Anthony Zurcher

Hello, it's Anthony, and I'm here in the BBC Bureau in Washington, D.C., but that's not where I started my day.

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning in Bangor, Maine.

Yeah, we've talked about this race before.

Of course, it's the Graham-Plattner race to become the Senate Democratic nominee to take on Susan Collins, the incumbent who has served in the Senate for 30 years now.

This is the high stakes race in the upcoming midterms.

This is a state that could decide which party controls the Senate after November's midterm elections.

And that's because this is the one state that Kamala Harris won

in 2024 that a Republican senator is up for reelection in.

In fact, a Republican hasn't won for president statewide, won the state of Maine since 1988.

So this has been a state that has been on Democrats' target for quite some time.

And Susan Collins keeps defying gravity, but they think that this is the year.

And if they can get Maine to flip, then it'll make it much easier to find the three other states, Republican states, they need to flip to take back control of the Senate.

The northeastern tip of the United States, and it's very rural.

And it's bigger, I think, than a lot of people imagine geographically, but still very small as far as the population goes.

1.4 million people, I think, spread out over the state.

A lot of them are around Portland and the western portions of the state that are essentially suburbs of Boston.

I flew into Portland on Sunday night.

It's an artsy kind of town, a really cool, hip place.

They have a lot of breweries.

Good little lobster roll places if you if you're a lobster fan and live music and things.