Unpopular Maine Senator Susan Collins has waded into next week’s governor’s race in Virginia to raise money for an anti-abortion candidate who’s slated to lose—and if the polls are any guide, lose badly.
The New Republic obtained a fundraising email that the Collins campaign sent Wednesday morning in support of Virginia Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, a staunch religious conservative, who is polling far behind her Democratic opponent, former Representative Abigail Spanberger. Some pollsters have her trailing Spanberger by double digits. Virginia gubernatorial races often swing in the opposite direction of the presidency, and it seems that Earle-Sears’s hopes to follow in Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin’s footsteps will founder amid a broader anti-Trump backlash. In part due to Earle-Sears’s weaknesses, and revelations that the Democratic nominee for attorney general sent violent text messages in the past, Virginia Republicans are spending more on the attorney general’s race rather than the top of the ticket.
But Collins’s oddly timed decision to insert herself into the race on Earle-Sears’s behalf is a curiosity. The perpetually concerned Maine senator, after all, routinely claims to be pro-choice—all while having a heavy hand in the construction of the Roe v. Wade–gutting conservative Supreme Court supermajority—yet she is sticking her neck out for a candidate who has called abortion “genocide,” suggested that consenting to sex is consenting to pregnancy, and has pledged, if elected, to sign a ban on abortion at 15 weeks or earlier.
Such an outcome would be devastating, as Virginia is the only state in the South without an abortion ban following the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision. For her part, Spanberger supports an amendment to codify abortion rights in the state constitution; the legislatively referred amendment needs to pass the House of Delegates again next session before it can go to voters in November 2026.
The email subject line from the Collins campaign reads, “BIGGEST race of 2025,” while the body says, “It’s Winsome Earle-Sears. I’m locked in the BIGGEST race of 2025. Can you chip in to help me win this?” Underneath a donate button and a photo of Earle-Sears is a box that reads, “Paid for by Collins for Senator,” the name of Collins’s campaign committee.
Clicking the donate button sends viewers to a WinRed page, a fundraising platform for the Republican Party, with Earle-Sears’s campaign logo at the top. A donation plea reads, “George Soros and Hollywood liberals are all stacking BIG money against me and my team in this must-win race. Please donate even just $10 to help me keep up with the Left’s dark money!” Fine-print enthusiasts, take note: Small text under red buttons with different amounts specifies that donations “will benefit Collins for Senator,” rather than a split donation between the two campaigns or to Earle-Sears’s campaign only.
The New Republic reached out to the Collins campaign for comment on the fundraising pitch, whether she’s endorsing Earle-Sears, and whether she supports an abortion ban in Virginia, but they did not respond by publication time.
Earle-Sears has taken far-right positions on issues beyond abortion. During an October 9 debate, Earle-Sears said it is not discrimination to fire someone for being gay, a moment that Spanberger made hay of on social media. The Collins email was sent nearly three weeks after those damning comments, and after news broke that Earle-Sears made a $1,800 donation to the Richmond-based Family Foundation, which has described in vitro fertilization, or IVF, as “child trafficking” and opposes same-sex marriage, which alarms LGBTQ advocates, since the state has a ban on the books that could spring back to life if the Supreme Court overturns the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling. (Virginia is one of 32 states that would automatically ban same-sex marriage if the precedent is overturned.)
It’s curious that Collins is using her email list to support a doomed campaign, especially when her own favorability is negative 20 points—36 percent approval against 56 percent disapproval, per October data from Morning Consult. For comparison, at this point in the cycle before she won reelection in 2020, she was at 52 percent approve and 39 percent disapprove, for a net positive of 13 points. And that was before two of the Supreme Court justices she confirmed voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022. (She was a “no” on Amy Coney Barrett only after it was clear Coney Barrett would get confirmed anyway.) Collins faces reelection next year, and while she has not officially declared her candidacy, she told CNN in May: “It’s certainly my inclination to run, and I’m preparing to do so.”
So far in 2025, Collins has also voted to confirm at least eight explicitly anti-abortion judges to lifetime seats on the federal judiciary, one as recently as this week. It seems plausible she knows she’s likely to lose next November and is no longer even trying to court voters. It’s no longer of concern to her.
