Administration

Vance heading to Maine as Platner-Collins fight heats up

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by Max Rego - 05/12/26 12:16 PM ET

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by Max Rego - 05/12/26 12:16 PM ET

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Vice President Vance will visit Maine on Thursday, as the Senate race between incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and likely Democratic nominee Graham Platner rolls on.

Vance’s office said Tuesday that the vice president will visit Bangor, the third-most populous city in the state. While there, he will deliver remarks on the Trump administration’s “efforts to combat fraud.”

The vice president is chairing a White House task force on combatting fraud in federal programs, which President Trump created in March amid the administration and House Republicans probing alleged fraud in Minnesota’s social services programs.

Last week, Vance told a crowd in Des Moines, Iowa, that finding fraud in the federal government is “kinda like fishing in a barrel with dynamite.”

He later credited Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins for finding 186,000 deceased individuals that were receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits.

Vance’s visit to Maine comes amid a heated Senate battle between Collins, his former colleague in the upper chamber, and Platner, an oyster farmer and Marine Corps veteran.

Collins, 73, is seeking a sixth term in the Senate. Platner, a progressive populist, is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination after Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) dropped out of the race last month. David Costello, a former U.S. Agency for International Development worker, is also running as a Democrat.

Early voting in the primary started on Monday and runs through June 4. The final day to cast a ballot is June 9.

A poll conducted by Echelon Insights last month, before Mills dropped out of the race, found that 51 percent of respondents backed Platner in a hypothetical general election matchup against Collins, while 45 percent backed the incumbent.

As of the end of March, Platner’s campaign had more than $2.7 million on hand, while Collins’s campaign had more than $10 million on hand, according to the Federal Election Commission.

The Hill has reached out to the offices of Vance and Collins regarding whether the two will campaign together during the former’s visit to the Pine Tree State.

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