Susan Collins: Lincoln Project Attacks Ignore Facts of Her Career

Those responsible for the new Lincoln Project ad taking aim at Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) either don’t know what “never” means, or don’t believe that you do. Collins “never stands up, never speaks up, never does what a Maine leader should do,” the ad’s narrator confidently asserts, his voice dripping with disgust, as a graphic citing an ABC News report — “Collins votes with Trump/McConnell 67.5 percent of the time” — flashes across the screen. The incongruence between the ad’s claims and the actual facts makes it all the more important to detail Senator Collins’s unusual record of independence and bipartisanship in the upper chamber of Congress.

Collins was first elected to the Senate in 1996. For the duration of her tenure, she has distinguished herself as one of its most independent, least partisan members. As a relatively liberal member of the Republican caucus, Collins makes no secret of her pro-choice inclinations, was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign in 2014 for her support of the LGBT community, and joined only a handful of other Republicans to vote to confirm both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.

About the Author

Isaac Schorr

Isaac Schorr is an editor at Mediaite and a 2023–2024 Robert Novak Journalism Fellow at the Fund for American Studies.

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Those responsible for the new Lincoln Project ad taking aim at Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) either don’t know what “never” means, or don’t believe that you do. Collins “never stands up, never speaks up, never does what a Maine leader should do,” the ad’s narrator confidently asserts, his voice dripping with disgust, as a graphic citing an ABC News report — “Collins votes with Trump/McConnell 67.5 percent of the time” — flashes across the screen. The incongruence between the ad’s claims and the actual facts makes it all the more important to detail Senator Collins’s unusual record of independence and bipartisanship in the upper chamber of Congress.

Collins was first elected to the Senate in 1996. For the duration of her tenure, she has distinguished herself as one of its most independent, least partisan members. As a relatively liberal member of the Republican caucus, Collins makes no secret of her pro-choice inclinations, was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign in 2014 for her support of the LGBT community, and joined only a handful of other Republicans to vote to confirm both Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court.