PHOENIX — Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, is moving past the threats that came after she announced she would vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
After weeks of threats against the Maine Republican and her family, Collins is finally feeling a sense of security and relief after casting one of the deciding votes to confirm the justice and facing outside pressure to vote the other way. Collins was protected for weeks during the confirmation process by Capitol Police and by local law enforcement back in Maine, but now all of that is gone as she regains a sense of normalcy.
“I do feel more safe at this point,” Collins said in an interview Thursday, thanking law enforcement at all levels and noting that she was the second senator targeted by a New York individual who was arrested for threats against two senators. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, confirmed last week he was the other senator. Grassley chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
For weeks, Collins says she was uneasy about the threats and attention she had garnered, particularly after one instance — a story she did not reveal until Wednesday’s interview — where a man waited for her late one night outside her Washington townhouse in early October, less than a week before the Kavanaugh vote.
“I was [nervous] for a while, but I’m not now. I’m not,” Collins insisted. “It’s interesting, I think it was partially the night that I came home late — I’d worked late til 9:30pm, and there was a man who had been waiting for me at my townhouse in the rain in the dark for hours. And that, I will tell you, really scared me.”
Collins said it was after incident where she called the Capitol Police and they began assigning her protection in Washington, D.C. She also received protection when she returned to Maine as protests broke out outside her home in Bangor.
“After that, and going through being protected to and from work, I just — I don’t know. I guess I came to grips with that,” Collins said, adding that she got rid of the protection after the vote for about a week.
Collins said that Capitol Police protection was dropped almost immediately after the final vote on Kavanaugh, but that matters became dicey a week later after her husband received a letter in the mail purporting to contain ricin. Tom Daffron, her husband, and their dog, Pepper, were quarantined before the letter was considered to not be poisonous.
“That was a bit unnerving,” Collins said.
Collins was in Arizona Wednesday campaigning for McSally alongside Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., a longtime friend of hers. She also drove from one event to another in Kyl’s white Chevy Corvette, noting that she came alone — no staffers or police protection — to campaign for the Arizona congresswoman.
“But now, the assessment is that I’m fine,” Collins said. “I’m cheap enough and enough of a Yankee that I did not want to add additional costs to Martha McSally’s campaign since I’d already maxed out to her, so I didn’t want to have them pay for a staffer to come with me.”
The political ramifications for Collins remain to be seen, although she has seen polling move in her direction after the vote. According to a New York Times poll of Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, representing about half the state, 56 percent agreed with her support for Kavanaugh. Overall, 64 percent also approve of her job in the Senate.
“It’s been very interesting,” Collins said. “Despite the fact that I’ve had seven weeks of protests at my personal home on Sundays, when I’m out and about and talking to people the reaction has been, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive.”
Collins received a similar reception in the Arizona capital city Wednesday. While attending a Small Business Expo at the Phoenix Convention Center, attendee after attendee greeted Collins and thanked her for her vote, with many telling her they watched her entire Senate floor speech live with baited breath.
“You must have incredibly broad shoulders,” one attendee told her after the event. Collins said, “I do,” before doing a faux flex of her muscles for the attendee and those in line for a selfie.
