Senator Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh remains a sticking point in her reelection campaign in Maine’s Senate race. Collins, a Republican, voted to confirm Kavanaugh to the High Court eight years ago in 2018, delivering a major victory to President Donald Trump’s first administration. It was a contentious vote at the time—Democrats argued a justice should not have been confirmed so close to the midterms, citing former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to confirm a Supreme Court justice nominee in 2016, before the election.
Democrats also took issue with Kavanaugh’s position on abortion rights and whether he would support overturning Roe v. Wade, which for decades guaranteed abortion rights across the country. Collins was a key vote securing his confirmation, saying she believed he would respect precedent and not overturn the case.
That vote garnered a wave of backlash toward Collins, and millions of dollars were raised to unseat Collins in 2020 following the vote, which Democrats believed challenged the notion that she was independent from the Trump administration in a state where he has never been particularly popular. But in a major show of strength, and a shock to many, the Republican senator managed to outrun that backlash in the 2020 election, when she defeated Democrat Sara Gideon with a slim majority of the vote, even as former President Joe Biden carried the state by 9 points. Whether or not voters are willing to overlook the vote again remains a central question in the outcome of the Maine Senate race, a critical toss-up that could determine the balance of power after the midterms.
Newsweek reached out to the Collins and Jackson campaigns for comment via email. As she faces another competitive reelection against Troy Jackson, who previously served as the president of the Maine Senate, Democrats are hoping Maine voters aren’t forgetting the Kavanaugh vote. It’s been central to Jackson’s pitch that Collins is less independent than she claims, and it’s an issue Collins has faced questioning about during debates.
But how much voters will really care is “difficult to determine,” Mark Brewer, professor of political science at the University of Maine in Orono, told Newsweek. The vote may be more salient this time around because Kavanaugh ended up voting to overturn Roe, defying Collins’ expectations, Brewer said. Following the ruling, in the case Dobbs v.
Jackson, numerous states moved to ban or place restrictions on abortion procedures. Abortion remains illegal in 13 states, though it is legal in Maine. James Melcher, professor of political science at the University of Maine at Farmington, told Newsweek the Kavanaugh vote has played a “major role” in the race, and “more of one than it did in 2020.” “That’s because Kavanaugh’s vote was so key in the Dobbs decision, and because Collins had previously indicated that she would not vote for a justice who would vote to overturn Roe,” he said.
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