She’s empowered by an odds-defying win
Maine’s Collins faces pressure for her pivotal vote
The calls began pouring in even before Sen. Susan Collins, R-maine, bounded onto a makeshift stage in a snowy parking lot in Bangor to declare victory in a race she was supposed to have lost.
Republicans who had privately fretted about her demise offered hearty congratulations, professing to have always known she would survive. Sen.
Joe Manchin, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia, reached out wanting to know how soon he could get a meeting with his fellow moderate to begin breaking through the impasse on a coronavirus relief package. And President-elect Joe Biden made a brief call to congratulate a former Senate colleague and legislative ally whose vote he will badly need to push through his agenda and staff his administration.
The ring kissing reflected the prime perch of Collins, who, after having survived the steepest re-election challenge of her career with a comfortable margin, has emerged more powerful than ever, poised for a fifth term in which her brand of bipartisan deal-making will be crucial.
The question is how Collins, who has long held sway as one of the few swing votes in a narrowly divided Senate, will use that power. She has drawn brutal criticism in the past from Democrats who say she courts compromise, only to ultimately side with the Republican Party line. Now, with Republicans bent on blocking any policy accomplishments by a Biden administration, Collins will be under immense pressure from both sides for her pivotal vote.
“We will be able to encourage the president not to be drawn to the far-left,” Collins said in an interview in Washington, calling her election and
“We Irish are the only ones who are nostalgic about the future. Well, I’m nostalgic about your future. A long way to go, and you’ve got a lot more to give.” President-elect Joe Biden
Biden’s an endorsement of divided government that vindicated her moderate approach.
“I think that’s a message the American people were sending — that they want more centrist politics pursued, and they don’t want to go to the far-left — so that too provides me with an opportunity,” Collins said.
Collins, 67, has a strong relationship with Biden, who has called her “a woman of incredible character, integrity and grace.” And now she has the battle scars and enhanced credibility that come with having accomplished a feat many Republicans readily concede they never could have: win a resounding victory in a state that President Donald Trump lost. She has also surpassed a more enduring milestone, having now outlasted Margaret Chase
Smith, the first woman to represent Maine in the Senate, to become the longest-serving Republican woman in the chamber’s history.
“She’s the greatest that’s ever been,” Sen. Tom Cotton, R-ark., one of the most conservative members of the Senate, declared in the aftermath, noticing Collins in conversation with a reporter in the Capitol. Sen. John Cornyn, R-texas, effectively declared her the queen of the Senate, posting on Instagram a depiction of Collins seated on a throne of skulls.
Her success in Maine, where she prevailed over the Democrat, Sara Gideon, despite polls showing her on track to lose, has vindicated Collins’ signature brand of New England moderation, cultivated over the last two decades. Come January, whether Biden oversees a divided government or a narrow Democratic hold on both chambers, she is positioned to play a crucial role in confirming administration nominations, approving spending agreements and negotiating legislative priorities like coronavirus relief or prescription drug legislation.
“My winning shows that a moderate can prevail in this highly polarized environment,” Collins said. “My victory in Maine shows that you can be an independent voice and take some breaths, do what you think is right, and the voters — in some states, at least — will reward you.”
Collins said she was open to working with former political foes in order to achieve legislative accomplishments. But having survived a brutal campaign in which Democrats savaged her, Collins has reason to hold some grudges. She pointedly noted that Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, presented “a challenge” given “the millions of dollars in blatantly false ads he ran against me.”
Although the precise balance of the power in the Senate will remain unknown until two Georgia runoff races are decided in early January, Republicans are favored to win both seats, likely leaving Biden as the first Democratic president since Grover Cleveland in 1885 to take office without Democrats in control of both congressional chambers. A fraction of Republican support — likely, that of Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who faces re-election in 2022 — will be needed to advance both his legislative and political ambitions.
“It puts her in a very strong position to get things done in the Senate,” said Steve Abbott, her campaign manager and a longtime adviser.
In a signal of where the power could rest in the 117th Congress, Biden has yet to speak to Sen. Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. But he made a point of calling Collins before his own victory was cemented.
Collins, who is in line to lead the powerful Appropriations Committee, ran a classic retail campaign, popping into business after business — sometimes purchasing a pair of earrings, or cans of food for a local food drive — and emphasizing the importance to Maine of her clout in the Senate.
The argument resonated for many of the voters who flocked to her flurry of campaign stops across the state, including a woman who brought a Tupperware full of the senator’s favorite cookies to a Fourth of July parade in rural Jackman; the business owners and town leaders grateful for the federal dollars she had steered their way; and the Postal Service worker who thanked her for pushing for funding for the embattled mail delivery agency.
Collins and her allies note that her gentility and penchant for deal-making has not wavered in more than two decades, even as liberal critics have grown scornful of what they say is a seemingly perpetual pattern of condemning the extreme elements of her own party but then siding with them on crucial votes.