Susan Collins reaffirms 2026 reelection bid
Phil Hirschkorn
News Center Maine
December 4, 2025
Maine Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins cited her place at the ideological center of American politics on Thursday as a reason for her reelection in 2026.
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“I still plan to run for re-election,” she said, despite frustrations with current Senate dynamics and its increasingly irregular budgeting and appropriations process. “People who are in the middle are tending to leave. They’re tending to retire.”
Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, noted she is the only Republican among the U.S. Senators and U.S. Representatives in the six New England states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; a significant shift from the region’s bipartisan makeup when she joined the Senate in 1997.
Collins said, “I think that was much healthier. It was a much less polarized era, and it’s important to have voices of people who want to solve problems. I’m not one who tends to rant and rave on certain news shows. Instead, I like to bring people together to search for common ground.”
In June, Collins won the initial Joe Lieberman award from the group No Labels, which “recognizes courageous leaders who embody his legacy of principled pragmatism and bipartisanship.” The Lugar Center and Georgetown McCourt School of Public Policy ranked Collins first in its bipartisan index in 2023.
“What we need in this country is for those that are in the center to be as riled up and involved as those on the far left and the far right,” Collins said. “It is hard to get things done.”
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Regarding one of the more contentious issues of the moment, Collins said she would support a deal to extend the taxpayer-provided premium subsidies that were enhanced during the coronavirus pandemic for people enrolled in Affordable Health Care Act insurance plans – if there is an income cap on eligibility.
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Collins said, “To me, what we should look at is a two-year package. The first year we really cannot make significant changes that will bring down the cost of health care. But what we could do is put an income cap on those who qualify for the enhanced tax credit.”
As she did in an interview with News Center Maine last month, to underscore her desire for an income cap, Collins cited the hypothetical example of a family of four living in Augusta, Maine, earning up to $325,000 in annual household income.
“Very few people in Augusta, Maine, would make that kind of money. You still qualify for some kind of subsidy,” Collins said. She also suggested eliminating zero-premium plans under the ACA.
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Among her legislative accomplishments, Collins cited her Social Security Fairness Act, which became law in January. It removed two rules she called ‘unfair,” because they had reduced benefits for retired public sector employees who receive a pension from a job where they had not previously paid Social Security taxes.
The reforms will help 2.8 million retirees, including some who will receive over $1,000 more in monthly Social Security payments, according to the Social Security Administration.
Collins said, “I can’t tell you how many Mainers have come up to me, it made the difference between just barely getting by and having a comfortable standard of living. That really touches me, and it’s one of the things that motivates me.”
Collins also cited her legislative work on Alzheimer’s disease – the designated focus of her Punchbowl News appearance, which the Alzheimer’s Association cohosted.
Collins said her family’s personal experience with Alzheimer’s – which afflicted her grandfather, father, two uncles, and brother-in-law, all of whom have died – motivates her to co-chair the congressional task force on Alzheimer’s and seek more funding for treatment.
“From my perspective, there is no investment that is more worthwhile than biomedical research,” Collins said.
This included the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Infrastructure for Alzheimer’s Act, sponsored by Collins and signed into law by former President Joe Biden. It authorized federal spending of $33 million a year for five years, but its implementation has been compromised by staff layoffs under Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“It’s something obviously I am watching very carefully and have had many conversations with the Secretary and other officials at HHS,” Collins said.
Americans spent $360 billion on Alzheimer’s care in the U.S. last year, with two-thirds of those costs covered by Medicare and Medicaid, according to the Alzheimer’s Impact Movement.
Collins said the federal government spent $500 million a year on Alzheimer’s research when she started the congressional task force in 1999, but now spends around $4 billion.
Collins said on a recent visit to a federally funded University of California-San Francisco lab, a research scientist predicted there could be an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s within five years.
“Wouldn’t that just be fabulous, but the good news is after years of very disappointing clinical trials, we’re making progress,” Collins said. “It’s absolutely devastating to look into the eyes of a loved one and receive no sign of recognition in return. You lose the person before you physically lose the person, and it’s just heartbreaking.”