Three Senate debates on one night showed how Republican candidates in close races are handling a president whose approval has fallen sharply. In Maine, five term senator Susan Collins stressed that she voted against the administration’s signature tax and policy bill because of its Medicaid cuts, opposed the tariffs on Canada, and said the president had no good plan for the Iran war and should have anticipated the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Her Democratic challenger, Troy Jackson, argued she remains beholden to wealthy donors and special interests, and the two clashed over a reported contracting allegation that Collins’s office has called categorically false.
In Iowa’s open seat race, Republican representative Ashley Hinson repeated her break with the Russian diesel deal, saying fuel prices should fall without an arrangement with Moscow, and noted her vote for the 2022 ban on Russian energy imports. She also said she had lobbied the president personally to complete soybean trade agreements for Midwestern farmers, an acknowledgement of tariff damage, while Democrat Josh Turek attacked her lack of in person town halls and the two traded charges over attendance and bipartisanship.
Georgia was the most personal of the three. Democratic senator Jon Ossoff said directly that he has zero interest in running for president in 2028 and would serve the full term, then pressed Republican representative Mike Collins on tariffs, the Iran war and a House ethics investigation, which Collins called a political hit job. Collins attacked Ossoff over a major donor’s past meetings with Jeffrey Epstein; Ossoff replied that Collins had voted against releasing the Epstein files in 2025 before later supporting the release law.
None of the debates changes a vote count by itself. Their significance is the pattern: in the three races that may decide the Senate, Republican candidates spent the night creating distance from the White House on war, trade and Russia, while Democrats ran on those same issues. Status: campaign events, reported.