Can Sara Gideon dislodge Susan Collins?

By M.S.R. | WASHINGTON, DC

SUSAN COLLINS has worked hard during her four terms in the Senate for Maine to cultivate a reputation as a moderate, independently-minded Republican. The last remaining Republican in Congress from New England, once a Republican redoubt, she was among the first Republican senators to back gay marriage. In 2016 she opposed the nomination of Donald Trump. A year later, she was one of three rebel senators to sink a bill that would have killed Obamacare. And she is one of only two Republican senators who publicly support abortion rights.

But maintaining her hard-won image is likely to get tougher for Ms Collins. She is one of only two Republican senators up for re-election next year in a state won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. Ousting her is critical to the Democrats’ hopes of taking the Senate. This week Ms Collins was duly presented with a formidable challenger. Sara Gideon (pictured), the Democratic speaker of Maine’s House, made it clear she would seek to undermine Ms Collins’s claim to independence and moderation by highlighting the number of times she had supported Mr Trump’s agenda.

“Susan Collins has been in the Senate for 22 years,” said Ms Gideon, who has served in Maine’s legislature since 2012, in her launch video. “And at one point, maybe she was different than some of the other folks in Washington, but she doesn’t seem that way anymore.”

In the video, Ms Gideon highlighted Ms Collins’s vote for the Republican tax bill, alongside footage of Mr Trump warmly thanking the senator. She also—in what is already emerging as her mostly powerful line of attack—highlighted Ms Collins’s support for Mr Trump’s conservative Supreme Court picks. Last year, during tumultuous confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman as a teenager, Ms Collins appeared to be mulling a vote against him. To the fury of Democrats and women’s rights activists, Ms Collins nonetheless voted for Justice Kavanaugh and stoutly defended him in a 30-minute speech on the Senate floor.

Since then the anger over Ms Collins’s support for Justice Kavanaugh has focused on a different issue: abortion. Though he has not yet voted in any significant way to curtail abortion rights, Justice Kavanaugh has expressed strongly pro-life views. So has Justice Neil Gorsuch, Mr Trump’s earlier pick, whose nomination Ms Collins also supported. At a time when political hostilities over Roe v Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that declared abortion a constitutional right, are more intense than ever, upholders of abortion rights worry about how both justices will vote in abortion-related cases that come before America’s highest court.

Ms Gideon is well placed to exploit such concerns. Earlier this month, Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, signed a bill Ms Gideon had sponsored allowing health workers other than doctors to perform abortions. That will allow Ms Gideon, who has focused on access to health care as a state representative, to portray herself as a champion of the rights she claims Ms Collins has imperiled.

In her video, she says that Ms Collins’s support for Justice Kavanaugh “may be paying off for her, but it’s put women’s control over their own health-care decisions in extreme jeopardy.” That is a reference to a surge in fundraising for Ms Collins that followed her vote for Justice Kavanaugh. Ms Gideon did not mention the fact that Ms Collins’s vote also sparked a successful crowdfunding campaign for whichever Democrat ends up running against Ms Collins.

All of this is an indication of the potency of abortion as an electoral issue. Another sign of that came this week when both NARAL Pro-Choice America, a leading abortion rights group, and Emily’s List, which promotes the candidacy of pro-choice women, both endorsed Ms Gideon. NARAL Pro-Choice America once endorsed Ms Collins; it campaigned against her after she voted for Justice Kavanaugh.

Before she takes on Ms Collins, Ms Gideon must see off two lesser known candidates in a Democratic primary next June: Betsy Sweet, who lost the Democratic primary for governor last year, and Bre Kidman, a lawyer. She is likely to beat them both for two reasons. Firstly, unlike them, she has legislative experience. More importantly, Ms Gideon will be supported by the national Democratic machine: the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has already endorsed her.