U.S. Senator Susan Collins (R. ME) has been receiving a lot of negative press and I’ll be getting to that in this diary. But there’s one piece of negative press I want to draw attention to and that’s Amy Fried’s, chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine, piece in the Bangor Daily News that calls out Collins for blatantly misrepresenting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s position when it comes to reproductive rights:
The critical case is Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey. Decided in 1992, the title is often shortened to Casey, and it concerned laws passed in 1988 and 1989.
Pennsylvania lawmakers had limited abortion in four ways. One, women would have to wait 24 hours before having an abortion. Two, women had to hear information about abortion. Three, minors needed a parent’s consent or that of a judge. Four, a married woman needed to notify her husband that she intended to have an abortion. All but the fourth were ruled constitutional.
Beyond these details, the big outcome was that Casey allowed states to put some restrictions on abortion, including ones that would limit women’s ability to access an abortion. Limits were OK unless the majority of the Supreme Court decided the state created an “undue burden,” restricting women’s rights too much.
Whether you’ve heard of Casey, Collins certainly has. She mentioned it four times when she explained why she was voting for Kavanaugh to sit on the Supreme Court.
In the same speech Collins said that “protecting” abortion rights “is important to me.” Collins contended that Kavanaugh’s support of Casey as a precedent meant that Kavanaugh would not undermine women’s reproductive rights and consistently characterized Casey as supporting abortion rights.
But Collins’ description of Casey is inadequate and misleading.
While Casey didn’t let states ban abortion outright, it did allow them to make it harder to get an abortion. As legal analyst Jessica Mason Pieklo told Vox, “Casey opened the door for a whole host of restrictions that would have probably been unconstitutional under a straight Roe analysis.”
After the Casey decision, many state legislatures passed all sorts of limits into law, including requiring women to pay for and watch an ultrasound even when doctors say the test is not needed and making women wait a day afterwards to have an abortion. Half of the states now have some sort of ultrasound abortion law.
Other laws states passed would close most or all abortion clinics. This was at issue in last week’s Supreme Court decision in June Medical Services v. Russo, which overturned a law passed in Louisiana.
Justice Stephen Breyer found that the Louisiana law would “result in a drastic reduction in the number and geographic distribution of abortion providers” and create “substantial obstacles in the path of women seeking an abortion.”
But, if Justice Kavanaugh’s view had prevailed, the law would have gone into effect.
And, despite Collins saying Kavanaugh respected precedent, he did not. Kavanaugh voted to uphold the Louisiana law even though, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted, four years ago the court invalidated “a nearly identical Texas law.”
And her vote for Kavanaugh is going to cost her big time:
After coasting to a fourth term in 2014 with 69 percent of the vote, Ms. Collins is now among the Senate’s most endangered incumbents. She is being handily out-raised by Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House and her likely Democratic opponent, and outside political groups seeking to oust the sole remaining New England Republican in Congress, one of a nearly extinct breed of moderates who once made up a powerful centrist bloc.
The Maine Legislature, after reaching a bipartisan agreement to adjourn in March, remains out of session, freeing Ms. Gideon to appear at a string of virtual events and make individual appearances at local hospitals and other facilities. Ms. Collins spends most weekdays in Washington working on Senate business, leaving her few opportunities for face-to-face campaigning before Election Day.
“It’s a more challenging environment in which to reach people,” Ms. Collins conceded on Saturday as she crisscrossed the state. “Being grossly outspent makes it harder, because I can’t offset that by increasing the number of appearances that I’m doing.”
While she has split with Mr. Trump more than any other Republican senator in the 116th Congress, Ms. Collins’s carefully cultivated reputation as a moderate has been damaged during his tenure, particularly after she backed the $1.5 trillion tax-cut package in 2017 and cast a decisive vote in 2018 to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. When Justice Kavanaugh sided with the court’s conservative majority in an abortion decision last week, progressives renewed their attacks.
Unlike in 2016, when she very publicly declared that she would not vote for Mr. Trump, Ms. Collins refused on Saturday to say how she planned to vote come November.
“My inclination is just to stay out of the presidential and focus on my own race,” she said.
As for Mr. Biden, “I do not campaign against my colleagues in the Senate,” she added, explaining that taking on Mr. Biden, whom she knows “very well” from their days serving together there, would be akin to violating her own rule.
The proof is in the polling:
Maine state House Speaker Sara Gideon (D) holds a 4-point lead over Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in the state’s hotly contested Senate race, according to a new poll.
The survey, conducted by the Democratic-leaning firm Public Policy Polling (PPP), shows Gideon, the current front-runner for the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine, garnering 46 percent of the vote to Collins’s 42 percent.
Collins, a 23-year veteran of the Senate, has repeatedly won reelection in the past, largely due to her crossover appeal to both Republicans and Democrats. But she became a top political target for Democrats in 2017 after she voted to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2017 as he faced allegations of sexual assault.
The latest PPP survey found signs that her crossover appeal in her home state isn’t what it once was. Her overall approval rating is underwater, with 36 percent of respondents approving of her job performance and 55 percent disapproving.
Of course, Collins will be getting money from her new friends:
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, may have risked her political career on a pivotal vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. While recent polls show the move has cost Collins critical support, especially among women voters, the vote has benefited her in another regard.
Since Collins cast her vote in 2018, she has raised about $200,000 from major donors to the Federalist Society, many of whom had never given to Collins before, according to The Daily Beast.
Collins, who for years appealed to women voters by stylizing herself as that rarest of all political birds — a pro-choice Republican — received the contributions to her campaign and two affiliated political action committees from 39 donors connected to the vehemently pro-life Federalist Society, including its former executive vice president Leonard Leo.
Leo, along with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, is one of the main drivers behind the GOP's historic streak of stacking federal courts over the course of Trump's term with conservative judges who oppose women's reproductive rights.
Though Leo had never given money directly to Collins before, he and his wife, Sally each made a maximum $5,600 contribution to Collins' campaign last year.
But that’s why we have to be ready. Let’s get ready to have the Blue Wave hit Maine hard. Click below to donate and get involved with Gideon, Joe Biden and their fellow Maine Democrats campaigns:
Sara Gideon
Joe Biden
Jared Golden