Maine Democratic Senate candidate Troy Jackson told Sen. Susan Collins during their first debate that she is like an arsonist who helped set the fire and then wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out, while separately declining to answer whether or not he is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
The exchange, which circulated widely on social media Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, came during the candidates' head-to-head matchup as Democrats press their long-running effort to unseat Collins in one of the country's most closely watched Senate races.
Jackson's arsonist line, quoted in posts from the accounts @atrupar and @OurRevolution, was first delivered during an exchange over rural health care. The transcript of the video shows Jackson responding to Collins' claim that she proposed paying for a Rural Health Care Fund by raising costs on people making more than two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year: "Well, Senator Collins is like an arsonist who helps set the fire, and then she wants credit for bringing a cup of water to put it out. I mean, she advanced the bill out of committee. You just heard her say if she had stopped it, she wouldn't be able to do the other things, meaning that she could have stopped it. That's exactly the point."
In the same passage, according to the transcript, Jackson said Collins votes with President Trump ninety-six percent of the time and warned that rural health care in Maine is collapsing. "We're not going to have any rural health care left because of the $3 billion in cuts that we're going to be having. I mean, what she brought back is a pittance to what we're losing in this state. I mean, we're watching our health care system crash."
Jackson used a version of the arsonist line a second time, according to the transcript, during a discussion of the Keystone XL pipeline and energy prices, saying Collins "threw Maine in a hole" and "threw us a short rope with this $100 million barrel deal."
The sharpest single exchange of the night, according to a transcript posted by @atrupar, came over Collins' vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh, eight years to the day after she cast the vote that Jackson and other critics say doomed Roe v. Wade. Jackson asked her directly: "What will it take for you to admit that you're ever wrong?"
Collins responded that she evaluates Supreme Court nominees based on qualifications and cited Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's guidance that nominees should not predict how they would rule. She noted that she voted to confirm Justices Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, all nominated by Democratic presidents, and told the crowd: "There's only one of us on this stage who has always been pro-choice, and that's me." Asked whether Kavanaugh lied to her when he described Roe as settled law, Collins said she does not feel he lied but that he should not have used that phrase.
On tariffs, Collins defended her work on the Canada file, saying she had successfully removed concrete, pulp and road salt from the tariff list. "And if you ask towns in northern Maine and eastern Maine, they get all of their road salt from Canada," she said, describing a small town of nine hundred people that would have paid ten thousand dollars more this winter and a businessman in Waldo County facing an additional one hundred fifty thousand dollars a month. Jackson's retort, per the transcript: "I didn't mock the fact that she got road salt back. I mocked the fact that what about everything else? We can't eat road salt."
He continued that Mainers "can't afford to pay their bills with a press release or a strongly worded letter," and argued that the tariff fights with Canada are a function of Congress, not the president.
On health care, Jackson said he supports Medicare for All and described Collins as a lifelong government employee who has always had coverage, a characterization Collins disputed. "First of all, I have not been insured my whole life," she said, describing a year during her 1994 gubernatorial run when she could not afford insurance.
Separately, per a post from @AndrewKolvet, Jackson refused during the debate to answer whether he is part of the Democratic Socialists of America, a question likely to follow him in the closing weeks of the race. The post said he "wants to support the socialist pipe dream being promised by radicals like Mamdani, AOC, and El Sayed while avoiding" the label. The exchange marked a point of vulnerability for a candidate who, according to CNN Politics, is a fifth-generation logger from rural northern Maine with a distinct Allagash accent.
Jackson entered the race as the party's nominee only in late July, after the campaign of Democratic primary winner Graham Platner collapsed, according to PBS News. That compressed timeline has forced Jackson to introduce himself to the rest of the state quickly, as local reporting notes that while his small hometown knows him well, that recognition has not yet translated into support across Maine.
The New York Times reported that the two candidates clashed on Supreme Court appointees, health care, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their approach to governing.
Next News Network could not independently verify the specific quotes and exchanges as described here. The account @atrupar, which posted the nearly ten-minute supercut of the exchange along with shorter clips and transcripts, is known for posting video from political events, and the material should be treated as what is being claimed and circulated rather than independently confirmed.
Our Take
Troy Jackson's performance is red meat for the online left, which loves nothing more than a Democrat willing to throw rhetorical punches at Susan Collins. But the exchange also hands Republicans a gift: a candidate who calls his opponent an arsonist while refusing to answer a simple yes-or-no question about whether he belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America. The "can't eat road salt" line may land in a debate hall, but it is not a governing philosophy, and it does not answer why Maine voters should send a man to Washington who will not say plainly where he stands. Collins has her own record to answer for, but Jackson is running a campaign built on zingers and avoidance, and eventually the substance catches up to the slogan.
