A strong opponent is needed to unseat Collins

Political activist and lobbyist Betsy Sweet has become the first mainstream Democrat with at least a modicum of political experience and name recognition willing to take on Susan Collins in 2020 for a crucial seat in the United State Senate. Sweet became known to voters across the state through her unsuccessful bid for the governor’s office in 2018. Hopefully, other strong candidates will surface in the weeks ahead to provide a vigorous and necessary public debate about why it’s time for Collins to go. At this writing, the only other Democratic candidate in the offing appears to be Saco attorney Bre Kidman, a name likely unfamiliar to most Mainers. Kidman describes themselves on Facebook as a “criminal defense attorney by day and radical fat queer/performance artist/model/musician/activist most other times.” That’s a colorful resume, but those aren’t likely the credentials of an electable candidate.

If ever there has been a time when Maine needs a political leader who can appeal to a broad spectrum of the voters, that time is now. Maine Democrats will miss a golden opportunity to capture one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats if they fail to put forward and support a strong and viable standard-bearer for the upcoming statewide election. Never has Collins been as vulnerable as she is now. Thanks to a vigorous fundraising effort following Collins’ now infamous vote to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court, the eventual Democratic candidate will start their campaign with substantial financial backing. A Crowdpac fund raised nearly $3.8 million from nearly 125,000 donors to back Collins’ future opponent.

Meanwhile, the evidence continues to mount that Collins is not the forthright and independent voice for Maine that she has represented herself to be. As has previously been pointed out, Maine’s senior senator rightly observed back in 2016 that Donald Trump was unfit to occupy the nation’s highest office. As president, he has demonstrated that unfitness for the world to see. But for more than two years now, Collins has shown almost no willingness to call out Trump for his constant lying and his disgraceful behavior. At the same time, she has joined with other Republican senators to provide critical backing for Trump initiatives.

A recent Beacon article discusses a new nonpartisan report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) showing that claims made by Republican lawmakers, including Collins, justifying their votes for Trump’s 2017 GOP federal tax cuts have not been borne out. The CRS researchers found that, contrary to Collins’ assertion that the tax cuts would spur growth and raise wages for American workers, “the growth effects tend to show a relatively small (if any) first-year effect on the economy.”

Read more: https://mainebeacon.com/a-strong-opponent-is-needed-to-unseat-collins/