The Grassroots Plot to Take Down Susan Collins
On the ground with the Maine activists working to flip her seat and take back the Senate
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The cars that crawled by the protestors were mostly courteous. Around noon on a frigid November day in Bangor, Maine, the normally sleepy downtown plaza showed signs of life as roughly two dozen people held up signs that said things like “Make Truth Matter Again” and “Senators: neglect becomes complicity” and, more bluntly, “You Lied!” The city square adjoins the main street, which is full of modest brick storefronts — a noodle bar, an Irish pub, and an outdoor sports retailer, all fitting witnesses to this equally modest display of democracy. A pickup truck drove by and the front-seat passenger gave a friendly wave to the group gathered here to urge passersby to vote against President Trump and Maine’s senior U.S. senator, Susan Collins. Minutes later, a car full of teenagers sped by and someone yelled “Trump rules!” in the activists’ direction. The demonstrators, most of whom appeared to be in their sixties and seventies, shrugged it off.
A few yards behind the picketers, Marie Follayttar, one of the leaders behind the protest and arguably the most significant progressive organizer in a state that’ll inarguably see one of the most significant elections of 2020, gently chided another member for his lack of social media presence. “You need to get that Twitter account live,” Follayttar said.
After another 30 minutes, the protest wound down and Follayttar and about half the activists stowed their signs in their cars and continued a few blocks up the street to a brightly decorated bistro to plot, over a table full of sandwiches and salads, how to defeat Collins.
They represented groups new and old: Follayttar, 43, is co-founder and executive director of Mainers for Accountable Leadership, a two-year-old political action committee headquartered in Portland with 10,000 members. Others affiliated…
