Rivals Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Manchin are campaigning in Maine this week as polls show a tight U.S. Senate race between Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democrat Troy Jackson.
Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic New York representative, and Manchin, a former Democratic and independent West Virginia senator, were the faces of the ideological clash that has defined the Democratic Party in the past few years—with Ocasio-Cortez emerging as a leading progressive voice and Manchin one of the most moderate members of the party before leaving it in May 2024.
This week, both will be in Maine, campaigning for opposing candidates in the November 3 midterm elections.
Manchin will be rallying for Collins in the politically moderate Androscoggin County, home to Lewiston, on Wednesday, while Ocasio-Cortez will join Jackson in Portland, the state’s largest city and a progressive stronghold, on Thursday.
Newsweek reached out to the Collins and Jackson campaigns for comment via email.
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Maine Senate Race Becomes Battleground
The campaign appearances come as the Maine race remains one of the most important of the midterms. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so Democrats must flip four seats to win control of the chamber, as Vice President JD Vance serves as the tiebreaker vote.
Democrats view Collins as one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans, as she represents a state that President Donald Trump lost in all three of his presidential races, including by 7 points in 2024. The national environment has soured for Republicans as Trump’s approval rating slips and voters become increasingly frustrated with the economy.
However, Collins is still a formidable opponent. She has defied the state’s partisan lean in the past due to her personal popularity, bipartisan image and position as chair of the Appropriations Committee.
If Democrats fail to flip the seat, their path to a majority would narrow, and they would have to make up for the loss in a more conservative state.
AOC, Manchin Campaigning in Maine: What to Know
Manchin and Collins were allies while he was in the Senate despite being in opposing parties. Both were seen among the most politically moderate members and established a friendship over the years. Manchin has endorsed Collins in the past.
He told The New York Times that he had never worked with a “more centrist, independent-minded person” than Collins.
Ocasio-Cortez, meanwhile, is set to attend the “Students vs. Billionaires” town hall hosted by the progressive organization More Perfect University in Portland. Jackson is also expected to attend, according to the event page.
It would be the first appearance with Jackson for Ocasio-Cortez, who is a popular figure among younger, more progressive voters. Notably, she did not endorse Graham Platner, the progressive who won the Democratic primary in Maine but withdrew from the race amid allegations of sexual assault that he has denied.
Jackson wrote in a post on X that Manchin “serves as a perfect example of the kind of broken status quo politics this movement is fighting like hell to put an end to.”
“Joe Manchin and Susan Collins are fake ‘moderates’ who hide behind that label to sell out working people to big corporations and special interests. Regardless of party, they fight for the same people: the wealthy and the powerful,” he wrote.
AOC and Manchin History
The Maine race is far from the first time Ocasio-Cortez and Manchin have found themselves at odds.
Perhaps no two politicians have embodied the ideological divide that has shaped Democratic politics over the past decade—a democratic socialist from New York City and a centrist blue dog from West Virginia.
They regularly traded jabs over policies around the environment. Their first major clash came in 2019 after Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Green New Deal, a sweeping proposal aimed at mitigating climate change.
Manchin rebuked the policy during a February 2019 interview on CNN.
“The Green New Deal is a dream," he said. "It’s not a deal. It’s a dream, and that’s fine. People should have dreams in the perfect world, what they’d like to see. I’ve got to work in realities, and I’ve got to work in the practical, what I have in front of me. I’ve got to make sure that our country has affordable, dependable, reliable energy 24/7. But you can’t just be a denier and say, ‘Well, I’m not going to use coal. I’m not going to use natural gas. I’m not going to use oil.’”
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After the 2020 election, Manchin distanced himself from more progressive Democrats, writing on X: “Defund the police? Defund, my butt. I'm a proud West Virginia Democrat. We are the party of working men and women. We want to protect Americans' jobs & healthcare. We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police.”
Manchin also told The New York Times that Ocasio-Cortez is “more active on Twitter than anything else.”
"I don't know the young lady—I really don't. I never met her. I'm understanding she's not that active with her bills or in committee,” he said.
Ocasio-Cortez hit back on X just days after the interview was published.
“I find it amusing when politicians try to diminish the seriousness of our policy work, movement organizing & grassroots fundraising to ‘she just tweets,’ as though ‘serious’ politics is only done by begging corporate CEOs for money through wax-sealed envelopes delivered by raven,” she wrote.
In a June 2021 interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Ocasio-Cortez criticized Manchin for opposing ditching the filibuster to pass a landmark voting rights bill, criticizing a “romanticism of bipartisanship” that she said is “about an era of Republicans that simply do not exist anymore.”
“I also believe that the opposition to big money and dark money," she said. "You have the Koch brothers and associated organizations from the Koch brothers really doing victory laps about Joe Manchin's opposition to the filibuster.”
Later that year, in September, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on X that Manchin “has weekly huddles w/ Exxon & is one of many senators who gives lobbyists their pen to write so-called ‘bipartisan’ fossil fuel bills.” He told CNN that is “totally false.”
She also criticized Manchin after the collapse of Build Back Better, a signature piece of legislation of President Joe Biden, telling MSNBC (now MS NOW) that his actions were an “egregious breach of the trust of the president.”
Manchin has continued to criticize the progressive wing of the Democratic Party after becoming an independent. In July 2026, he told Fox News that he believes the party is moving “too far left.”
“It’s even further left than I ever thought it could get,” he said. “I don’t think that’s part of the Democratic Party. They really ought to start their own party. The Democrats I grew up with and that I have known all my life were hardworking, but they were fiscally responsible and socially compassionate.”
What Latest Polls Show About the Maine Senate Race
Polling suggests that the Maine Senate race will be one of the most competitive of the midterms.
A Suffolk University poll gave Jackson a 2-point lead, 49 percent to 47 percent. It surveyed 500 Maine voters October 8-11 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.
Collins also trailed by 2 points in an InsiderAdvantage survey of 1,200 likely voters October 13-14. Jackson’s support stood at 49 percent to 47 percent for Collins. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.
Jackson was up 4 points among 800 likely voters in a poll from The Washington Post and George Mason University, conducted September 30-October 5. Fifty percent said they planned to vote for Jackson to 46 percent for Collins. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Polls underestimated Collins in her 2020 bid. She trailed Democrat Sara Gideon in public surveys but won reelection with more than 50 percent of the vote.
Maine Senate Race: Latest Developments
Collins and Jackson faced off last week in the final two debates in Maine.
The last one was briefly interrupted by a data center protester as Collins was speaking, about which she said: “This is obviously one of Troy’s supporters.” Jackson responded: “Oh, shut up. I don’t even know that kid.”
Jackson’s remark drew some criticism from Collins. Jackson declined to apologize during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday.
“I’ve had four debates with Senator Collins," he said. "I’ve shook her hand afterwards every time. What I’m not going to be is talked down to by Senator Collins, I’m not going to be accused of things like that. I’m fighting for Mainers and I just think that was another situation where she was talking down to me, so I’m not going to apologize for that.”
Last week, Jackson’s campaign filed its first financial disclosure form with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which showed that he outraised Collins 4-to-1 in the most recent quarter, though he remains behind in overall fundraising and outside assistance.
Former President Barack Obama recently endorsed Jackson, while Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, traveled to the state to campaign with him over the weekend.
Trump has also floated the idea of visiting Maine ahead of the midterms in remarks to reporters, though Collins said during a debate that she does not believe the president will visit.
"I’ve heard nothing from his office, and I’m not exactly his favorite senator," she said. "I would say that he is not coming to Maine."
Democrats had a registration advantage of 31,732 in the state as of March, with 305,364 to the Republicans' 273,632. There were also 282,314 unaffiliated voters, according to the Maine Secretary of State’s Office.
Maine Voting: What to Know
In-person absentee voting began on October 5 and will continue until October 29, according to the Maine Secretary of State’s Office. More than 70,000 Mainers had requested an absentee ballot as of October 2, according to the office. Polling locations are open between 6 a.m. or 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., depending on a town’s population.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.