as Maine’s guardian in Washington, leaning on her reputation as a moderate who works across the aisle and on her ability to bring home billions of dollars in federal funding as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
杰克逊和柯林斯都在缅因州北部同一个农村县长大，那里离加拿大边境不远。尽管杰克逊在缅因州议会担任领袖多年，柯林斯却把他当作一个新手，认为他在华盛顿会力不从心。柯林斯在竞选后期的一则广告更明确地表达了这一点。“我们这里说的可不是买一考得木柴，”已退休的缅因州广播员比尔·格林在广告中说，这是指杰克逊的伐木背景。
Both Jackson and Collins grew up in the same rural county in northern Maine, not far from the Canadian border. Despite Jackson’s many years as a leader in Maine’s legislature, Collins treated him as a novice who’d be in over his head in Washington. A Collins ad late in the campaign made the point more explicitly. “We’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here,” the retired Maine broadcaster Bill Green said in the commercial, a reference to Jackson’s logging background.
“我们是要送一个人去美国参议院，而特洛伊不具备发挥作用所需的工具。”在两人的四场辩论中，杰克逊通常称她为“柯林斯参议员”。她则直呼他“特洛伊”，这一选择看似体现小州的亲切，实则意在凸显两人地位上的差距。当杰克逊在最后一场辩论中让柯林斯“闭嘴”时，她的竞选团队将这句话与有关杰克逊作为议员对女性恃强凌弱、恐吓威胁的报道联系起来。
“We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn’t have the tools he needs to be effective.”During their four debates, Jackson usually referred to her as “Senator Collins.”She just called him “Troy,” a choice that suggested small-state friendliness but was really designed to accentuate the stature gap. When Jackson told Collins to “shut up” during the final debate, her campaign linked the remark to reports that, as a legislator, Jackson was bullying and intimidating toward women.
杰克逊否认了这一指控——一位前同事曾对记者说，他有时会发脾气，但并非“带有性别意味”。但这次选举中的选民也很愤怒，急于回绝传统政客。杰克逊乐于参与一场关于谁更像参议员的辩论，试图把柯林斯的经验变成她的负担。万圣节时他装扮成一考得木柴，周一晚上在波特兰一家保龄球馆结束竞选活动，在那里他再次回到其参选所依的民粹主义主题。“我等了这么久，就是盼着普通民众奋起要求一个为他们服务的政府，”杰克逊对欢呼的支持者说。
Jackson denied that charge—a former colleague at one point told reporters that he sometimes lost his temper, though not “in a gendered way.”But voters in this election were angry, too, and eager to rebuff conventional politicians. Jackson was happy to engage in a debate over who was more senatorial, seeking to turn Collins’s experience into a liability. He dressed as a cord of wood for Halloween and concluded his campaign Monday night at a Portland bowling alley, where he returned to the populist theme of his candidacy. “I’ve waited so long for everyday people to rise up and demand a government that works for them,” Jackson told his cheering supporters.
周一在波特兰各地奔走时，杰克逊试图展现出乐观的情绪。“我对这次选举感觉很好，”他在一场拉票启动活动上对一群志愿者说。他的话并不完全令人信服。大多数时候，杰克逊只是显得筋疲力尽，频频揉眼睛，并提醒支持者——或许也在提醒自己——竞选已接近尾声。周一是他参议院竞选的第100天，这场冲刺甚至比卡玛拉·哈里斯2024年那场缩短的总统竞选还要快。
As he made stops around Portland on Monday, Jackson tried to project a sense of optimism. “I’ve got a good feeling about this,” he told a group of volunteers at a canvass launch. He wasn’t entirely convincing. Mostly, Jackson just seemed exhausted, frequently rubbing his eyes and reminding his supporters—and possibly himself—that the campaign was almost over. Monday marked the 100th day of his Senate campaign, a sprint that was faster even than Kamala Harris’s abbreviated presidential campaign in 2024.
到竞选结束时，杰克逊基本上已经设法打消了人们的担忧，即他无法像普拉特纳最初那样激发年轻进步选民的热情。在南波特兰主持一场拉票启动活动的退休人士阿尔·亨特利告诉我，他遇到了一些打算把普拉特纳的名字写进选票的死忠支持者，“但不多。”亨特利和他的妻子波琳都告诉我，他们对杰克逊的胜算感到有信心。
By the end, Jackson had managed to mostly set aside concerns that he would be unable to marshal the excitement among younger, progressive voters that Platner had initially generated. Al Huntley, a retiree who was hosting a canvass launch in South Portland, told me that he encountered a few diehards who planned to write in Platner’s name, “but not many.”Both Huntley and his wife, Pauline, told me they were feeling confident about Jackson’s chances.
但他们说，六年前选举结束时，他们对吉迪恩也有同样的感觉。“所以我心里发毛，”波琳·亨特利说。
But they said they’d felt the same way about Gideon as the election closed six years ago. “So I’m skittish,” Pauline Huntley said.
这正是我在竞选最后几周遇到的民主党人中的普遍情绪——一种试探性的信念（即便算不上确信），即柯林斯对缅因州选民的掌控已经松动，选民对特朗普和共和党人的愤怒足以让一位任职30年的现任者下台。“我允许自己抱有希望，希望她会输，”64岁的教育工作者詹妮弗·廷格尔在刘易斯顿的一场杰克逊集会上对我说。
Such was the prevailing mood among Democrats I encountered throughout the final weeks of the campaign—the tentative belief, if not the conviction, that Collins’s hold on Maine voters had loosened, and that voters were angry enough with Trump and Republicans to oust a 30-year incumbent. “I am allowing myself to hope that she will lose,” Jennifer Tingle, a 64-year-old educator, told me at a Jackson rally in Lewiston.
或许民主党人本不必如此忧心忡忡。全国性的压倒性胜利实在太大，一个蓝州的共和党人根本无法抵挡；这场两党一度都认为可能决定参议院控制权的竞选，最终只是民主党大量胜利中的又一场。到今早为止，民主党已有望在明年控制多达56个参议院席位。这场全国性的溃败给柯林斯的支持者带来了一丝安慰。“这不是针对她的投票，”其中一人对我说。
Perhaps the Democrats did not have to fret as much as they did. Their national landslide proved far too big for a blue-state Republican to overcome, and a race that both parties once thought might determine control of the Senate instead became just one more in an enormous pile of Democratic triumphs. By this morning, Democrats had a path to controlling up to 56 Senate seats next year. The nationwide rout offered a measure of solace for Collins’s supporters. “It’s not a vote against her,” one of them told me.
当地共和党主席戴维·惠特尼表示，柯林斯已经几乎无能为力。“2024年，共和党人发出了响亮而明确的声音，”惠特尼对我说；“2026年轮到民主党人做同样的事了。”在长期占据主导地位之后，柯林斯的落败对缅因州的许多人来说一直难以理解。但对班戈的一些共和党人来说，随着昨晚共和党中期选举惨败的全貌变得清晰，这一切反而显得不可避免。
David Whitney, a local GOP chair, suggested that there was little more Collins could have done. “In 2024, Republicans spoke loud and clear,” Whitney told me; “2026 is the Democrats’ turn to do the same.”A Collins loss, after a long run of dominance, had been difficult for many in Maine to fathom. But to some Republicans in Bangor, as the full picture of the GOP’s midterm wipeout became clear last night, it came instead to seem inevitable.