Republican Sen. Susan Collins vowed she won't be "intimidated" after her Biddeford office was vandalized, while her Dem rival Troy Jackson initially stayed silent.
Page A4From§Eachthe milkman edition — 29 September 2026
Jackson calls Collins report 'corruption of the highest order' same day, stays silent for days on vandalism.
As it ran on the front
I want to start by saying something nice, because it's rare enough when I get the chance. The statement Troy Jackson's campaign put out on September 22nd is a sharp piece of writing — "corruption of the highest order," Senator Collins "delivered millions in taxpayer dollars for a corrupt donor bankrolling her campaign" — and it went out the same day as the ProPublica report it was answering. No "we're reviewing this." No "no comment at this time." Same day. I wrote that down.
Then I turned the page, because there was one more page underneath. Same day, same story, a few paragraphs further into that same coverage: Senator Collins's own aide calls the whole thing "categorically false." Says there have "never been any allegations of wrongdoing" against the campaign. That's not a spokesman for the other side saying that. That's her own office, on the record, the same day the accusation ran.…
…(cont) So I've got two statements, both dated September 22nd, both about the same report, and I honestly don't know which one is true. I'm not equipped to know. I'm a man with a notebook, not a jury, and both pages are sitting right here in front of me saying the opposite thing at the same volume.
Here's what happened six days later. September 28th, Fox News: Senator Collins's office in Biddeford gets vandalized, a vulgar message left on it, and the story quotes her saying she won't be "intimidated." That's her line — I can't tell you what day she said it, only what day it ran, and the 28th is the day it ran.
I keep an old toolbox out on the back porch, the kind with a drawer that sticks no matter what you do. When something in there doesn't fit — a bolt with the wrong thread, a screw too short for the job — you don't argue with the bolt. You just notice it doesn't fit, and you set it next to the one that does, to see the difference. That's all I'm doing here. Setting the two responses side by side on the step.
Because the same September 28th story carries a headline about Jackson, too: he "breaks silence." Present tense — their word, not mine. Six days sit between that headline and the one from the 22nd, the "corruption of the highest order" one that went out the same day as the report it was answering.
I went back through the clips twice, looking for a same-day statement from Jackson's campaign about the vandalism — the kind I found so easily for September 22nd. I couldn't find one. Maybe it's out there and I just don't have the right page. You've got the same clips I do — has anybody turned one up?
Actually — hold on, before I put the notebook back in the glovebox — there's one more thing on this page I keep skipping past. A report about a donor gets a same-day answer calling it "corruption of the highest order." A real window, with a real vulgar message on it, gets a headline about a silence somebody had to break. I'm not the one who decides which of those deserved the faster answer. I just found the two dates. Which one got the same-day statement, and which one got the headline about breaking silence?
“Troy Jackson found the microphone in under a day to call the ProPublica report "corruption of the highest order," then found it again six days later, after somebody vandalized Susan Collins's office, and only after Fox News made a story out of the silence. That's not principle, that's a stopwatch: outrage gets same-day service, and everything else waits for someone else to notice. Ask which of those two responses was actually about the taxpayer money, and which was about who blinks first on camera.”
“Senator Collins's office called the ProPublica story categorically false the same day it ran, so there was nothing there to slow-walk — which is exactly why we answered immediately. As for Jackson taking six days on the vandalism, maybe he was just being careful, verifying the facts before he spoke, which, come to think of it, is not what he did with the donor story at all. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me.”
The receipts
· 'Corruption of the Highest Order,' Says Troy Jackson After Explosive Susan Collins Report from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Collins opponent says 'jig is up' after ProPublica report; her aide calls it 'categorically false' from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Susan Collins aide dismisses ProPublica corruption allegation as ‘categorically false’ from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
· Manchin endorses Collins in Maine Senate race from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.