Former Sen. Joe Manchin joined Republican Susan Collins on the Maine campaign trail and called Chuck Schumer “crazy” for trying to oust the bipartisan incumbent in a toss-up race.
Manchin stood with Collins in Lewiston on Wednesday and unloaded on the Senate minority leader’s long drive to flip her seat. After greeting workers and customers at Simones’ Hot Dog Stand, the former West Virginia Democrat turned independent told Fox News Digital that Schumer’s pressure campaign against his longtime colleague makes no sense.
The stop landed in a blue-leaning state President Trump lost in 2024, where Collins is seeking a sixth term as the only Republican senator defending a seat in territory the former president failed to carry. Polls show a margin-of-error contest, and major handicappers rate the race a toss-up.
Manchin made plain he had already delivered the same message years earlier. He said Schumer would not be surprised to see him beside Collins now.
"Chuck Schumer would not be surprised of me being with my dear friend. There is no surprise there at all. I told him he was crazy in 2020 from working against her so hard and he’s crazy now to work against her"
He went further, casting Collins as indispensable rather than expendable.
"This is not right. She is the soul of America. She is the soul of the Senate, and he knows he needs more Susan Collins, no matter what side of the aisle they’re on. This is ridiculous."
That verdict lands as Democrats under Schumer still treat her seat as a must-flip target in the fight for Senate control. Manchin rejected the party line that she is simply another partisan marker.
He described her as “not a Trump senator,” “not a Republican senator or a Democrat senator,” but “an American senator that represents her state of Maine” and “the most independent minded person I’ve ever met.” Collins, for her part, recalled years of joint work that actually became law.
"Joe and I were part of every bipartisan initiative that passed the Senate and became law during the years that we worked together... I just so enjoy our partnership in getting things done for Maine, for West Virginia and for America."
The New York Post reported Manchin’s same rebuke as he campaigned with Collins in Lewiston and Norway, calling Schumer “so crazy” for working against his “dear friend” again. The cross-aisle appearance underscored how the minority leader’s hard-edge approach is drawing resistance even from figures who spent years inside the Democratic fold.
Fox News Digital sought comment from Schumer’s political team and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Neither responded by publication time.
Manchin’s public break fits a wider pattern of strain around Schumer’s leadership. Fellow Democrats have already shown early cracks in support for keeping him at the top of the caucus.
Collins has survived this movie before. Six years ago she trailed then-Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon yet won re-election by nearly nine points, roughly the same margin by which Joe Biden carried the state. Democrats poured resources into defeating her then. Manchin says the strategy was wrong then and remains wrong now.
Her current Democratic opponent is Troy Jackson, a former state Senate president who won a special nominating convention in late July after primary winner Graham Platner ended his campaign following rape allegations, which he denied. In debates, including their fourth and final meeting Oct. 15 at Bangor’s Gracie Theatre, Jackson has tried to tie Collins to Trump while casting himself as an outsider who understands working-class voters.
Collins has used those forums to highlight Senate seniority and the federal dollars she has steered to Maine. She has also broken with her party and with Trump at times, a record Manchin treats as proof of independence rather than disloyalty.
Fox News Power Rankings list the race as a toss-up. So do the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections, and Sabato’s Crystal Ball. In a chamber where every seat matters, Schumer’s team is still pressing to replace a proven deal-maker with a more reliable partisan vote.
Manchin spent 2010 to 2025 in the Senate as a Democrat who routinely frustrated Barack Obama and Joe Biden by refusing lockstep votes. He now argues the chamber needs more members like Collins, not fewer. That argument collides with a leadership style that has also struggled to hold restless members in line, including episodes in which Schumer pleaded with Sen. John Fetterman to remain in the Democratic caucus.
Voters in Maine’s swing 2nd Congressional District saw the Manchin-Collins pairing up close at the century-old hot dog stand and a second stop the same day. The message was simple: bipartisan work produced laws; pure partisan targeting produces a thinner Senate.
Schumer has signaled he intends to keep his leadership post regardless of midterm results, a stance covered when he vowed a sixth term as Senate Democratic leader no matter the outcome. Manchin’s Maine visit suggests that loyalty is not universal among the people who actually passed bills with Collins.
A Fox News video report framed Manchin’s criticism as a direct hit on the effort to oust the senator he called the “soul of the Senate.” The former West Virginia governor and senator is no longer subject to caucus pressure, and he used that freedom to say what many moderates only mutter.
Democratic leadership has also drawn fire for bottling up practical measures, including cases where Senate Democrats blocked a bipartisan bill aimed at lowering electricity costs. Against that backdrop, Manchin’s defense of Collins reads as a defense of the few remaining senators who still cut deals instead of running every fight through the party whip.
Collins is running in a state that leans blue yet has repeatedly chosen her brand of caution over the alternative. Manchin’s presence hands her a validator who once sat on the other side of the aisle and still calls her essential. Schumer’s silence left that contrast unanswered.
The minority leader’s theory of the case is straightforward: peel off a vulnerable Republican in Trump-lost territory, pad the Democratic map, and reclaim the majority. Manchin’s rebuttal is just as plain. Remove Collins and you remove one of the last senators both parties could still work with when legislation had to clear 60 votes and reach a president’s desk.
Jackson will keep pressing the Trump association. Democrats will keep spending. Handicappers will keep the race in toss-up territory until voters decide. None of that changes the fact that a former Democratic senator traveled to Maine, ate hot dogs with a Republican incumbent, and told the country the man running the Democratic Senate operation is repeating a mistake he already made in 2020.
When even Joe Manchin calls the strategy crazy, the problem is not a shortage of partisan soldiers. It is a leadership class that treats compromise as betrayal and then wonders why the middle walks away.