The market for middle-ground politics having evaporated, Democrats are convinced they have Sen. Susan Collins on the ropes after years of failing to oust the Republican centrist from Maine.
Collins has defied the odds, defeating strong Democrats in liberal-leaning Maine, even as blue-wave elections decimated the once-thriving delegation of New England Republicans who once filled Congress. But in an era of hyperpartisanship, Collins’s centrism, the linchpin of her political staying power, has come under an uncomfortable microscope.
Democratic and Republican voters are less receptive to her pragmatic votes on legislation and judicial nominations than during much of her nearly quarter century in the Senate. This vulnerability has become especially pronounced since President Trump assumed office three years ago.
“No question in my mind, this is the hardest race Collins will have had since her first go-around,” said Toby McGrath, a Democratic insider in Maine who ran Barack Obama’s two campaigns there and also guided independent Sen. Angus King to victory in 2018. “Democrats are not giving her the benefit of the doubt anymore the way they were in the past.”
Since facing a tough battle in her first Senate race in 1996, Collins has easily dispatched formidable Democratic challengers. She beat Chellie Pingree, now a congresswoman, by 16 points in 2002; and she defeated Tom Allen, then a sitting congressman, by 23 points in 2008. That year, Obama won big in Maine and helped Democrats flip control of nine Senate seats.
Despite this demonstrated political muscle, Democrats say the 2020 contest looks and feels different. They point to a drop in the senator’s job approval in some polls to levels that mirror Trump’s ratings in the mid-40s. She has had a middling fundraising performance in the first quarter of this year, $2.4 million raised, compared to the whopping $7.1 million haul of her Democratic challenger: Sara Gideon, speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
Democrats contend these indicators are proof Collins has done irreparable damage to the centrist image that inoculated her from spirited challenges in previous campaigns. And they particularly credit her votes to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 and acquit Trump on two articles of impeachment earlier this year for what they describe as Collins’s undoing.
“She usually wins because she gets Democratic crossover votes, and I think Democrats are frustrated because she keeps falling back in line with her party and the president,” said Rachel Irwin, a veteran Democratic operative from Maine who is now the spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC, the super PAC aligned with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Republicans agree that Collins is in considerable trouble, at least judging by the major, early investments the GOP and its allies are making in her reelection.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has reserved initial television and radio advertising worth $5.1 million in Maine. The spots are set to begin June 3, a full five months before the November elections. The Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has made a $7.2 million buy in Maine to begin Sept. 8, amounting to one of the biggest investments the group will make in this election cycle.
Additionally, One Nation, the political nonprofit organization aligned with the Senate Leadership Fund, has been on the air in Maine since January with ads touting Collins’s record.
But Republicans claim confidence in Collins.
They point to the senator’s victory in 2008 as an example of unique resiliency under fire, while highlighting what they assert are missteps by Gideon, 48, who Republicans say is unprepared for a pressure-packed campaign. Republicans cite a campaign finance complaint the Maine GOP filed against Gideon with the Maine Ethics Commission. They also accuse her of opportunism for criticizing the proliferation of money in politics despite accepting donations from political action committees.
“Between the ethics violations and corporate money hypocrisy, Gideon has a trust problem. She looks like a craven politician,” said Jesse Hunt, NRSC spokesman.
The Republican nominee has not won a presidential election in Maine outright since 1988. But the state is not a political desert for the party.
From 1997 to 2013, the GOP controlled both Senate seats, and from 2011 until 2019, the party held the governor’s mansion. Trump lost the state narrowly to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 but won one of the state’s two congressional districts — the mostly rural, conservative 2nd District encompassing northern and western Maine. A Republican has ruled that seat periodically, most recently from 2015 to 2019.
