Thread by @StevenTDennis

Susan Collins is touring Maine, touting her independence and raising money as she gears up for what would be an epic reelection fight with control of the Senate potentially at stake —> bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Susan Collins built a bipartisan brand for four terms but in the Trump era, there’s also bipartisan anger: Trump fans mad at her for criticizing their guy and Democrats irate over Kavanaugh, the tax law and more. No senator has seen their approval ratings take a bigger hit.

Might this be Susan Collins’ trump card?
“You know who’s going to be the next chairman of the Appropriations Committee should I choose to run?” she asks me, pointing at herself
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

There are some voters in Maine who care about Collins ability to bring home $$$ - it’s the sort of old-school seniority pitch senators have been using since the beginning of time.

When she first ran in 1996, Susan Collins told voters she’d only serve two terms - “12 years is enough...”

Now she tells me she sees the benefits of seniority in the Senate, which she notes can be particularly valuable for a smaller state like Maine.

This ad attacking Susan Collins for breaking a campaign promise on serving two terms is from 2008:

One sign Susan Collins is actually running: She went to a fundraiser at Leonard Leo’s Maine mansion. Protestors showed up & snapped pics, which went viral. I asked her about the backlash from the fundraiser and she sounded exasperated.

She noted her opponents raised millions after her Kavanaugh vote.
"So I went to a 20-person fundraiser," Collins said. "It’s just ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous."

Example of the viral teeing off on the Leonard Leo fundraiser from former Schumer aide Brian Fallon:

Susan Collins at the Buxton parade earlier this month

One potential exploding pineapple for Susan Collins: She vouched not just for Kavanaugh but predicted how he would vote on Roe, on lawsuit overturning the ACA etc. There’s a long time between now and Election Day...

Susan Collins is swimming against a big blue tide in Maine, where Democrats last year took the governorship, the state Senate, massively expanded their state House majority under Speaker Sara Gideon and flipped a GOP House seat.

Susan Collins strategy: Make the race about what she can do for Maine, not Trump.
She’d rather be talking about CDBG grant money for a local pie baker - $100K - or a $600K grant she championed for community forests (the kinds of programs Trump unsuccessfully targeted for cuts).

Another issue in the race: Guns. Susan Collins backs Manchin-Toomey, not the House-passes background check bill backed by Sara Gideon, etc. Why? She says it doesn’t have enough exemptions for family transfers and the like (though it does have a number of exemptions).

Maine voters narrowly defeated a background check referendum in 2016; talked to a Collins supporter who still has a sticker opposing the referendum on his truck.

Fascinating storyline of the Maine race down the line could be the candidacy of @TiffanyBond (I). Her voters made the difference in Poliquin’s defeat last year via Maine’s new ranked-choice voting, with enough choosing Jared Golden as their 2nd choice.

Ranked choice voting makes it harder for someone to win with minority support - like former Maine Governor Paul LePage, who won with 38% his first time around boston.com/news/politics/…

Bond also has a novel approach to campaigning - urging people to give to worthy causes in Maine in lieu of traditional fundraising.

Health care also a key issue in the Maine Senate race. D rivals attacking Collins for her vote for the tax law’s repeal of the individual mandate penalty tax, which GOP AGs backed by Trump are using to try and overturn the ACA in its entirety over Collins’ objections.

Gideon touting her role pushing through legislation enshrining ACA pre-ex protections etc in state law. Her attack on eliminating mandate though opens her to counterattack because mandate itself has never been super-duper popular.

Collins has sent letters to Barr objecting to the lawsuit to no avail and along with many of her colleagues says there was no legislative intent to nuke the ACA as part of the tax bill.
The lawsuit’s arguably reason No. 1 why Manchin - who backs Collins - is still in the Senate.

I also asked Collins about the repeated attacks on her deal with Mitch McConnell for a vote on a bill shoring up the ACA in return for her tax bill vote.

Susan Collins told me as she has before that McConnell kept his word to her; she got her vote. But, Republicans added a provision tying the Hyde amendment to the ACA, and Democrats said no.

Collins still blames Patty Murray for the bill’s failure, not McConnell.

I also asked Susan Collins about folks attacking her for blaming “dark money” groups in part for her falling polls given she was deciding vote to kill the Disclose Act in 2010. She said she’s always been for disclosure but voted no because of exemptions for unions, the NRA etc

But if she had voted yes, the big donors to the dark money groups attacking her would have to be disclosed and therefore it wouldn’t really be “dark money” any more.