Could Susan Collins' vote for Kavanaugh help the Democrats flip the Senate in 2020?
Senate candidate Betsy Sweet addressed a group of about 15 Democratic voters gathered in a circle, sitting on folding chairs in an office on Main Street in the small town of Topsham, Maine.
Sweet, a Democrat, listened intently to their concerns – that they wouldn’t be able to afford their health insurance; that the little girl sitting in the circle playing with her mother’s cellphone would not grow up with access to clean water.
Then they talked about the courts. They expressed fear that Donald Trump – with the help of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell – had irreversibly changed America’s judicial branch by forcing through unfit nominees, such as supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Hundreds of miles from the supreme court, the ramifications of those appointments and the contentious Kavanaugh hearings are weighing heavily on the minds of Maine voters as they consider whether to re-elect the Republican senator who helped put Kavanaugh on the bench: Susan Collins.
The question has major implications for Democrats as they attempt to take control of the Senate in 2020. This would require flipping three Republican seats if the party can also capture the White House – and four seats if they fail to take the White House. (If Democrats win the White House then they need one less since the vice president can vote and break a tied vote in the Senate). If the Democrats were to win the White House but fail to get a majority in the Senate, it would seriously curtail their ability to enact legislation, since Republicans would likely block any meaningful reform. The race for the Senate is almost as vital as the White House.
This race in Maine could, therefore, have a defining impact in 2020 and beyond. And all because of Collins’ backing for Kavanaugh. Her role in affirming his nomination to the supreme court seemed all the more acute because many Democrats had hoped she, as a centrist Republican, would withhold her support for his confirmation.
In the end, Collins described Kavanaugh as “an exemplary public servant, judge, teacher, coach, husband, and father”, before adding: “I will vote to confirm Judge Kavanaugh.”
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The Kavanaugh controversy was reignited last week with the publication of a book offering new allegations of sexual misconduct. To some Maine voters – and especially Collins’ wouldbe Democratic opponents – the renewed focus on Kavanaugh has opened up a fresh opportunity to unseat Collins from her crucial Senate seat.
To Sweet, Collins’ decision to support Kavanaugh represented a “betrayal” of the moderate persona Collins has projected over her four terms in office.
“Susan Collins had been, to many of us, a moderate vote – especially on issues of choice and family planning,” Sweet said after the town hall in Topsham, just a 30-minute drive north along a tree-lined highway from Portland. “This is the lifetime appointment to the supreme court. So when she had the opportunity to help, to do something, she didn’t. It literally felt like a knife to the gut.”
In a statement issued by her Senate office, Collins defended her vote and blamed the New York Times for initially neglecting to mention in its essay – excerpted from the book – that the alleged victim of one newly-reported incident involving Kavanaugh declined to talk to the work’s authors.
“The news stories today are not adding anything to what has already been reported,” said Collins spokesperson Annie Clark. She dismissed the latest claim as “an accusation that lacks an accuser”.
But Collins’ opponents, in Maine and nationally, are eager to cast her Kavanaugh vote as representative of a broader political shift toward the Republican party line.
The campaign of Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine house of representatives who is also seeking the Democratic Senate nomination, said in a statement: “Senator Collins voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh despite evidence and allegations that cast serious doubt on his fitness for the supreme court, and that vote is one example of the many ways in which she has let Mainers down.”
Gideon’s campaign has attracted national endorsements from groups such as Emily’s List and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who have similarly accused Collins of abandoning her constituency.
Mairead Lynn, the deputy director of campaign communications for Emily’s List, said: “From voting to defund Planned Parenthood, to giving billionaires and corporations a massive tax break, to confirming Trump’s anti-women, anti-reproductive rights judges, Susan Collins has made it very clear she would rather please Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump than stand up for Mainers.
“[A]nd that’s exactly why they’re going to vote her out of office next year.”
Gideon’s bid has also been bolstered by massive fundraising hauls. In the week after she announced her candidacy in June, Gideon raised more than $1m – dwarfing the $81,000 raised by Sweet. The victor of the Senate primary will also be the beneficiary of $4m that Democrats raised for the eventual nominee in the wake of Collins’ Kavanaugh vote.
But Republicans are responding to Democratic enthusiasm by powering an even more impressive fundraising operation for Collins, who has not yet officially announced her intention to run for re-election.
Collins has already raised more than $6.5m through the end of this year’s second quarter, eclipsing her fundraising totals from three of her four past races with more than a year still to go until the election.
Collins’ critics have been keen to point out how much of her money has come from outside Maine, arguing it represents her ideological drift away from the center of the political spectrum.
But Collins’ allies continue to tout her willingness to work across the aisle, highlightingreports that rank her as one of the most bipartisan senators. Collins’ campaign spokesman Kevin Kelley said: “[A]s soon as Mainers do focus on next year’s campaign, and Senator Collins’ extraordinary record of bipartisan accomplishments, we are confident that she will prevail just as she has in past elections when extreme, out-of-state interests have tried to defeat her.
“Our campaign will remind Mainers of Senator Collins’ long record of bipartisan accomplishments that have helped people who live in all corners of our state.”
Even strategists on the left acknowledge they face an uphill battle to oust Collins.
Still, Democrats are hopeful that voters will rethink their support for Collins with Kavanaugh’s name back in the headlines.
Sweet told the story of a lifelong Republican voter she encountered who said he would never vote for Collins again. She said the man told her he thought Collins had “betrayed” her voters.
“She has been offered up so many moments of courage where she could have done it, and she’s passed them by. And she’s passed them not because she didn’t think they were good for Maine, but because she was bound to the pressure of the party,” Sweet said.
She gestured to the room where a voter had asked her just a half an hour earlier how she would consider judicial appointments before adding: “And I think that’s disappointing to Mainers.”