Maine's 'October surprise:' Offensive GOP ad for US. senator

By Ted Cohen

A leading Maine Republican set the state's political world atwitter Tuesday by calling out his ex-boss for an ad belittling working stiffs such as her Democrat opponent.

"The race is over," said Sam Patten, who previously worked for Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.

The ad that stuck in Patten's craw was a pro-Collins spot featuring former WCSH-TV features reporter Bill Green.

"We're not talking about buying a cord of wood here," Green intones as he extols the need to elect Collins over Democrat Troy Jackson. “We’re sending someone to the U.S. Senate, and Troy doesn’t have the tools he needs to be effective.”

"We're not talking about buying a cord of wood here."

"The remark has sparked outrage, with critics accusing the Collins campaign of looking down on blue-collar workers in a state where logging has deep economic and cultural roots," Brett Meiselas of MeidasTouch wrote Tuesday amid the firestorm.

In a Facebook post, Patten wrote, "I didn't believe this ad was real. I called every news station in Maine. WAGM in Presque Isle just confirmed to me it is real and has been running since last night.

"Why does it matter?" he asked. "For more than 30 years, Susan Collins has carefully concealed her intrinsic arrogance because she is very smart and knows well that in Maine politics that would be fatal. With this ad, she gave that act up.

"I can see her, Tom and Steve snickering to each about the tag line, but I never imagined they would clear such a public confession of their disdain for little people," Patten wrote, a reference to the editors of The Maine Wire, an influential conservative news outlet of which Patten is a former managing editor.

"It's too bad they hurt Bill Green with it, as he's a good man" Patten added. "But that's what politicians do."

"The race is over," he concluded.

Patten's post went viral once Andy O'Brien of the opposing party posted it on his X account.

MeidasTouch and The Raw Story both picked up the story, expanding its reach, further publicizing O'Brien's post featuring Patten's critically honest analysis of the party he has long called home.

O'Brien's tweet had hundreds of thousands of views by midday Tuesday.

"That ad just really bugged me, and you saw my Sunday column," Patten told Patch.com. "It literally was point 3."

In that piece, Patten decried the tone of the Republican campaign, writing, "ugly ads have cast a pall over the home stretch of the U.S. Senate race."

He mentioned the Collins campaign deriding Jackson for having his second-cousin's children.

"While it is true that Collins neither authored nor approved the ad and she did call for it to be taken down on Wednesday (following public backlash), the episode raises another uncomfortable question about her: If Maine’s senior senator is so powerful, why is there such a mounting list of things she does not control?" Patten wrote in his column for the state's largest paper, the Portland Press Herald.

"Collins’ likelihood of being elected to a sixth term will come down to how undecided voters answer three questions," he said.

Will she stand up to Trump and is her seniority as beneficial to Maine as she claims are two of the questions.

"Finally, there is the question of humility," Patten said. "Time spent in Washington tends to chip its reserves away. This is such a subjective standard that each individual voter will have to answer whether Collins cares about them, and people like them, in the quiet seclusion of the polling booth.

"This election isn’t about Troy Jackson; he’s an accidental candidate," Patten wrote. "It’s about Susan Collins and how, after 32 years, one answers three simple questions."

Offensively belittling Jackson as some hick through his connection to the Maine woods - he and his relatives were loggers - and accusing her opponent of incest should effectively help deny Collins a sixth term, in Patten's view.