National Journal - "Maine: Truth in Labeling?"

News Article

National Journal - "Maine: Truth in Labeling?"

As Collins reflected on her proudest moments since her last election, the two-term senator recalled a high-stakes battle over Bush's tax-cut proposal in 2003. The GOP leadership was strongly pressuring her to back it, but she was holding out for $20 billion more in relief for state governments.

"I'll never forget being in Dennis Hastert's office with Vice President Cheney and the speaker and Bill Thomas, chair of the Ways and Means Committee," she recalled. "The whole purpose of the meeting was to try to beat me down. I came out bloodied but unbowed."

Ultimately, the states got the additional money. "At a time when states were running huge deficits," she said, "we averted sharp cutbacks in Medicaid and other essential programs that help those who have the least in our society."

She cited that experience, in which she worked with Democrats, as an example of her crossing swords
with the Bush administration. Breaking with the party line is not that exceptional for her, the senator insisted, pointing to her vote to override Bush's veto of stem-cell research legislation, her efforts to increase funding for low-income heating assistance, and her opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But Tom Allen, the presumptive Democratic nominee, took a different lesson from Collins's vote for the tax cut, on which Cheney cast the tie-breaking vote. He noted that Maine's other Republican senator, Olympia Snowe, opposed the measure, deriding it as full of "gimmicks" and irresponsible, given the size of the national debt.

"For middle-class families in Maine, that vote, that bill, made no sense because it effectively passed on to future generations an increase in the national debt they didn't need," Allen said. "It did nothing to help them economically."

"The question for people in Maine is whose side we're on, what we fight for, and whether or not we are reflecting their values," Allen said. "Susan wants this election to be about labels: She is a moderate, she
is bipartisan. She will say I am a partisan. I am a New England Democrat. The truth is that the Democratic agenda that I fight for is much more in sync with the people of Maine than the Republican agenda that she tries to hide that she is supporting."

When pressed on Collins's ranking in National Journal's 2006 vote ratings that put her close to the middle of the Senate ideologically, Allen responded that she "wants to get by on the label she has been able to attach to herself with the help of the national and the Maine press."

This is clearly a battle over who best reflects Maine's fierce independence. "If anybody takes a fair look
at my record over the past 11 years, they will see the record of an independent senator," Collins said. "If
you look at philosophy, commitment to the job, or effectiveness, I believe that I have demonstrated
during the 12 years that both Tom and I have been in public office that I better fit the people of Maine."

But Allen points to the vote that he's proudest of -- his opposition to the resolution to authorize the use of force in Iraq in 2002 -- as underscoring the difference in the way he and Collins approach their jobs.

"Susan bought the president's arguments on Iraq hook, line, and sinker," he said. "I didn't. I voted against the war. I wasn't sort of hanging back waiting to see how everyone else voted -- I was out in front on this from the beginning."

Allen also said that Collins broke her promise to serve only two terms, and he criticized her support for the president's judicial nominees, a stance that he said flies in the face of her support for abortion rights. "Susan has voted for all but two of George Bush's judicial appointments. If being a moderate [means], 'I can be pro-choice on legislation and pro-life on judicial appointments' -- well, I'd be embarrassed," he said.

Still, if the battle is over truth in labeling, Collins all but dares Allen to bring it on. For example, in a far from-subtle portrayal of her Iraq vote as not all that different from leading Democrats', Collins said that,
like Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., "I made the best decision possible based on the information
before me."

Collins is quick to add that as a member of the Armed Services Committee, she was "probably [former Defense Secretary] Don Rumsfeld's least favorite Republican" because of her "tough questions" about prisoner abuse and the "slow progress" in training Iraqi forces. She co-sponsored a plan calling for a drawdown of troops and mandating a change in mission in Iraq, but, unlike Allen, she opposes a deadline for troop withdrawal.

On term limits, Collins asserted, she has been "very straightforward" in explaining her reversal, telling
constituents, "I made a mistake in saying that. I underestimated the value of seniority and how much
more effective I would be as time went on."

She has no litmus tests for judicial nominees, Collins said, but considers such values as integrity, qualifications, experience, temperament, and a respect for precedent. No one can know with certainty how a nominee will vote once he or she is confirmed, she contended. "History is replete with surprises."

Allen compares this race to the campaign in blue-state Rhode Island two years ago, when Lincoln Chafee, the Senate's most liberal Republican, lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse. "It's a different state, I grant you, but Kerry carried Maine by 9 points. The population has moved well to the left. George Bush's approval will be in the mid-20s."

Voters will compare the two candidates' records, Collins counters, and conclude that she has had more
success in passing legislation and more skill at attracting bipartisan support. Instead of talking about Rhode Island, Collins spoke of her history of winning tough contests.

"The first time I was elected, in 1996, I won in a year when Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole in Maine by 21 points," she said. "I won over a former two-term governor and two-term congressman [defeating Joseph Brennan], and I had never been elected before. It's hard for me to think that anything could be tougher than that environment, but I know that this is a very credible challenge."

Source