Vandals dumped red paint and wrote "blood on her hands" outside Sen. Susan Collins's Maine office the night before Election Day, the second attack in a month aimed at intimidation.
Fox News reported that saboteurs hit the Republican senator's Biddeford office Monday night, dumping a bucket of red paint in front of the building and scrawling "BLOOD on her HANDS" in crimson across the sidewalk.
It was the second time in a month the Biddeford site had been defaced. Collins' campaign said Biddeford police are investigating.
Her chief of staff framed the damage as part of a pattern meant to scare the senator and the people who work for her.
Katie Brown, Collins' chief of staff, told Fox News' Alexis McAdams the office will not back down.
"This is another incident in a series and the second attempt at our Biddeford office to intimidate the Senator and her staff. These tactics are disturbing, but not effective. Our staff is undeterred and on the job,"
Brown's statement puts the paint and sidewalk message in a longer run of pressure on the same Maine office. No arrests or charges were reported in the latest case.
Democratic challenger Troy Jackson condemned the vandalism in a statement shared with Fox News Digital. His campaign did not immediately offer further comment when asked.
"There’s no place for this in Maine. Vandalism and intimidation are wrong, full stop. Senator Collins and her staff should be able to do their jobs without anyone defacing their office, and I condemn whoever did this,"
Jackson, a former Democratic state senator now running for the U.S. Senate seat, had used nearly the same language after an earlier attack on the building.
In September, vandals spray-painted the office door. The message in red included a vulgar "Trump w****" epithet aimed at Collins.
That earlier defacement made Monday night's paint dump the second hit on the Biddeford location in roughly a month. Brown called it the second attempt there to intimidate the senator and her staff.
The pattern did not start with spray paint. It tracks back to a deadly encounter near the same office earlier in the year.
In July, a law enforcement officer shot and killed 26-year-old Colombian national Johan Sebastián Guerrero in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer-involved shooting near the Biddeford office scene.
Days after that shooting, protesters barged into the front door of Collins' Biddeford office. They chanted "vote her out."
The office sits close enough to that July incident that the protests, the September door graffiti, and the fresh red paint and "BLOOD on her HANDS" sidewalk message form one continuous stretch of pressure on the same workplace.
Collins has continued her campaign work through it. A recent debate at Husson University in Bangor showed her still facing Jackson in public forums while staff kept the Biddeford office running.
Biddeford police are investigating the Monday night damage, according to Collins' campaign. Identities of the people who dumped the paint and wrote on the sidewalk have not been released. No motive from any perpetrator appears in the public statements.
What is on the record is the physical act: a bucket of red paint in front of a U.S. senator's office and a crimson accusation of blood on her hands, delivered the night before voters headed to the polls.
Collins' team says the goal is intimidation. Jackson says vandalism and intimidation have no place in Maine. Both descriptions leave the same practical fact: staff who serve constituents in Biddeford had to clean up political graffiti and paint instead of simply doing their jobs.
Elected officials and the people who answer their phones should not need a fresh coat of paint and a police report to get through an election week.
