“TROY JACKSON IS weird. He has two kids with his cousin. If he’ll screw his own family, he’ll screw yours, too!” Set to a catchy backing soundtrack, this is the opening stanza of a radio ad in Maine ripping to shreds the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate, Troy Jackson, who is seeking to vanquish the long-serving liberal Republican, Susan Collins.

Jackson does have two children with his partner, Lana Pelletier, who also is his second cousin. This is not illegal. Collins has called for the very nasty, yet undeniably catchy and humorous, tune to be removed from the airwaves. Her team is not behind it. A cynic can be pardoned for opining that it’s easy to be high-minded when the ad has been heard countless times, drawing plenty of attention to what is a rather unusual family situation. The damage has been done.

But if the Collins campaign itself did not create or pay for the hard-hitting jingle, who did? As those listening keenly at its close would hear, it was sponsored by the Republican-affiliated Senate Leadership Fund (SLF). The SLF is an independent political action committee (PAC) which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to elect politicians who are on their side.

Staggeringly, the SLF is spraying over a third of a billion dollars into 2026 Senate races across the US. Some $160 million (€142.79 million) to try and prop up the ethically challenged Ken Paxton of the GOP in Texas; approximately $70 million against populist Democrat Sherrod Brown in Ohio; $37 million (€33.02 million) in Michigan to beat the left-wing Abdul El-Sayed, who Donald Trump alleges without basis is a........

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