Maine’s Independent-Minded Voters Want Susan Collins to Stand Up to Her Party

SKOWHEGAN, Maine—On Tuesday morning, Merlene Sanborn was at work on an alteration at her small stitchery. Near her sewing machine, a radio was playing an endless stream of campaign ads from both Sen. Susan Collins and her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon. Sanborn said she has supported Collins in the past, but this election cycle seems different.

“There’s such an atmosphere of disrespect in the campaigning,” she told me, flicking off the station. “I feel like both candidates have forgotten about what matters to Maine.”

Chief among those issues, she said, are financial opportunities for small-business owners and access to health care. She said she is worried the Supreme Court will rule in ways that jeopardize both, which is why the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday and the fight over how quickly to fill her vacancy has suddenly become an issue of consequence in a part of Maine that will play an important role in deciding the reelection of both Collins and President Donald Trump.

“It’s just too important to rush the process,” Sanborn said. “The Senate needs to take the appropriate amount of time to really consider the candidates. I want to see Susan Collins be a true leader and publicly advocate for that.”

Collins on Saturday was the first Republican senator to issue a statement urging the Senate to wait until after Nov. 3 to vote on Ginsburg’s replacement. She stopped short, though, of saying a vote should be delayed until after the January inauguration of the new president. Even in a town of just over 8,000 people—most of whom work either in a massive pulp paper mill, a New Balance factory store or at a holiday wreath manufacturer—these fine distinctions are being noticed.

Maine voters have long prided themselves on electing officials who demonstrated a fiercely nonpartisan, independent streak. But in the midst of perhaps the most bitterly contested election in modern times, Collins’ measured statement on the Supreme Court vote suddenly strikes some voters as too cautious. Many say they are looking for a more dramatic and definitive stand from their four-term senior senator.

Cheryl Staples, a sea glass artist and one-time Collins voter said she feels like Trump’s attempt to rush a Supreme Court nomination and approval process feels like the worst in party politics. “We expect Collins to go with her conscience, not her party. It’s going to take more than saying she won’t vote until the election to demonstrate that.”

Staples, 63, says she’d like to hear Collins make a more formal statement that she will refuse to participate in the Supreme Court nomination process until after the new president and Congress have been sworn in. She’d like to see Collins talk about the importance of honoring Ginsburg’s wishes and actively caucus to convert other Republicans to this position as well.

These “slow down” sentiments are backed up by a Colby College poll released Friday that finds 59 percent of Maine voters want Collins to delay voting on the nomination and approval process until a new president is sworn in in January.

Dick Enright, a retired Air Force medic, said he considers himself an independent-minded Democrat. He said he supported Collins until the approval of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

“He’s a bad person and not fit for the court,” said Enright. “I trusted her to take a stand on his fitness.”

Now, he said, it’s only right that she insist Republicans refrain from any nomination hearings until after the new Senate is seated in January. “Fair is fair. [Mitch] McConnell blocked Obama when he had the reins. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Collins could stand up to her majority leader publicly, said Enright. She could call out her party for the unfairness and partisanship they’re currently demonstrating. It’s notable, he said, that she is doing neither.

“She’s just playing a game and trying to gain votes by saying as little as possible. If there was a chance she’d really turn around and take a real stand on this issue, I’d be happy. But I don’t see her doing that.”

Prior to 2018 judicial appointees had rarely been a flashpoint for Collins and her constituents.

Throughout her 24-year tenure, she has reliably approved most federal nominees regardless of who occupied the White House. Maine voters accepted the practice as part of her political brand. In 2014, they reelected her with over 68 percent of the vote. As late as the summer of 2017, she scored a 65 percent approval rating.

That all changed after the 2018 nomination of Kavanaugh, who was subsequently accused of sexual misconduct with a young woman when he was a teenager. After Collins’ Senate floor speech in favor of his candidacy, her popularity among constituents took a sizeable hit, dropping to 52 percent. She has yet to recover. For over a year now, Collins has remained America’s least popular senator, according to Morning Consult. Her approval rating there is at 42 percent and has remained constant or dipped slightly since spring 2019.

Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House, entered the race citing Collins’ Kavanaugh vote, along with the senator’s acceptance of big pharma campaign donations, as two of her main motivators. Even before she had secured the party’s nomination, Gideon was set to receive nearly $4 million in contributions made to a fund dedicated to whoever challenged Collins. Since announcing her candidacy, Gideon has maintained a modest and consistent lead of about 5 percentage points against Collins.

The announcement of Ginsburg’s death once again thrust the Supreme Court into the center of the race. Attention shifted immediately to centrist Republicans such as Collins to see how they would respond to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s vow that he would bring the president’s nominee to a vote before the election.

Maine’s junior senator, Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, issued a statement saying that, out of respect for Ginsburg’s dying wish, the Senate should delay the approval process until after the election has been decided. Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat, concurred. Collins restricted her official statement Friday evening to a celebration of Ginsburg’s accomplishments in the judiciary.

Saturday afternoon, the Collins camp released a statement on the timing of the nomination: “I would have no objection to the Senate Judiciary Committee's beginning the process of reviewing [President Trump’s] nominee’s credentials,” Collins stated. “Given the proximity of the presidential election, however, I do not believe that the Senate should vote on the nominee prior to the election.”

Later that night, at a campaign rally in North Carolina, President Trump chastised Collins. During a Monday morning interview on Fox & Friends, he said Collins had been “very badly hurt” by her statement. (Trump also attacked Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who on Sunday pledged not to vote for a Supreme Court nominee until after the election. In the end, Collins and Murkowski would be the only two Republicans to break ranks with the party.)

Many of Collins’ constituents agreed that she had been hurt, albeit for very different reasons. Collins, they complained, hadn’t said anything about how or even if she would vote. Voters on both sides of the aisle took to social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter. “Sneaky,” wrote one. “Slippery Susan at it again.” Yes, agreed a respondent, “the Queen of Equivocation.”

On Tuesday, several national news outlets, including The Hill and the Associated Press, reported that Collins had told unnamed journalists that she would oppose any nominee or vote brought to the Senate prior to the November election. The senator’s office did not respond to multiple requests I made to confirm that statement. But even if it’s true, say Maine voters, her attempt at clarification on Tuesday doesn’t go nearly far enough. They say there’s nothing preventing Collins from pledging to vote the day after the election or changing her mind entirely.

At a medical marijuana dispensary in Skowhegan, Mike and Shawn (who did not want to give their last names, citing the delicacy of their profession), said they both plan on voting again for Trump. As for Collins, they fear this Supreme Court vacancy is just another place where she’ll let down her constituents and change her mind later on. They want her to take a stand and vote now.

“She’s screwing us up with all of her flipflopping. You can no longer trust anything she says,” Mike said. “She needs to smarten up and correct herself. If she got a spine and proved she’s really going to do what she says, then maybe I’d vote for her.”

The responses from places like Skowhegan don’t surprise Dan Shea, author of the Colby poll.

Only about 24 percent of Republicans want her to wait until the new president is sworn in, compared to 92 percent of Democrats. But the majority of voters in the state of Maine are unenrolled, and they overwhelmingly want her to wait.

“A lot of Mainers think the senator works too hard to be on both sides. They want some clarity; they want Susan to take a side. If she is too calculating on the nomination question, she’ll threaten her brand as a moderate, lose independents and swing Democrats, and maybe even end her career in the Senate.”

It’s that appearance of political calculation that really rankles Les Fossel, a lifelong Republican who lives in Knox County, part of the state’s largely blue 1st Congressional District. He served in the state Legislature for six years and as Collins’ Knox County campaign chair for all of her elections.

When the state GOP asked him to serve again this year, he declined. As far as he was concerned, Collins had been on a slippery partisan slide for way too long. First there was the Kavanaugh confirmation. Then there was Collins’ unwillingness to allow evidence in Trump’s impeachment trial and her subsequent vote against either of the two impeachment articles. More recently, it was the revelation that U.S. intelligence agencies had been warning about the severity of the pandemic as early as January (Collins serves on the Intelligence Committee, which received at least some of these briefings).

“It was her responsibility to stand up to Trump or get out,” he said. “Instead, she just hid and allowed him to run roughshod.”

The current Supreme Court vacancy, he said, is the last straw.

“If I were representing a constituency, I would feel honor bound not to vote until we know for sure if the election will cede control of the presidency and the Senate to Democrats. This nomination process must follow the election results.”

Ginsburg’s vacancy could have other, unexpected consequences for Collins’ race.

Maine is the only state that uses ranked-choice voting, which works like an immediate runoff election if no candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote. The new Colby poll shows Gideon with a 4-point lead over Collins. (A poll released last week by Suffolk University and the Boston Globe revealed similar numbers.) Two independent candidates currently hold 8 percent of the vote, and 6 percent of voters remain undecided, raising the possibility that neither Collins nor Gideon get a majority and that voters’ second-choice ballots would come into play.

“There is no doubt about it that the race is very close,” said Colby’s Shea. “It’s quite possible this election will be decided by ranked-choice voting, and that will be very controversial.”

In 2018, Bruce Poliquin, the sitting representative for the 2nd Congressional District, lost to Democrat Jared Golden only after the third-party candidates were eliminated through the ranking process and their supporters’ second-choice votes were distributed. Poliquin immediately filed a lawsuit, saying the process was unconstitutional.

A federal court struck down Poliquin’s case, saying he had failed to prove unconstitutionality. But some political watchers here in the state say that if Poliquin had had more cash, he would have pursued the case on appeal.

Collins, they note, has no such money shortage. They point out that The Federalist Society, which promotes conservative justices, has been one of her largest donors since the Kavanaugh hearings and that majority leader Mitch McConnell has pledged she will remain “well-funded.”

“Certainly, there will be a national spotlight cast on the legitimacy of our ranked-choice process,” said Shea.

Peter Brann is a practicing attorney in the state and a visiting lecturer at Harvard Law School. He represented Golden in the 2018 Poliquin suit. He said the prospect of Collins appealing to the Supreme Court is possible, but the court would probably agree to hear the case only if a lower court was divided in its ruling or if enough justices see ranked-choice voting as a potential infringement of voters’ equal protection.

Collins’ office did not respond to questions about whether she would appeal November’s election results if she lost.

Regardless, Brann said, he’s hopeful that decision will stand and there will be no further Republican attempts to challenge it at any level—and particularly not at the Supreme Court.

“Constitutional arguments aren’t like wine,” he said. “They don’t improve with age.”