After Senator Collins betrayed Mainers and gave her full-throated support for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, she cynically drove the largest fundraising quarter of her political career. One year later, she’s still trying to cash in. A new HuffPost story lays out all the ways in which Senator Collins’ vote for Kavanaugh has “proved lucrative to her own campaign,” including plenty of support from Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his cadre of dark money groups. While her right-wing out-of-state donors are happy to tout Collins as the “hero of the Kavanaugh confirmation,” it’s costing her back home with Maine women and unions that once supported her. Collins has become “one of the most vulnerable senators running in 2020,” and her approval among Mainers has plummeted to an “all-time low.”

 

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

 

HuffPost: Susan Collins Is Fundraising Off Her Brett Kavanaugh Vote: ‘Far Left’ Coming After Me

The GOP senator’s vote to confirm a man accused of sexual assault to the Supreme Court sparked outrage. Now she’s using it to raise money.

 

Hayley Miller

October 10, 2019

  • Sen. Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, despite the allegations of sexual misconduct against him and his anti-abortion views, enraged Democrats and women’s rights advocates nationwide.
  • A year later, the Maine Republican is boasting about her key role in securing his spot on the bench to raise money for her 2020 reelection campaign.
  • After several days of hemming and hawing, and hundreds of sexual assault survivors and their allies converging on Capitol Hill to protest Kavanaugh, Collins announced on the Senate floor that she would cast her vote in his favor, thereby cementing his seat on the Supreme Court. 
  • Her vote drew instant outrage from women’s rights activists and Maine Democrats who had previously supported Collins, a self-proclaimed pro-choice moderate they believed would break from the rest of the Republican Party on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
  • Despite the backlash, Collins’ pivotal vote also proved lucrative to her own campaign. She raised more money in the months following Kavanaugh’s confirmation than she’s raised in her entire career, though the vast majority of the contributions came from out-of-state donors.
  • A direct mailer, also sent by Collins’ campaign in September, dubbed her vote to confirm Kavanaugh as “the right thing to do” and warned that “far left extremists” were out for revenge.
  • “Casting that vote unleashed a hornets’ nest of stinging attack ads and more are on the way,” the campaign wrote. “I’m asking for your help ... I really need it now.”
  • To compliment her campaign mailers, Collins attended a lavish fundraiser on Oct. 2 in Orange County, California, that hailed her as the “hero of the Kavanaugh confirmation.”

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