BANGOR — Last summer, Sen. Susan Collins’ re-election campaign ran a TV ad featuring Carol Watkins, a veteran’s widow. Sen. Collins helped this elderly woman sort out a paperwork snafu with the Veterans Affairs Department, and got Mrs. Watkins’ benefits flowing again. This allowed her to keep her house. Happy ending!

The commercial reminded me of an anecdote I once heard about Gerald Ford, the rather mediocre U.S. representative from Michigan who became, through an unlikely chain of coincidences, president of the United States. One of his colleagues in the House supposedly said of him, “If Jerry was on his way to the House and saw a hungry child, he would give the kid his own bag lunch, then vote against a school lunch subsidy program and never see any conflict between the two actions.”

It’s wonderful that Sen. Collins helped Carol Watkins, but in February of this year, she joined such arch-conservatives as Ted Cruz in blocking (by filibuster) a bill that would have provided $21 billion in veterans’ assistance: education, job-training benefits and medical support. To me, the contrast between the ad and the action says that Susan Collins swatted a single wasp while ignoring the nest.

In another ad, Collins is surrounded by admiring Bath Iron Works employees. Lots of happy guys and gals, and why wouldn’t these union workers be happy? Entry-level positions at BIW pay $17 an hour. A welder starts at around $25 an hour. An electrical engineer makes $70,000 a year. Plus benefits, of course.

Stack these numbers up against Maine’s minimum wage, which is $7.50 an hour. The federal minimum is even lower – $7.25. Susan Collins has voted against raising it to $10.10 an hour. That, she has said, would just be too high. Really? Tell it to the guy who says hello to you when you walk into Wal-Mart, or the gal who takes your order at the McDonald’s drive-through window.

I support Democrat Shenna Bellows for U.S. Senate because there are actually two middle classes in Maine. Those in the upper middle are making $60,000 to $120,000 per year. This is the middle class Republicans see when an election year rolls around. But there’s another middle class, those making $40,000 a year or less, and to these people, Republicans – Susan Collins very much included – seem blind. These are the waitresses, convenience store clerks, agricultural workers, supermarket cashiers and many more.

Those in the lower middle can barely keep up with the minimum payable balance on their credit cards. For them, owning a home is a pie-in-the-sky daydream; just making the rent is a balancing act.

They can’t afford to send their kids to college. They have to work one hour to buy two lousy gallons of gas, and they thank God for Obamacare, which has made visits to a doctor’s office possible again, instead of waiting until whatever’s wrong with them gets bad enough to justify a trip to the nearest emergency care facility.

Shenna Bellows is in favor of making millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share, and passing that on to veterans. She’s in favor of equal pay for equal work (Collins voted against it). Bellows is against the Keystone pipeline, which, if constructed, will carry tar sands oil, the dirtiest fuel on earth, directly above the Ogallala Aquifer, one of America’s biggest and cleanest water preserves. It runs beneath eight states and supplies water to a dozen. Collins is for it.

I find all Bellows’ positions reasonable, but what infuriates me is the Republican refusal to face the inequity between the two middle classes: the one that’s making good and the one that’s barely making do. She actually sees all those people who are wiring up their mufflers rather than replacing them, living in cold apartments when winter comes, and feeding their kids what’s on sale because it’s what they can afford. She grew up one of them, in Hancock County, as I did down in Androscoggin, where my first job was for minimum wage in the Worumbo Mill dyehouse in Lisbon Falls.

Can Bellows be elected? The smart money says “no.” The smart money believes Maine voters will amble into the voting booths Nov. 4 and choose the supposed moderate. Maybe, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no third candidate, as there is in the governor’s race, to muddle the choice.

I see not one reason to vote for the incumbent this time. Susan Collins has never missed a roll-call vote, but perfect attendance is a damn weak reason to vote for a candidate. It’s the quality of those votes that matters, and an examination of Sen. Collins’ record makes it clear that Maine can do better.

— Special to the Press Herald

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