Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican who has represented her state in Washington for three decades, is considered one of her party’s most vulnerable incumbents in the midterm elections.
Here are five things to know about Ms. Collins, 73, of Bangor, who is running unopposed in the Republican primary on Tuesday and is expected to face Graham Platner, a Democrat, in the general election.
1. She is the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history. When Ms. Collins was first elected to the Senate, the Nintendo 64 was brand-new, the movie “Men in Black” was in production and Louisiana was still considered a swing state. The number of women serving in the 100-seat Senate was in the single digits. Ms. Collins, an early supporter of gay rights, rose on a middle-of-the-road message in the 1996 election. A daughter of two mayors of Caribou, Maine (her father was a World War II veteran), she spent years working in government in Washington, Maine and Massachusetts, and arrived in the Senate with the reputation of a workhorse. She has maintained that brand: Last week, she became the first senator to reach 10,000 consecutive votes cast without an absence. She is the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, and is known for securing millions of dollars for projects across Maine.
2. She was at the center of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation battle. Ms. Collins, who supports abortion rights, offered the decisive vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. In so doing, she broke with another Republican supporter of abortion rights, Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and declared in a lengthy speech that Mr. Kavanaugh had convinced her that he would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mr. Kavanaugh later joined five justices in overturning Roe in 2022, and Ms. Collins said she had been “misled.”
3. She is widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in the Senate. Ms. Collins’s state is reliably blue in presidential races — a Republican candidate for the White House has not won it since 1988. Ms. Collins has overcome that tilt for decades. But she is running today at a moment of heightened partisanship, and when many voters crave generational change. Democrats are hoping to defeat her by tethering her to President Trump. “She finds herself in this tough spot,” said Mark Brewer, a professor of political science at the University of Maine. He said that her strong personal brand “took a hit” after Mr. Trump rose to power a decade ago, but that “she’s never really lost that entirely, either.”
4. She has had a turbulent relationship with Mr. Trump. Ms. Collins, who voted to convict Mr. Trump of inciting an insurrection in 2021, has long been a target of criticism from the president. In January, after she joined Senate Democrats in voting to start debate on a measure restricting Mr. Trump’s ability to use military force in Venezuela, he wrote on social media that she should “never be elected to office again.” But he has since softened his tone. In March, he told Fox News that he considered Ms. Collins to be a “good person” and that “I hope she wins.” Asked in an interview on Monday if she would like Mr. Trump to campaign with her, she said, “That’s just not going to happen.” She added, “I’m happy running my own campaign.” She has never voted for Mr. Trump, according to her campaign.
5. She has sometimes backed the Trump administration on important votes. Last week, Ms. Collins voted in favor of a measure to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. But she has also sometimes broken with the administration, voting against its signature tax and domestic policy bill last year, and since April to the end the war with Iran.
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