After Senator Susan Collins announced on Friday that she would be voting to confirm Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, activists began working to prevent her from re-election in 2020.
Collins doesn’t have a solid Democratic challenger yet; however, progressives still raised millions of dollars online to fund the eventual candidate. According to CNN, an Act Blue fundraising account reached more than $3 million — and that was just in the time that Collins was reading her speech about nominating Kavanaugh.
A number of potential candidates were floated on social media, including Susan Rice, the former national security adviser for President Obama. She reportedly has a home in Maine and ties to the state.
— Susan Rice (@AmbassadorRice) October 5, 2018
She followed up her tweet with, “Many thanks for the encourgement (sic). I’m not making any announcements. Like so many Americans, I am deeply disappointed in Senator Collins’ vote for Kavanaugh. Maine and America deserve better.”
CNN reported other possible challengers, including Chellie Pingree, the Democrat representing Southern Maine in the US House; Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives; Seth Berry, a former member of the Maine House of Representatives; and Hannah Pingree, a former speaker of the Maine House and Pingree’s daughter.
“I would certainly not rule it out,” Berry told CNN. “There are others who are equally qualified and I would want to look at the whole field before I make a decision, but clearly Sen. Collins made a choice that did not reflect the people of Maine and our values.”
Gideon said she’s “considering” running. “I have a very important responsibility from now until November 6 to re-elect a Democratic majority (in the Maine House), so I am laser-focused on that in the next four and a half weeks,” she added. “However, this is something I am seriously considering and once we get past November 6 then I will be really laying out everything and making a decision.”
She continued, “As a woman, it is absolutely fundamentally tied to my belief about what he will do as a justice on women’s reproductive rights, but further than that, when the testimony of Dr. Ford came out, it really did become something different.”
No formal announcements were made.