ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — After Hurricane Helene barreled through Georgia in the fall of 2024, Sen. Jon Ossoff was the first high-ranking official on the ground in Valdosta, where he took in the damage and promised locals he'd help them get the federal recovery assistance they needed.
“Just about every week, I dial up Georgia mayors and pastors and farmers to find out how I can help,” Ossoff said at a recent campaign rally for his reelection bid against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Up the Eastern Seaboard, Maine Sen. Susan Collins keeps a regular itinerary of local events, including ribbon-cuttings and groundbreakings for projects she helped finance as Senate Appropriations Committee chair.
“There’s not a community in Maine that can’t say Susan helped us,” intones the voiceover in a campaign ad for Collins. The five-term senator, who's not related to the Georgia congressman, is facing Democratic former state legislative leader Troy Jackson in November.
The two senators — Ossoff the Democrat, Collins the Republican — began this election cycle widely viewed as their respective parties’ most vulnerable members. But as Republican Donald Trump's second presidency and partisan fights on Capitol Hill dominate national political conversation, the senators' campaigns have played out differently than expected in part because of the more mundane part of their jobs: helping the people back home.
“We in the political world tend to think about the strength of incumbency through the lens of fundraising and national media attention, and those do matter,” said Republican Chris Hartline, once a top adviser at the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. “But the ability to help the local communities you actually represent still matters.”
For Ossoff, it means attracting endorsements from Republican officials, including Valdosta Mayor Scott James Matheson, that have made it harder for Mike Collins to land attacks claiming that the liberal first-term senator from Atlanta doesn’t represent Georgia. For Susan Collins, it means a go-to buffer argument as she runs with the weight of Trump’s lagging popularity and her support for various parts of his agenda.
A month from Election Day, Ossoff has gone from a top GOP target to a widely perceived favorite to defend a seat that Democrats cannot afford to lose as they try to regain a Senate majority. And as Republican incumbents like Ohio Sen. Jon Husted are increasingly viewed as underdogs, strategists in both parties still view Susan Collins’ race as a tossup.
Ossoff and his aides say the senator tries to deliver on every aspect of what Washington calls “constituent services.”
That could mean federal appropriations, disaster assistance or nuts-and-bolts matters like assisting a voter who is seeking Social Security disability benefits or a missing Social Security check. It includes surprise notes of congratulations or condolences to constituents — something Ossoff sends even to aides of Republican elected officials.
Endorsing Ossoff earlier this year, Matheson, the Valdosta mayor, described himself as a lifelong conservative. But he praised Ossoff for his Helene response. The senator recalled “going block by block” with the mayor and serving “hot meals to folks who had just lost their homes.”
Ossoff points to money secured for a dialysis center in nearby Tifton, Georgia. Mayor Julie Smith, another Republican, has endorsed Ossoff, too, explaining that “he’s been very good for south Georgia.”
Courtney Eskew, whose husband, Joshua, was injured during an Army tour in Afghanistan, pointed to Ossoff’s work for veterans’ care. The couple both grew up in Republican households but said they were volunteering for Ossoff’s campaign.
“Senator Ossoff has been passionately vocal about VA funding, and any time we’ve needed to call to advocate or to ask a question about benefits, his office has done everything we needed,” Eskew said after the couple attended an Ossoff event.
Eskew said it’s a powerful counter to opponent Mike Collins’ attacks that Ossoff is too liberal for the historically conservative state.
Ossoff “doesn’t vote the way I want him to vote” on contentious issues, added Chan Jones, who chairs the Georgia Republican Party’s 8th Congressional District committee. “But as far as the office and the way they’ve carried themselves and handled other aspects of the job, I can’t knock that.”
Jones has his own example as a member of the Bleckley County Recreation Board.
“We were having some trouble with a federal grant,” he said, adding that one call to the senator’s office fixed the issue.
Susan Collins is relentless in promoting money she’s steered to Maine — for community colleges and hospital expansions or hyperlocal examples like a program to control the spruce budworm, a threat to the state’s forests and timber industry.
“That will go away with a freshman senator,” she said at a Maine manufacturing conference earlier this year. “It took me years to climb the ladder of seniority.”
No project is too small for her argument. In late August, she attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the rehabilitation of St. Croix Apartments in Calais, a city of about 3,000 residents on the Canadian border, more than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from Portland. It’s in a conservative part of the state where GOP candidates need heavy turnout to win statewide.
Collins was there to highlight $3 million she secured to restore 26 affordable housing units for low-income seniors.
“The renovated St. Croix Apartments will provide seniors with safe and affordable homes close to the family, friends and community they love,” Collins said.
The amount is a pittance within appropriations bills measured in the billions. But it’s the kind of work many Maine residents associate with the veteran lawmaker.
In the same campaign stretch, Collins visited a child development center in Bangor to highlight Head Start funding. In the summer, she walked in the Casco Days Grand Parade to raise money for the local fire association and stopped by the dedication of a new fire station in the town of Sweden, population 400.
At the same time, Collins has maintained a stretch in Washington of more than 10,000 consecutive votes — a streak she connects to those results back home.
There are recent examples of candidates succeeding by doing what Collins and Ossoff are trying.
The late Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran, another powerful committee chairman, withstood a fierce Republican primary challenge to win his final election in 2014 by coaxing Democratic crossover voters in part because of his decades of appropriating money.
Hartline, who worked for Senate Republicans in 2022, pointed to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson as a bright spot in an otherwise tough cycle for the party.
“Johnson knew every corner of Wisconsin because he’d been there,” Hartline said.
Collins, especially, needs that dynamic to outweigh national circumstances.
Democrats, Jackson included, have hammered her for not having done enough to shield Maine from Trump’s tariffs — which she has criticized — and for backing the Iran war, which has raised fuel prices.
But even Jackson supporters recognize Collins’ ability to win five elections when Maine has opted for Democrats in every presidential contest.
Warsame Dualeh, a 45-year-old Jackson supporter, mused about weak opponents — though Collins has drawn aggressive Democratic opposition over the years. And then he acknowledged that the federal money pipeline “very well could be” the reason for Collins’ durability.
Whittle reported from Portland, Maine.
FILE - Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is flanked by Coast Guard Capt. Brian LeFebvre, left, and Rear Adm. Andrew Tiongson, right, as she addresses reporters after the ribbon-cutting at a U.S. Coast Guard regional command center in South Portland, Maine, Feb. 20, 2019. (AP Photo/David Sharp, File)
FILE - Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., greets people who were impacted by Hurricane Helene in Augusta, Ga., Oct. 2, 2024, during a visit with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
FILE - Auburn, Maine Mayor Jason Levesque, left reacts after scoring a goal during a friendly game of foosball against Sen, Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Auburn Police Chief Jason Moen, Jan. 6, 2023, in Auburn, Maine.(Russ Dillingham/Sun Journa via AP)
