The $1,500 tank
Here is a number that does not care who you vote for: $1,500.
That is roughly what it now costs to fill a standard home heating oil tank in Maine, per Bloomberg. Heating oil there recently hit a record, averaging $5.96 a gallon, up about 80% from last year, amid price increases stoked by the war in Iran. And a tank typically has to be refilled a few times to get through a Maine winter.
Nighttime temperatures are already near freezing. The bill arrives before the snow does.
The race the tank is running
This is not just a kitchen-table story. It is a Senate-control story.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins faces Democrat Troy Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and former state Senate president, in a race Bloomberg calls crucial to either party’s hopes of a majority. Democrats need a net gain of four seats. Jackson became the nominee in July after Graham Platner dropped out amid a string of scandals.
Mainers split 47% to 47% on which candidate is better on cost of living, per a New York Times and Siena poll cited by Bloomberg. Only 25% approved of President Donald Trump‘s handling of it. The same poll had Collins up 3 among likely voters, while other recent polls give Jackson a slight edge. Collins and an allied PAC hold a $37 million spending advantage, tallied by AdImpact.
Translation: the voters think both of them are equally bad at the thing voters care about most.
What it feels like in the kitchen
The Boston Globe found prices above $6 a gallon in many places, more than $2 higher than last year.
Lisa Furman owns a home in Hancock County in northern Maine. She expects to pay $3,400 for heating oil over the next 10 months, against the $1,500 she usually spends in a season. “Now you’re going to double my heating oil bill? This is just a slap in the face,” she said. A community therapist, she makes too much to qualify for federal heating assistance, so it goes on the credit card.
The help that does exist is thin. Jason Parent, chief executive of Avec Community Action, one of Maine’s heating-assistance agencies, told the Globe the average award where he works is about $700 this season. At close to $6 a gallon, the Globe notes, that would barely fill half a tank once. His appointments are already booked into January. “All signs point to this being the most challenging year we’ve had,” he said.
Half a tank of help for a winter that needs several full ones.
The debate: everyone has a villain
Susan Collins
On Tuesday night, at the CBS13/FOX23 debate, the two candidates each found the cause, and it was each other, per WGME.
Collins: “If you look at the policies that have driven up the cost of living in Maine, you have to look at Augusta. Maine has the fourth highest electricity rates in the country.” Those, she said, are “all due to Augusta’s failed policies under the failed leadership of Troy Jackson.”
Jackson: “The reason our fuel prices are going through the roof and the reason why our electricity costs are going through the roof is because the cost of fuel, the cost of oil is so high because she wouldn’t stop President Trump with the Iran war.”
She blames the statehouse. He blames the White House. Your oil tank blames nobody. It just empties.
The red costume: cut in half, then call it a hoax
Let us check the promise on the label.
In Michigan in August 2024, Trump said, “Your heating and air conditioning, electricity, gasoline all can be cut down in half,” per FactCheck.org. In Detroit that October: “I will cut your energy prices in half within 12 months.” Experts told FactCheck.org there was no way to deliver that.
Heating. By name. Cut in half. Maine got the opposite half: up 80%.
Last Thursday in Denton, Texas, the president had a new theory, per The Independent: “You know, they came up with the word affordability,” he said of his critics, adding that “they have a great line of bull***t.”
And the program that helps people like Parent’s clients? Collins’s own office says she led bipartisan efforts to fund the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program at $4.045 billion this fiscal year, “overriding the Administration’s proposed elimination of LIHEAP,” per Sen. Collins’s office. Now senators are pushing the administration to release most of this year’s roughly $4 billion before the coldest months and to add $3 billion in emergency funds, per the Globe.
The White House promised to halve your heating bill, then tried to zero out the help paying it.
Credit where due: Bloomberg reports Collins pressed the administration to release heating aid, voted against last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and backed a resolution to limit Trump’s Iran war powers. But Bloomberg also reports she supported the procedural move that let that bill advance. Jackson says she voted with Trump “96% of the time.” Independent-minded on the final vote. Team player on the one that mattered first.
The blue costume: the bill Augusta wrote
Troy Jackson
Now Jackson’s side of the ledger.
Collins’s attack is not pulled from thin air. Maine’s expanded Net Energy Billing solar program, signed into law in 2019, was expected to cost more than $234 million last year, a cost the state’s Public Advocate raised concerns about, per WABI. State Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart says GOP rollback bills were killed “20 times” under Jackson’s gavel.
Jackson’s campaign answers that eliminating the program would not have lowered bills, per the Public Advocate at the time, and that he helped pass a 2023 reform to lower costs. Maybe so. But “I helped fix the bill I helped create” is a strange way to run as the affordability candidate.
And before any Democrat pins all of this on Trump: the Consumer Price Index for household energy rose 29% under President Joe Biden, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by FactCheck.org. That is part of why “cut it in half” sold in the first place.
Then there is the climate-friendly exit, the heat pump. A Massachusetts homeowner told the Globe an HVAC company quoted him $75,000 to convert. Even with a Mass Save rebate, it was far more than he could pay this season. The heat pump is a fine long-term idea. Your furnace needs a plan for this January.
We have seen this movie
In Don’t Hit Diesel, diesel printed a record $6.45 while the Iran war choked oil routes. In Temporary Exception: Oil, the White House said prices were coming down, except the thing you buy every week. In $6.50 Diesel, an Unpopular War, and the Next Jan. 6 Temptation, the fuel bill became the midterm. And in Donald Trump Is the New Jimmy Carter, the guy who promised cheap gas met the pump. Heating oil is the same war, just delivered to your basement.
Both costumes
Fair is fair. No senator sets the price of oil. A war, a refinery squeeze, and a cold snap do not care about party labels. Collins did fight for heating aid, and Jackson’s campaign says he helped pass a reform.
But the red costume is “your heating will be cut in half” stitched onto an 80% spike, a budget that tried to kill heating aid, and a president who calls affordability a word the other side made up. The blue costume is a former Senate president running against costs that run through his own statehouse, plus a party that wants Trump to own every penny of an energy bill that rose 29% on Biden’s watch.
You do not have to pick a costume. Before November 3, ask both of them one question: what will you do about my tank by January?
Receipts
- Bloomberg Government, October 6, 2026. The $5.96 record, the 80% jump, the $1,500 tank, the four-seat math, the Times/Siena numbers, the $37 million edge, Platner’s exit, and Collins’s votes and heating-aid push.
- Boston Globe, October 6, 2026. Prices above $6, Furman’s bill, Parent’s $700 average award, the LIHEAP push, and the $75,000 conversion quote.
- WGME, October 6, 2026. The Collins and Jackson debate quotes.
- FactCheck.org, October 28, 2024. Trump’s “cut in half” pledges, the experts’ doubts, and the 29% household energy rise under Biden.
- The Independent, October 2, 2026. Trump’s “affordability” remarks in Denton.
- Sen. Susan Collins, March 13, 2026. The $4.045 billion LIHEAP total and the administration’s proposed elimination.
- WABI, September 4, 2026. Net Energy Billing costs, Stewart’s “20 times,” and the Jackson campaign’s response.
Upgrade
Free readers see this section as Upgrade to paid. Paid readers pick 1 meme sticker from the Etsy shop HypocrisyDemocracy, plus quarterly sticker packs, discounts and bonus content, and 1 free business strategy & IT consultation a year with Anytech Solutions LLC.
If you haven’t subscribed, now’s a good time. Everything here stays free, always. But pieces like this take days of research, writing, and fact checking, and if you’d like to support that work, paid subscriptions are there. Thank you for your support!
Thanks for reading, sharing, and commenting.
Subscribe. Donate. hypocrisydemocracy.net. Hypocrisydemocracy@pm.me.
Originally published on Substack.