ME-SEN: A Trump Republican says he'll challenge Susan Collins from the right in 2020

A conservative blogger has announced that he’ll run a Republican primary against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins as she approaches a 2020 re-election race promising to be one of the more competitive ones in a year with a difficult map for Democrats.

He is Derek Levasseur, a blogger and former police officer from Fairfield who said in a Facebook post that he will run after Collins joined 11 other Republican senators to oppose President Donald Trump’s border emergency declaration. He hasn’t filed with the Federal Election Commission yet, but he said he will when he raises $5,000.

Levassaur says he’ll back Trump’s “America First policies” and his run shows lingering resentment toward Collins among conservatives, even if he doesn’t begin as a serious threat to the senator. He’ll have to deal with being a relative unknown and a 2012 incident — no longer on his record — in which he was charged with assaulting four people, including a daughter.

Levasseur’s stint as a police officer ended after the incident at a wedding reception, which he blames partially on post-traumatic stress disorder. Levasseur worked for the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office from July 2009 to June 2011 before going to work as a part-time officer in Clinton in January 2012, according to the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.


https://bangordailynews.com/2019/03/25/politics/daily-brief/a-trump-republican-says-hell-challenge-susan-collins-from-the-right-in-2020/?_ga=2.132319949.278582896.1553514332-78203163.1551203143