february 17–march 1, 2020 | new york 35League of Conservation Voters. Planned Parenthood, which gave
the officially pro-choice Republican an award as recently as 2017,
in January endorsed her leading Democratic opponent, Sara
Gideon. In the final quarter of 2019, Gideon, the Speaker of the
Maine House who has not even won the primary yet (she is run-
ning in a big field that includes Betsy Sweet, Bre Kidman, Tiffany
Bond, and Ross LaJeunesse), raised $3.5 million—$1.2 million
more than Collins. The race is expected to ultimately draw close
to $50 million, the most expensive in the history of Maine.
Collins’s neutered vote for witnesses in the impeachment trial—
which came only after it was clear there weren’t enough Republican
votes to risk any actual witnesses being called—didn’t seem to en-
rage the most powerful Republicans. One White House official told
me, on the day that she cast it, that no one in the administration “is
surprised or angry,” and cpac,
which sent Romney a huffy disin-
vitation from its annual confer-
ence even before he voted to con-
vict Trump, made no such
affronted gesture toward Collins.
But her efforts to present as a
solemn defender of procedural
norms—she said that witnesses
would permit both sides to “fully
and fairly make their case”—
didn’t endear her to the Trump-
loving masses, who online call
her a rino (“Republican in name
only”) and imagine a hero who
will arrive to primary her from
the right, which remains a possi-
bility until the state filing dead-
line of March 16. On Fox News,
conservative radio host Howie
Carr suggested that her witness
vote made her “the most endan-
gered” Republican senator upfor
reelection. Collins’s longtime
friend and former Republican
state senator Roger Katz toldme
that not too long ago, Collins’s
pac “sent a check to one ofthe
county Republican committees
toassistthemingettingtheir
localcandidateselected.Butthe
countyRepublicancommitteeis
soupsetwithherthat they sent
hercheckback.”
MAINEISANEXTREMELYruralstate,its1.3 millionresidents
spreadamong 495 towns.“SusanCollinshasbeentoeverysingle
oneofthose 495 towns,”saidBenGilman,whohasbeeninMaine
politicssincethe1990sandnowworksforthestate’sChamberof
Commerce.“Ialwaysthoughtthat sheembodiesMaine’sspirit:
independentwitha fiscallyconservative,sociallyliberal model.”
Indeed,withtheexceptionofitsbombastic,hard-right,two-
term74thgovernor,PaulLePage,whoserveduntil 2019 and
likedtodescribehimselfasa precursorofDonaldTrump,Maine
hasa lengthy historyofpoliticalindependence.Fortypercentof
votersarenotregisteredeitherasDemocratsorRepublicans,
andalmosttoa number, MainenativesI talkedtostressedthat
if theywere ted art ar teda str
ticket. To wi 008 a w ne points,
Collinswonreelectionby 23 points.
In additiontoBillCohen,otherstateleaders,includingDemo-
cratic senators Ed Muskie and George Mitchell and former Repub-
lican governor John “Jock” McKernan, were regarded as moderates,
well liked both inside and outside their parties. Their forerunner
was Margaret Chase Smith, who was elected to her husband’s con-
gressional seat after his death and then to the Senate in 1948,
becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress.
Smith was a Republican hawk who supported the Vietnam War
and pushed to use nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. But
she also famously broke with her party to stand up to Joe McCarthy
and his anti-communist crusade and voted against judicial and
Cabinet appointments made by Republican presidents. Collins has
often cited Smith as her role model and told of how she first met her
on a high-school trip to Washington: “What I remember most was
her telling me always to stand tall for what I believed.”
Maine, like Texas, California,
and other frontier states, has a
comparatively rich history of
women in politics, richer in
many ways than traditionally
blue states like Massachusetts
and New York. Olympia Snowe,
another in Maine’s tradition of
moderate Republicans, was
elected to the Senate in 1994,
two years before Collins filled the
other seat, making Maine the
second state to field an all-female
delegation. (Snowe and Collins
had a famously frosty relation-
ship: Joe Lieberman, a friend
of Collins’s, once joked with a
Washington Post reporter
writing a dual profile about the
pair that it should bespelled
“d-u-e-l.”) So many women have
been in Maine politics for so long
that the state has become home
to multiple matriarchalpolitical
dynasties, including the Col-
linses’. Her mother, Patricia, was
the mayor of her hometown.COLLINS IS FROM CARIBOU,
a town of just about 8,000 in
Aroostook County, Maine’s
northernmost region.Aroos-
took, where my mothergrew up
on a potato farm about 60 miles
south of Collins’s hometown, is
rural,wooded,wild, and remote; once you get to Bangor, you keep
drivingmorethanan hour to enter it from the south.
It’salsoconservative; Maine’s liberal populations are clustered
nearPortlandand on the coast, while everything north and west
inthestateispretty red. When Collins was growingup, the
County—asAroostook is called in Maine—had a robust farming
economythat has slowed, as well as military bases and a college
thathavesinceclosed.
Collins’sfamilyhas run a lumber and hardware business based
inCaribou for five generations, and it wasn’t just her mother who
wasmayor; her father, Donald, was too, before he served five
termsas a Republican in the state legislature. (Collins’s uncle was
ontheMaineSupreme Court and in the state senate.) At her
father’sfuneral in 2018, Katz told me, he noticed thatCollins,
oneof six siblings, did not give a eulogy. “It was clear tome that
shedidn’t want it to be about the passing of a U.S. senator’s➜A 1972 adforCollins’sfather.Susan DonPat