PORTLAND, Maine — Troy Jackson spent part of this week in New York City asking donors to help him unseat Sen. Susan Collins. But the biggest gift his campaign received didn’t come from a donor or political actor at all. It came from a ProPublica investigation published Tuesday alleging a pay-to-play scheme involving Collins, her staff and a Hawaii-based military contractor.

Democrats have spent the days since trying to make the allegations stick in a race that polls show is close and that both parties see as crucial to control of the Senate, with in-person early voting set to begin in less than two weeks.

Jackson called the report “corruption in the highest order.” On Wednesday morning state party leaders gathered reporters outside Collins’s Portland office and echoed his charge.

Crucially, the story appeared on local newscasts across Maine on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday afternoon it was still near the top of the homepages of newspapers like the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News. (ProPublica makes most of its stories available for other outlets to publish for free.)

Democrats have little room for error. The latest New York Times/Portland Press Herald/Siena poll, released Thursday morning, shows Collins at 49% among likely voters and Jackson at 46%. With a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points, the race is effectively a toss-up. Five percent of voters were undecided. The survey was conducted mostly before the ProPublica story broke. Collins’ support has ticked up slightly since the same pollsters’ June survey, but neither candidate has any cushion.

Collins and her aides have vigorously denied the allegations, arguing — inaccurately — that ProPublica simply recycled accusations of campaign finance violations involving the contractor, Martin Kao, whose ties to Collins have been reported before. Kao is serving an 87-month prison sentence for Covid-relief fraud and bank fraud.

“We hear this every cycle that Susan Collins is corrupt. I mean, whatever,” Collins’ chief of staff, Steven Abbott, told reporters Wednesday. “I’m just so, I guess, used to it, and it’s so tiresome. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. It’s their effort to discredit the work that she does on behalf of the people of Maine.”

Over 30 years in the Senate, Collins has carefully cultivated a reputation as a senator intensely focused on her constituents’ concerns. That could make the allegations hard to land.

“It’s going to be tough,” said Dan Shea, a professor of government at Colby College, in Waterville. “I think there is a predisposition to not imagine that Susan Collins would engage in this … that this would not be something Susan would do. It’s not part of the narrative that has sort of circled the senator for 30 years.”

Still, Shea added, “as new evidence emerges, I think there could be a growing crack in that narrative.”

He cautioned Democrats against “storming out of the gate,” suggesting they “should lay off and let the media do their business.”

At a Wednesday press conference, Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said Democrats would “add this to the very long list” of arguments against Collins.

“A lot of [our] conversations with voters are very lengthy,” she said. “We do still have undecided voters in this state, and that’s what we’re focused on in the last 40 days … We feel confident that we are going to beat Susan Collins on Nov. 3.”

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