A group of protesters disrupted a ceremonial ribbon cutting Tuesday in Waldo County featuring U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, highlighting the tense political climate Maine’s senior senator is likely to navigate during her reelection campaign.

The event reportedly was moved indoors as about 200 protesters lined the sidewalks of downtown Searsport, a small coastal town east of Belfast.

The town was celebrating a $17.8 million downtown revitalization project that received $9.2 million in federal funding secured by Collins.

Video posted on the social media website X, formerly Twitter, shows Collins being booed by dozens of protesters who followed her inside as she approached the podium. Some chanted “shame.”

A longer video posted to YouTube shows Collins being greeted with chants of “stop funding genocide,” a reference to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza that world health organizations say is causing starvation among civilians, including children.

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Protesters continued to shout angrily about Collins’ lack of town hall meetings, her support for Israel and her recent votes on U.S. Supreme Court nominees, as the town manager and Collins sought to restore order and refocus the event on the ribbon cutting.

Collins offered to meet with protesters after the event if they stopped interrupting the ceremony, which they didn’t do.

“If you can’t show them (local officials) the courtesy of that, then this is really bad,” Collins said. “This is not the Maine I know.”

“This is the Maine you created!” a protester responded.

One of the event attendees, Judy Berk, said in a Facebook post that some of the protesters “were able to mingle with her and ask questions directly one-on-one after the ribbon cutting.”

Democrats have once again taken aim at Collins as she eyes reelection next year and activists have been pressuring her to hold town hall events. They believe Collins is more vulnerable this cycle than when she last ran in 2020 — a race in which she trailed in all of the polls but ended up winning by 9 points over former Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon of Freeport.

The spotlight has grown on Collins this year as Trump enters his second term and as she fulfilled a career goal of leading the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, which negotiates discretionary spending, including earmarks for projects like those in Searsport.

Collins has been criticized by Trump supporters — and more recently by Trump himself — for not supporting all of the president’s actions, and by Democrats for enabling Trump as he seeks to consolidate more power in the executive branch.

Democrats also have hammered Collins for supporting some of Trump’s controversial appointments, such as vaccine opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Russell Vought as budget director.

And they have been working overtime to tie Collins to the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill that made permanent the president’s 2017 tax cuts, which primarily benefit the wealthy, while cutting nearly $1 billion from the Medicaid program. Collins voted to advance the bill for a final Senate vote, but ultimately voted against enacting it.

Tuesday’s event in Searsport was one of the few public events on Collins’ calendar during the August recess.

The Midcoast Villager reported that the protests were organized by Indivisible Waldo County, which is part of a national activist network opposing the Trump administration and pressuring members of Congress into holding town hall events, which have turned confrontational in other states.

In a written statement, Shawn Roderick, Collins’ campaign spokesman, accused protesters and Democrats of distorting the senator’s record.

“The far-left progressives at the Maine Democratic Party headquarters continue to lie and distort Senator Collins’ record for their own political purposes and to confuse Maine voters,” he said. “Senator Collins respectfully listened to the protestors who showed up in Searsport, mingled with them after the event, and answered their questions.”