Maine’s Susan Collins’ Bipartisanship Is Now a Re-Election Liability

Bitter Legacy of Trump Court Fights Put Collins Down in Maine

By Greg Giroux

October 29, 2020, 4:00 AM EDT

The Cook Political Report on Oct. 27, 2020

The bitter partisanship that took hold in the U.S. Senate under President Donald Trump has haunted Susan Collins, a Republican in the largely Democratic state of Maine who carefully crafted a record of crossing the aisle over 24 years in the chamber.

Nothing better illustrated the divide between Republicans and Democrats than the 2018 battle over Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. And Collins’s vote for Kavanaugh gave Democrats the opening they’d sought for years to chip away at her carefully built bipartisan image.

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The four-term veteran pivoted this month, voting against Trump’s latest pick for the top court, Amy Coney Barrett. But that’s alienated some of the president’s fervent supporters in the state, whose backing she needs to win re-election.

The Barrett case “brings the Supreme Court issue back center-focus right now, when she doesn’t need it to be,” Jessica Taylor, Senate editor of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said. “You have conservatives that are again upset that she’s bucking the Republican Party, and you have centrists and Democrats that she may have gotten that still don’t trust her.”

Collins was already on the back foot before the Barrett vote. Her support for Kavanaugh, who faced allegations of sexual assault, sparked a national fundraising campaign to oust her. And her odds lengthened when Sara Gideon, an exceptionally well-funded and well-known Democrat who’s the speaker of the state House, won her party’s primary.

The level of disdain for Donald Trump in much of Maine and the immediacy of the Supreme Court vote casts a shadow over all the metrics that kept Susan Collins in place in a Democratic-leaning state.

Photographer: Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

The downfall of the sole New England Republican senator could help Democrats retake the majority in the chamber after six years of GOP control. Polling shows other strong pick-up possibilities including Arizona, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa, while Democrats are likely to lose a seat in Alabama.

Collins, 67, has been whipsawed during Trump’s presidency—rebuked by the president when she’s broken rank with Republicans, and scorched by Democrats for siding with Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in voting for the 2017 tax-cut law, confirming Kavanaugh and acquitting the president on two articles of impeachment in February.

It’s plunged her approval ratings from the Olympian levels that enabled her to win her first three re-election campaigns by convincing and increasing margins.

That vulnerability explains the in-pouring of more than $90 million in outside spending. It also helped Gideon raise nearly $70 million, including $6 million in the first two weeks of October. Collins has brought in a total of $27 million.

An anti-Collins advertising onslaught has included a pitch from former President Barack Obama, who said in a Gideon ad that backing her would help “make sure if Joe Biden wins, he’ll have a Senate ready to work with them to move our country forward.”

Collins hopscotched the state this year, reminding voters she’s a primary author of the Paycheck Protection Program to help small businesses and Maine workers amid the pandemic. She’s touted her willingness to work across the aisle, as well as the advantages her seniority offers her small state.

She’s known for a robust constituent-services operation and for not missing a floor vote over four terms—casting more than 7,400. She’s also highlighted that for seven straight years she’s ranked first among senators in a bipartisanship index maintained by the Lugar Center and McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University.

“She has been for a while the most moderate Republican in the Senate,” said Ron Schmidt, a professor at the University of Southern Maine. “But that really says more about the polarized nature of the Senate than it does about her.”

A onetime supporter of term limits, Collins is now seeking a fifth term and says she initially underestimated the importance of seniority to Maine, the 42nd-most populous state. Collins has emphasized her success securing federal largesse for Maine industry and infrastructure as a member of the Appropriations Committee, where she’s chairwoman of the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Subcommittee.

If she’s re-elected and Republicans maintain control of the Senate, Collins would be in line to lead the Senate Appropriations Committee in two years—the first Mainer to hold the position since the 1930s.

Still, the level of disdain for Trump in much of Maine and the immediacy of the Supreme Court vote casts a shadow over all the metrics that kept Collins in place in a Democratic-leaning state.

Sara Gideon’s ads note that Susan Collins voted for 181 of Trump’s judicial nominees to the federal bench.

Photographer: Sarah Rice/Bloomberg

Gideon, 48, has contrasted her leadership of the Maine House with the political paralysis in Washington. She said Collins hasn’t been able to parlay her seniority into relief for Mainers when they need it most.

“The lack of progress on lowering the cost of prescription drugs, the lack of progress on more Covid relief—these things Susan Collins is not able to get done, even though she talks about her 24 years of experience. It doesn’t seem to have an impact within her caucus,” Gideon said at a debate on Oct. 22.

Collins called Gideon reflexively partisan. “I think we need more bipartisanship, and that is what I’m known for in Washington,” Collins said.

Democrats have homed in on the votes where Collins aligned with Trump, including the Kavanaugh support that sparked liberal donors nationwide to donate millions even before Gideon had entered the race. Gideon’s ads note that Collins voted for 181 of Trump’s judicial nominees to the federal bench.

Collins said she’s always voted to confirm federal judges if they’re qualified, regardless of the president nominating them. Her campaign said that 84% of the 181 Trump judicial picks were backed by at least one Democrat. Collins noted she supported many of the Obama administration’s judicial picks, including Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

“Senator Collins works with this president—like she does with all presidents—when she thinks he’s right, and she opposes him when she thinks he’s wrong,” Collins spokeswoman Annie Clark said in a statement. “It’s what she’s always done, and it’s what she’ll continue to do.”

In June, Collins was the lone Republican vote against McConnell protege Justin Walker to be a U.S. Circuit Judge for the District of Columbia Circuit. Collins has voted against some Trump administration executive nominees, including Betsy DeVos for education secretary and Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler to lead the Environmental Protection Agency.

But in the deeply polarized Senate, McConnell still had the votes to confirm Trump nominees opposed by Collins.

Collins “simply has very little chance to be effective in today’s Senate,” Brian Duff, a political scientist at the University of New England, said. “The Senate doesn’t do much, and when it does things, it does things completely along party lines. And those two factors just completely gut Susan Collins’s argument for why she’s an effective senator.”

A wild card in the race, which features two independent candidates, is Maine’s use of ranked-choice voting. It permits voters to choose candidates in order of preference.

If no candidate wins a majority of the vote, the candidate who received the fewest first-choice votes is eliminated, and each vote cast for that candidate will be transferred to the voter’s next-ranked choice among the remaining candidates.

The process continues until one candidate receives a majority of the votes.

But that could be more bad news for Collins: a poll by Colby College released this week indicated that Gideon would likely net more second-choice votes from the supporters of two independent candidates than Collins, lead researcher Dan Shea said.

Bitter Legacy of Trump Court Fights Put Collins Down in Maine

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