Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | October 29, 2026
Yesterday, I ran a fun little experiment with my middle-school students: I told them about two “fictional” Senate candidates and where they stand on certain issues, and I wanted to see which candidate the class would vote for once party identity and names had been stripped. After the votes were tallied, I revealed that the two “fictional” candidates were actually Troy Jackson and Susan Collins. For what it’s worth, three out of the four classes voted overwhelmingly for Jackson based only on the issues.
Of course, discussing the Maine Senate election gets a little sticky with middle schoolers. “Mr. Rowles, did Troy Jackson really have kids with his cousin?” “Mr. Rowles, why did Graham Platner drop out?” etc., etc.
I don’t write about politics much on the site anymore, but with election day five days away, here’s my take: There are essentially 7 toss-up seats (8 if you want to add South Carolina, but I’m skeptical). Each party will need at least four of those toss up seats to take control of the Senate. I feel like it will actually come down to Maine, and because of ranked-choice voting, it may actually take a week to know who won for sure, so it may be several days after election day before we know who controls the Senate.
And who will win Maine? As someone who has lived in Maine for nearly 20 years (but, as John Hodgman notes below, still not allowed to call myself a “Mainer”), I have no idea. I like Troy Jackson, but he’s not a particularly polished candidate (dude burped at one of the debates). The headwinds are blowing against Susan Collins, but she always seems to pull it out, despite Maine being a far more blue state than purple. There haven’t been a lot of polls and most show a dead heat, but polls are also notoriously unreliable.
For what it’s worth, however, one ad that Susan Collins released seems to have gained a lot of attention in the last few days, and not in Collins’ favor. She had Bill Green — a sort of salt-of-the-earth retired local television reporter here in Maine — do an ad for her, where he says that he knows Susan Collins, she’s great, blah blah blah, and that he also knows Troy Jackson, but “we’re not talking about buying a cord of wood here, we’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate.”
As you might imagine, in a state where a lot of cords of wood are being bought this winter because of the high price of natural gas and heating oil (I have two cords sitting in my driveway waiting to be stacked), that didn’t sit well. Very smug. Very elitist. Will it matter? Who knows.
What I do know is that the campaigns have spent $166 for every voter in Maine for this election, and instead of using the money to air these ads non-stop for the last six months, if one of the candidates had used that money to buy Mainers 1/3 of a cord of wood, they’d win in a cakewalk.
Anyway, here’s John Hodgman to discuss the Maine race, but mostly, to serve up a lot of Maine stereotypes. He has no idea who will win, either.
