Joseph R. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, endorsed Sara Gideon Friday in her bid to challenge Sen. Susan Collins in Maine.
“Ending the Trump nightmare is not enough. We can’t just go back to the way things were,” Mr. Biden said in a statement. “We need to make progress on health care, the climate crisis, criminal justice reform on our courts, and so much more. And to do that, I need Sara Gideon in the U.S. Senate.”
Ms. Collins, a vulnerable moderate Republican, said this month that she would be staying out of the presidential race and not campaign against Mr. Biden because she knew him “very well.”
Democrats see the tight race between Ms. Collins and Ms. Gideon, speaker of the Maine House, as one of their best chances to flip the state, which they’ll need to do to take control over the upper chamber.
