A Republican senator has been trashed by her own voters for supporting a Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice.
Susan Collins, the 73-year-old Maine senator seen as a vulnerable incumbent in the midterm elections, sparked outrage among 10 of her female voters who spoke to MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Friday about her 2018 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, who later overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
Collins is one of two Republican senators who support abortion rights along with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. But in 2018, she voted to confirm Kavanaugh as Supreme Court justice. Four years later, he joined the court’s conservative majority that voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.
“The Brett Kavanaugh vote was one that really resonated with me,” one voter said. “How a woman could put back Roe v. Wade and everything like that, knowing what we fought so hard in all these years, you know, to be going backwards and for her to decide that way, I really lost a lot of respect.”
“You could have at least a little understood it if she’d been a man and doing that, but the fact that she was a woman, it wasn’t just about her, you know, going with Republicans. She was a woman and she stood with that,” another voter said. “So that really, that’s really disturbing.”
A third voter pointed out that Collins regularly breaks ranks with the GOP and votes with Democrats, “when the Republicans are like, ‘Well, we don’t really need your vote, so you can feel free to vote differently.’”
Last month, her spokesperson Blake Kernen told The New York Times that criticism of her Kavanaugh vote was driven by “hyperpartisan voices.”
“Senator Collins fully and honestly explained her decision in the days before and the years that followed Justice Kavanaugh’s nomination,” Kernen said.
Collins personally addressed the controversy in June, telling the Portland Press Herald, “I do not regret that vote. I do disagree with Justice Kavanaugh’s vote.”
In 2018, Collins said Kavanaugh gave her personal assurances that he viewed Roe v. Wade as “settled law.”
“He said that he agreed with what Justice [John] Roberts said at his nomination hearing, in which he said it was settled law,” Collins told reporters at the time, praising her conversation with Kavanaugh as “excellent.”
Some of her voters told MS NOW that they would accept an apology if Collins admitted that she was misled by Kavanaugh.
“It would need to feel genuine, though, too, and not just as a ploy to, like, gain more support,” one voter said.
Six of the 10 voters said they were still undecided about who they’re voting for in the Senate in November. Three women said they would vote for Collins again if the election were held tomorrow.
Collins is running for re-election against Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee and former president of the Maine Senate.
When reached for comment, Kernen argued that Collins has been “reliably pro-choice.”
“Six of the 10 women described themselves as undecided, and when asked whom they would support if the election were held tomorrow, three of those six chose Senator Collins. That may be because Susan Collins is also the only candidate in this race who’s been reliably pro-choice,” she said.
“Mainers know that Susan Collins is an independent leader for Maine and has championed policies that benefit Maine women and their families,” she added.
