Susan Collins’s allies spent $25,000 attacking her rival in the Oregon version of Portland: ‘They can’t even find it on a map’

Since 1997, Susan Collins has served as one of Maine’s senators, and she may be the epitome of Maine. She, like her opponent Troy Jackson, grew up in the state’s northern tip. Her family ran a lumber business for generations in Caribou, and she’s well regarded by Mainers as someone from “the County,” not a politician. During the Barack Obama era, her bloc of crucial swing voters included Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania and fellow Mainer Olympia Snowe, but she’s the last of those Republican moderates standing, giving Maine an outsize national footprint.

So when a political attack ad ran in Portland last week, it would be safe to assume the Portland in question was in Maine. So why did Defending Main Street, a super PAC backing Collins, run an ad in the wrong Portland?

Defending Main Street spent nearly $25,000 on digital placements for “So Many Taxes,” a 30-second ad against Jackson, to run the ad in hundreds of zip codes across Oregon and Washington State from Oct. 8 to Oct. 11, according to Google’s Ads Transparency Center. It came to light when an Oregon X user reported seeing five anti-Jackson ads in one day.

“I choose to believe they mixed up Portlands,” the user wrote. The same ad aired on........

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