A few weeks ago, I highlighted a story from Newsweek about this:
As U.S. health officials have expressed concern over the insufficient amount of testing and overall unpreparedness in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, a 2009 stimulus bill has gained attention for the removal of funding for pandemic preparations.
Politico senior writer Michael Grunwald posted a tweet Friday that explained Maine Senator Susan Collins successfully argued for the removal of pandemic flu preparation funds from the stimulus package 11 years ago: "I had forgotten my own reporting that Senator Collins stripped $870M for pandemic preparations out of the 2009 stimulus."
According to Grunwald, then-Senator Joe Lieberman convinced Collins to shift the $870 million over to funding for community health centers instead of removing it outright. However, Collins did vote to fund pandemic flu research in a different bill only four months after the stimulus passed.
And The Daily Beast is highlighting how this vote could bite her on the ass:
And that vote came back to haunt her, says Willy Ritch with 16 Counties, a nonprofit formed last year in Maine to hold Collins accountable for votes that he claims are out of step with what Maine voters want. He points out that the $870 million she killed in the stimulus package for pandemic preparedness was in addition to the smaller $500 million for pandemic flu research that had been in the pipeline, and that was approved in an omnibus spending bill.
“Senator Collins talks a lot about the power she has in the Senate, but many of us increasingly don’t like what she does with that power,” Ritch told The Daily Beast. “She always seems to have some convoluted explanation or excuse.” He ticks off Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court after saying she believed his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, but thought she was “mixed up” and “mistaken” about her attacker’s identity. She thought President Trump abused the power of his office, but that “the Founders” would not want her to vote to convict him for doing so. “And she voted for pandemic preparedness after she killed it,” he says.
Collins is running for a fifth term in the Senate in the toughest race of her long career. “Her brand is a centrist, a pragmatic legislator who works across the aisle—and that took a hit when she voted to confirm Kavanaugh and when she voted against removing President Trump,” says Jessica Taylor, who monitors Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “Those are seminal moments, and they make it much harder for her to be seen as a pragmatic lawmaker.”
Collins is one of the last of a kind, the lawmaker whose image is based on crossing the aisle and standing up to party doctrine. “In the age of Trump, it is much harder to have any moderate image, and she is a victim of that,” says Taylor. After impeachment, Collins said she felt Trump had learned his lesson. Immediately after, he made it clear he had not.
Voters who once applauded Collins’ thoughtful pragmatism now increasingly see her as having gone to the well once too often, and that when she arrives at her final position, it was the one she was going to take all along.
Her decline in favorability is stunning. In 2016, according to a Morning Consult survey, she was the second most popular senator after Bernie Sanders. In January of this year, a Morning Consult poll tracker found that Collins is now the most unpopular senator, eclipsing Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who had held the position for some time.
Maine House Speaker, Sara Gideon (D. ME), has the lead over Collins in the latest PPP poll:
New PPP polls find Sara Gideon leading Susan Collins 47-43 in the Maine Senate race and Mark Kelly leading Martha McSally 47-42 in the Arizona Senate race. Additionally a PPP poll for a private client last week found Cal Cunningham leading Thom Tillis 46-41 in the North Carolina Senate race, and when PPP last polled the Colorado Senate race John Hickenlooper led Cory Gardner 51-38. This makes four Republican held US Senate seats where PPP has found Democratic challengers with at least a 4 point lead.
The Maine result is most interesting. When PPP first polled the Gideon-Collins match up for a private client last spring, Collins led by 18 points at 51-33. The reason for the 22 point shift since then is that in the wake of opposing impeachment, Collins has lost most of the crossover Democratic support she’s relied on for her success over the years. Last April Collins had a 32% approval rating with Hillary Clinton voters, and trailed Gideon only 59-28 with them head to head. Now she has just a 9% approval rating with Clinton voters, and trails Gideon 81-10 with them head to head.
Overall Collins’ approval rating is 33%, with 57% of voters disapproving of her. She has shored up her position with Trump voters- her approval rating with them is now 59/26 after it was an upside down 42/47 last spring- but her choice to cast her impeachment vote more based on fear of a primary than on fear of the general election now has her trailing in the general election. We found last fall that Collins’ political standing- already perilous- was going to be hurt no matter which way she voted on impeachment. It may be that if nothing else the Democratic impeachment effort results in the end of Collins’ Senate career and gives Democrats the 50 seats they need for control of the Senate with a Democrat in the White House next year- perhaps another indication that Nancy Pelosi is playing three dimensional chess.
Let’s help her win big time. Click here to donate and get involved with Gideon’s campaign.