Dan Kleban is betting that something is brewing in Maine, and he’s not talking about his company’s latest pale ale.
Kleban, a Democrat who is a co-founder of Maine Beer Co., says Mainers have lost confidence in Republican Sen. Susan Collins ahead of her re-election race next year, so he’s jumping into the race to defeat her.
“The cost of living up here is too damn high. People are being squeezed, and Susan Collins isn’t doing enough to help families out up here,” Kleban said in an interview Tuesday ahead of his campaign launch Wednesday. Kleban said Collins “went Washington, and she stopped looking out for Mainers.”
“People up here are struggling,” Kleban added later. “We’re a bunch of hard workers up here. We don’t ask for a lot. We don’t ask for handouts. All we ask is we get a fair shake.”
The race is central to any path to a Democratic Senate majority next year, when the party needs to net four seats to take control of the chamber. And the growing primary may send broader signals about the state of the Democratic Party beyond Maine.
Collins is the only Republican senator in a state former Vice President Kamala Harris won last year, making her Democrats’ top target.
Collins, who has yet to officially announce that she is running for re-election, has been tough to beat. First elected in 1996, she has fostered personal relationships with voters and has proven she has bipartisan appeal. She won her fifth term in 2020 by 9 points even as President Donald Trump lost Maine by the same margin. Last year, Trump lost Maine by 7 points.
Kleban and other Democrats believe Collins may be more vulnerable this year, even though she broke with Trump by opposing his signature tax cut and spending law, known as the “big, beautiful bill.” Kleban noted that Collins voted to advance that legislation before she ultimately opposed it and called her actions “the typical inside D.C. bulls— politics that people are just fed up with.”
Democrats have already started to try to paint Collins as a Washington insider. Majority Forward, the nonprofit arm of the main super PAC backing Senate Democrats, launched a $700,000 ad campaign against Collins on Tuesday, knocking her on congressional stock trading.
But Democrats will first have to contend with a growing primary field that now includes Kleban as well as oyster farmer Graham Platner, an Army and Marine veteran; Jordan Wood, who was chief of staff to Katie Porter, D-Calif., when she was in the House; and David Costello, a former official with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Maryland state government.
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, who can’t run for re-election because of term limits, is also considering running against Collins. She recently told local reporters that she would decide by mid-November.
Platner and Wood have both pledged to stay in the race if Mills jumps in. Kleban declined to say whether he would do the same, saying, “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic primary is already heating up.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., endorsed Platner over the weekend and appeared with him at one of his “Fight the Oligarchy” rallies Monday.
Asked about Sanders’ involvement, Kleban said that he doesn’t know Platner and that he would stay focused on his own campaign.
A self-described “pragmatist,” Kleban plans to stress his work as a small-business owner. Pressed to cite someone in his party he sees as a strong leader, he pointed to Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.
Kleban said he empathizes with Mainers who struggle to make ends meet, noting that he and his brother launched Maine Beer Co. after he was laid off from his job during the Great Recession. With the slogan “Do what’s right,” which he highlighted in his campaign launch video, Kleban said, his company has grown while also contributing funds to environmental groups, paying its employees a “living wage” and covering their health insurance costs.
Kleban did praise Collins back in 2015 for her work on tax relief for small businesses, which he likened in the interview to a broken clock’s still being “right twice a day.” He acknowledged Collins has done some good, but he accused her of having lost touch with Mainers, pointing to her votes to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2020 and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary this year.
If Kleban prevails in his primary, he would be running against Collins as a Democrat amid record-low ratings for his party, but he sees a path forward for Democrats.
“What I’m going to do is offer voters a vision of the future that’s inspirational. How are we going to make their lives better and not get bogged down in social issues?” he said, saying he plans to focus on improving access to affordable housing and quality health care.
“We need to prove that we can be the party that makes people’s lives better,” he said.