PORTLAND (WGME) — If the polls are any indication, Graham Platner is the toughest challenger Senator Susan Collins has faced in the 30 years she’s held her Senate seat.

“I know now for certain, or pretty much for certain, who my opponent will be,” Collins said.

Collins toured York County’s new regional training center Friday, which she helped secure the funding to build.

As the first chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee from Maine in nearly 100 years, she says she’s been able to bring $1.5 billion to Maine for more than 650 projects across the state.

It’s federal funding, she says, that paid to replace or renovate 45 Maine fire stations, support childcare centers and help rural hospitals stay open.

“I think every day about how we can make life more comfortable for people in Maine,” Platner said.

Platner blames billionaires, big corporations, President Donald Trump, Collins and Republicans in Congress for the ongoing struggles facing working families and small businesses in Maine.

“We need to beat Susan Collins,” Platner said.

CBS13 asked Collins if she felt Trump’s performance will cost her votes in November. She did not answer that directly but did say she’s not running on Trump’s record, but her own.

“I’m proud of my record and the accomplishments of what I’ve been able to do for Maine and for our country,” Collins said.

Collins says the Social Security Fairness Act she helped pass allows retired teachers and first responders to now get the Social Security they earned working in the private sector, along with their pensions.

“I can’t tell you how many retired employees have come up to me and said that it’s made the difference between a comfortable retirement and barely getting by,” Collins said.

They are two polar opposites in many ways, vying for a Senate seat where the stakes couldn’t be higher.

“I look forward to what I hope will be a civil discussion of the important issues facing our country and the State of Maine,” Collins said.

The remote Washington County town of Topsfield voted Thursday to close its five-student school, opting to send a shrinking student population elsewhere.

Residents voted 42 to 18 to shutter the East Range II School after high costs began to drive students from out of town elsewhere, bringing the number of students down from 25 in 2023 to the small total it has today. Turnout was robust in a town with only about 175 residents and 130 registered voters.

School district officials projected that the school, which had once served pre-K through eighth grade but would have been left only with pre-K through early elementary school students, would teach no more than seven students at a time over the next five school years. They also expected it would cost nearly $500,000 per year to keep the school open.

“I had no idea how the vote was going to go,” Eastern Maine Area School System superintendent Amanda Belanger said Friday. “I’m glad that a decision has been made and that we can move forward.”

The school board will finalize the closure plan and weigh what to do about the staff at East Range, at a meeting on May 7. The school would have likely had only one full-time teacher working there next year. That teacher, Paula Johnson, said she wasn’t sure what she would do if the school closed. She has worked there for 11 years.

Students will now likely be bused from Topsfield to schools in Princeton or Baileyville, about 30 minutes south. East Range will close at the end of this school year. After that, the town will take over the property.

It’s not clear what will become of the building. At an April meeting to discuss the future of the school, some residents were already speculating about whether it could turn into a senior center or similar community facility.

The result of Thursday’s vote was not unexpected. Many residents at the April meeting said they could not afford the taxes required to keep the school open. They will still have to pay for maintenance of the building but that cost is expected to be much lower than the cost of maintaining the school.

Taxpayers will also have to continue to pay for students, but the cost of busing kids out of town is also expected to be much lower than maintaining the local school.

The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com

Kaitlyn Cunningham Morse is founder of Maine Aging Partners, a Maine-based consulting firm that helps families navigate aging and long-term care decisions.

In the coming election, Maine candidates will talk about housing. They will talk about workforce shortages, affordability, economic development and the future of our state.

What many will not do is confront the force tying those issues together: Maine is aging faster than our systems are adapting.

That omission matters.

Too much of our public conversation around aging still proceeds as though this is a manageable strain on an otherwise functional system — something that can be solved with another grant, another pilot program, another commission, or simply more patience.

But if that approach were working, it would be working by now.

Instead, we continue discussing the downstream effects of aging as if they are separate and unrelated problems.

We debate labor shortages. We debate housing shortages. We debate burnout. We debate economic stagnation.

All while ignoring the quiet reality unfolding behind closed doors across this state.

Somewhere in Maine, an older couple is beginning to struggle. One has fallen twice. The other is forgetting medications. The home that served them for 40 years no longer serves them now. And when no clear path exists — when there is no accessible support, no plan, no obvious next step — that problem does not stay within their household.

It lands downstream.

It lands in front of the daughter leaving work early because her father cannot be left alone. It lands in front of the employer wondering why a once-reliable manager is suddenly distracted. It lands in front of the small business losing a key employee to caregiving demands. It lands in front of the hospital trying to discharge someone with nowhere appropriate to send them. It lands in front of local leaders trying to solve workforce and housing issues while more residents quietly age out of independence.

That is what Maine’s aging crisis actually looks like.

Not simply older adults needing care. But families, employers and communities reorganizing themselves around a system under mounting strain.

Maine has the oldest population in the nation. Yet we still discuss aging as though it is a niche healthcare issue rather than a defining economic fact.

It is not separate from our workforce challenges. It is not separate from our housing crisis. It is not separate from our economic future.

When enough working-age adults reduce hours, leave jobs, delay advancement, or burn out because they are managing family caregiving in a fragmented system, the consequences ripple across the entire state.

This is no longer simply an elder care issue. It is a workforce issue. An economic issue. A housing issue. A civic issue.

And until our leaders begin treating aging as a central challenge shaping Maine’s future — rather than a specialized concern delegated to familiar institutions and stakeholder groups — we will continue mistaking downstream symptoms for unrelated problems.

We cannot build a thriving Maine while ignoring the demographic reality reshaping nearly every major policy debate before us.

The future of this state depends on our willingness to finally say so.