Republican Margaret Chase Smith is a storied name in Maine politics. She was the first female elected to the Senate not by dint of being the spouse of a senator, and the first woman to have her name placed in nomination for the presidency of either party. She gave the legendary Declaration of Conscience speech against McCarthyism. Smith came from working class Maine roots.
She also lost her re-election bid in 1972 after serving as a senator for over two decades. First, she was damaged by a primary challenger who accused her of being out of touch because she didn’t even have an office in the state. She lost the eventual election to Bill Hathaway, who only served one term and lost his re-election bid by 22 points.
Maine wasn’t that keen on Hathaway — they were just good and tired of Margaret Chase Smith’s national grandstanding. She forgot her job was to represent the people of Maine. Maine Political Science Professor Amy Fried wrote a wonderful article recently detailing Smith’s tone deaf responses to Maine students protesting the war two years before her last re-election campaign:
Addressing a group of striking students from 16 schools after the shooting at Kent State, Smith spoke in support of President Richard Nixon’s policies. According to one account, “When one student asked how her mail had been running on Cambodia, she turned to aide William Lewis, and asked audibly: ‘Bill, how has the mail been running on Cambodia?’ (6 to 1 against the invasion). The students gasped. For those who had been told to write their congresswoman rather than demonstrate, her response was hardly encouraging.” Smith also denied the fact that U.S. troops were in Laos.
As John Cole, the editor of the Maine Times, described the encounter, “There she was, the highest ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, and she seemed to have almost no idea of what was happening in the war, and no idea how the students felt about it.”
Collins would be happy to be perceived by Mainers as clueless at this point. But her constituents will no longer let her hide from her hypocrisy and lies.
I am tired, discouraged, and disgusted by the antics of Susan Collins over the past two years. Really, her entire career, but the past two years take the cake. Collins has coasted for many years on a reputation of being a champion for women. Whenever her vote hasn’t mattered, she has voted to support Planned Parenthood and for women’s health issues. When her vote has mattered, she has quietly voted to gut women’s health with elevation of extremist judges. She’s paved the way for drastic cuts in services to the poor with enormous tax cuts for the rich.
But here’s the thing. Her shtick just isn’t working anymore. What worked 20 years ago — dozens and dozens of photo ops with girl scouts and lobstermen, appearing like clockwork in Maine newspapers — just doesn’t fly in a viral age. Like Margaret Chase Smith before her, Collins craves the national spotlight. She loves the lights and cameras of the Sunday shows. She’s made some incredibly stupid statements in the past two years on key votes that bare her hypocrisy for all to see. Collins lied to Ady Barkan to his face about her plans on the tax cuts and health care bill, and thought no one would notice. She promised she would not vote for a Supreme Court nominee hostile to Roe v. Wade.No matter her vote on Kavanaugh, she has voted for scores of judges who oppose Roe v. Wade.
Republicans in Maine don’t like Collins much. Like everyone else, they have bought into the myth that she votes with Democrats as often as she votes with Republicans. But that hasn’t mattered for Collins, because Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats and Independents in the state, and they have bought into that myth too.
Collins has no sense of the tsunami of disgust she will unleash in Maine with a vote for Kavanaugh. Collins is very easy to read, and it was evident from the start she was going to vote for that huge tax giveaway to the rich. It’s also been evident for the beginning she was going to vote for Kavanaugh. Her mistake was going on camera promising to protect Roe v. Wade. Last year, she made similar bonehead promises about the tax cut bill which were immediately broken. She has been able for her whole career to say one thing loudly and quietly vote just the opposite, so she’s in shock that Mainers and even national reporters are finally calling her on her bullshit.
She is flailing in her response to constituents. First, she said to reporters that no one was calling her offices (and hence must not care much about the Supreme Court), which is a flat-out lie. There are hundreds and hundreds of Mainers in Indivisible groups who have been faithfully calling — you can multiple that by all the other groups in Maine who care deeply about the environment, workers’ rights, and a host of other issues who are calling to oppose Kavanaugh. Maine’s other senator, Angus King, last week released the number of calls he’s received and it is astonishing, over 6000 overwhelming against Kavanaugh — likely only a fraction of what Collins has gotten.
When we redoubled our efforts last week to call and write, the counteroffensive became that we were threatening and vile. And now, the tens of thousands like me who have donated to her opponent are part of an illegal conspiracy to bribe her. Small donors pooling their money for reform is the beauty of democracy — even those of us who aren’t rich can have a voice. And lumping the 99.9% of us who call her office to ask and plead respectfully to be represented “vile and disgusting” is the most offensive thing I’ve ever experienced in Maine politics, and that’s saying something after 8 years of Paul LePage as governor.
So this morning I am angry and discouraged and disgusted. But I take comfort in knowing there are many thousands of Mainers like me who have been calling her office (only to discover our input isn’t even being passed on to Collins).
We’ve been doing our best to represent the 70%+ of her constituents who support abortion rights and environmental protections, and she can’t even be bothered to consider our comments.
Collins will either retire in 2020, or she will face a stiff primary challenge in 2020 and then lose in 2020. Till then, she will face Mainers not shy about coming up to her on the streets, at photo ops, and sporting events to call out her hypocrisy. She can look at handmaids now on the street outside her Bangor home every weekend. She made a terrible mistake deciding against running for governor this year. She could have won easily. But hey, governors of dinky states don’t get to appear every other weekend on Meet the Press, do they?
I think at this point she is so dug in on her vote there is no way she switches to a “no.” Unless Heitkamp or Manchin or Donnelly vote no and give her cover to change her vote. Even then, she won’t do it without permission from Mitch because she has made a promise to him, and she sure values that over promises to the women of Maine.
But no matter her vote, she has irreparably damaged her chances for re-election. The thousands of us in Maine who have donated $20.20 to the campaign for her opponent and have called her local offices respectfully for weeks pleading to be heard will not forget that we have been called vile, disgusting members of a criminal conspiracy.
Most of our energy this fall is going into electing Democrats to the Maine state house, our first female governor in Janet Mills, and Jared Golden in the second district. But after that, we are going to get Susan booted out of office in 2020. We’re going to get Planned Parenthood and NARAL to rescind the awards they have given her over the years. We are going to go door-to-door, neighbor-to-neighbor to make sure everyone knows the truth about Susan’s voting record, which is not representative of the views of the vast majority of Mainers. We’re going to quietly and respectfully make it very uncomfortable and unavoidable for her to know what we think of her when she is out and about in the state.
We’re not going to forget what it feels like to wake up today feeling hopeless in the face of the hypocrisy and lies of Susan Collins. I suspect many Mainers felt the same way about Margaret Chase Smith in 1972. Unlike Smith, Collins will likely have no great speech or moment of ethical clarity for her legacy. But one thing is for sure — we won’t be silenced. A change is gonna come.