Collins' Kavanaugh Vote Draws $42.5M Ad Barrage in Post-Dobbs Bid

For legal and regulatory professionals, Susan Collins' 2026 Senate race is a live experiment in precedent accountability. Her 2018 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh — a justice who went on to help overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs — has been weaponized into roughly $42.5 million in attack ads, the first time a senator's confirmation record has been litigated this directly at the ballot box since the ruling. The outcome will signal whether stare decisis-era judicial appointments can become durable electoral liabilities.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine is running for a sixth term in an election that has become a referendum on the single most consequential vote of her three-decade career: her 2018 decision to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Nov. 3, 2026 contest is the first time Collins has appeared on the ballot since the Court's June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization dismantled the federal constitutional right to abortion — a ruling Kavanaugh helped deliver. The political machinery arrayed against her, and the money behind it, make clear that abortion rights has moved from a background issue to the defining fault line of her reelection.

“

Planned Parenthood Votes has spent at least $500,000 on ads featuring a female voter who regrets her Collins vote because of the Kavanaugh confirmation.

The story's emotional core is captured through Erin Evans, a 56-year-old Portland voter who told The Associated Press she is "just furious with myself" for trusting Planned Parenthood's past endorsements of Collins. Evans said she assumed "any woman from Maine was probably in line with me" on abortion, only to watch Collins' Kavanaugh vote become instrumental to the fall of Roe. This time Evans is backing Democrat Troy Jackson, a former state lawmaker and logger trying to deny Collins her sixth term. Evans is not an isolated data point; she is the archetype Democrats are banking on to flip a seat central to their effort to retake the Senate.

The financial stakes reflect that strategic priority. The Democratic-aligned advocacy group Affordable Maine has spent nearly $10 million on ads emphasizing Collins' support for Trump-appointed judges who oppose abortion. Win Senate, a PAC focused on Collins, has spent an additional $32 million. Planned Parenthood Votes has spent at least $500,000 on ads featuring a female voter who regrets her Collins vote because of the Kavanaugh confirmation. Combined, that is more than $42 million in abortion-centered messaging in a single Senate race — a staggering figure for a state of roughly 1.4 million people.

Collins' vulnerability is rooted in the gap between her carefully cultivated moderate brand and the downstream consequences of her judicial votes. For years she presented herself as a pro-choice Republican, and Planned Parenthood's endorsements lent that positioning credibility with voters like Evans. The Kavanaugh vote shattered that equilibrium: Democrats have since framed her as caving to Trump, and the Dobbs decision transformed a once-abstract confirmation vote into a concrete loss of bodily autonomy across much of the United States. The timing is also notable: Collins is not merely running in a post-Dobbs environment, but doing so while serving as a senior Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, where she was photographed questioning FDA commissioner nominee Dr. Heidi Overton on Sept. 24, 2026 — a hearing that underscores her continued influence over health policy even as her own political future hangs in the balance.

Maine's demographics sharpen the contest. Women make up the majority of the state's population and have voted at a slightly higher rate than men, according to a recent report by democracy advocacy groups. Both campaigns have built their ad strategies around female voters, with women featured prominently in spots from both sides. Jackson and Democrats are wagering that the erosion of trust among women who once saw Collins as a safeguard will outweigh her 30 years of incumbency advantage and the state's history of ticket-splitting.