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Vice President JD Vance is taking his anti-fraud road show to Maine on Thursday in a test of his political pull ahead of the midterms — though the state’s incumbent Republican senator won’t be joining him.
Sen. Susan Collins told Semafor that she can’t make the trip, citing her long-running vote streak: “He will have come and gone by the time I can get home, since I don’t miss votes.”
Collins added that she isn’t sure if Vance will return to Maine in the fall, saying she’s “always run my own campaign.” But she also said Vance’s new focus on fraud in government healthcare programs is a legitimate pursuit, saying she’s talked to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz about it.
“It’s important that we still protect Medicaid benefits for the many people in Maine who depend on that program for their healthcare, but the loss of funds to fraud only make it more difficult to serve those who do qualify,” Collins said.
The vice president does have the midterms on his mind: He plans to campaign for former Gov. Paul LePage in his House race. Vance is seeking to make his anti-fraud effort the antithesis of his predecessor Kamala Harris’ widely critiqued work on the southern border as he weighs a bid to succeed President Donald Trump in 2028.
And his White House press conference on Wednesday helped elevate his work — though he also fielded his fair share of questions about the burgeoning GOP debate over whether he or Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the most natural heir to Trump’s coalition.
“It’s the opposite of Biden making Kamala the border czar. What a joke,” Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a top Vance ally, told Semafor. “This is real, and it’s an issue that resonates at home.”
Banks said that Vance’s anti-fraud work would prove “a win for him post-midterm elections, as he dives into the presidential race. It shows that he’s action-oriented. He delivers results and is doing what the president asked him to do.”
Vance’s fraud push is being widely lauded as “a grand slam,” as one Republican close to the White House put it, with lots of upside and little downside as the administration faces high disapproval ratings amid the war with Iran, rising prices, and angst about the economy.
“It puts the vice president in a position where he can score constant wins for the administration on an issue that’s popular,” this Republican said. “It’s also an issue that Democrats have always struggled to successfully message against.”
People close to the White House predicted that Vance would ramp up his midterm travel over the next few months, a huge assignment for a party struggling to keep its grip on Congress. That work will inevitably be seen as a trial run for 2028, or what a second person close to the White House called “good practice.”
“There’s so much different speculation as to whether or not he’s actually going to run, or if he’s going to be the one that ultimately gets supported. But this is the tryouts,” this person said.
Multiple sources told Semafor that the Trump administration has long planned to ramp up midterm travel by Vance, who’s often leaned on for fundraising. The vice president’s allies insist they’re not thinking about 2028 as Vance gets on the road more.
But others in the party see the connection.
“He’s looking for something probably to pivot to, assuming he has higher aspirations. I think it’s all tied into finding a niche for him,” one Republican senator told Semafor.
As for his Maine visit, this senator added: “I don’t know if that helps [Collins], if that’s what he’s trying to do.”
A Vance spokesperson declined to comment.
Know More
As head of the anti-fraud task force, Vance announced a fresh front Wednesday: administration plans to defer $1.34 billion of California’s Medicaid funds, and threats to do the same to other states that don’t “cooperate” with the effort.
Officials will also prevent hospice and other home health care providers from enrolling in Medicare for six months, and they’re “looking into” whether to charge some governors with crimes, Vance said.
Vance pushed back on the idea that “this is a red-state, blue-state issue,” pointing to Ohio and Maryland, both of which “have worked with us to take this issue seriously.”
He also opened his Wednesday press conference by explaining he hadn’t gone to China because of “Secret Service protocols” that prohibit him from traveling out of the country with the president.
He quipped that he felt like the actor Macaulay Culkin in the film Home Alone: “I walk into the White House, and it’s very quiet, and no one’s there.”
Room for Disagreement
As much as his Maine trip is seen through that lens, Vance really doesn’t want to discuss a potential contest with Rubio — or anyone else — that’s still two years out.
“There are few topics that I want to talk about less than what office I’m going to run for years down the road, when I’m having a good time trying to make it work in the job the American people already elected me to do,” Vance said Wednesday when asked about his 2028 ambitions.
“If I was the American people, there are few things that I would hate more than a person who’s barely been in one office for a year and a half who’s aiming for a job two and a half years down the road,” Vance added. “Let’s do a good job now.”
Burgess, Shelby, and Eleanor’s View
Vance and his allies can insist all they want that he doesn’t have 2028 on his mind, but fraud and the midterms are two high-profile assignments that will inevitably affect his future.
Just ask Harris, whose handling of the border under Biden became a running joke in politics.
And LePage’s race in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, as well as House races overall, offers a good laboratory for Vance’s style of politics — there’s even an electoral vote in the state up for grabs in 2028.
Notable
- Vance is also involved in the efforts to end the war with Iran, saying on Wednesday that he believes there’s “progress” being made.