Calling on Maine Senator Susan Collins to provide leadership like Margaret Chase Smith her heroic predecessor

Echo guest opinion published in The Portland Press Herald in Portland, Maine: Party Invite for Senator Susan Collins

https://www.pressherald.com/2025/04/08/opinion-party-invite-for-sen-susan-collins/

This is a moment in time where the country needs a Margaret Chase Smith... not a coward. A person in Sen. Collins' position holds a great deal of power. 

She should use it. Get a spine, Susan. 

Be more like Margaret Chase Smith, for once❗
Party invite for Sen. Susan Collins

Now might be the time to consider a move away from MAGA world. Please RSVP❗

I know I'm just a rural Mainer, a Democrat from a small Maine town, but I have a suggestion for our Sen. Susan Collins. 

No, not just a suggestion, an invitation too.
Let me start with the suggestion.

Now is the time to change horses 🐎, even though it is in the middle of a stream, because the MAGA trail boss you are following is going the wrong way — getting deeper and deeper. 

And,you have known that for a long, long time.
Let me refresh your memory.

Here's what you said the first time Donald Trump ran for president: "I kept hoping that Donald Trump, once he won the primary, would change. I hoped that we would see a new Donald Trump, one who put forth thoughtful policy positions, stopped denigrating people and had a more positive vision for America. Regrettably, I have concluded that there is not going to be a new Donald Trump, that he's incapable of saying he's sorry, of changing, of learning, of growing." — Aug. 9, 2016

Three times since then you have — by your own proclamations — voted against Donald Trump, against electing him president every time he ran. Although you made the mistake of voting to acquit Trump in his first impeachment trial, you did join seven Republican senators who voted to convict him in his second impeachment trial.

And, in May 2021, you were one of five Republicans who voted with Democratic senators to establish a bipartisan committee to investigate the January 6th insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, calling it "a dangerous, shameful and outrageous attack on our democracy" and blaming Trump for "working up the crowd and inciting this mob."

Even before he took office this time, you said in December that you were "surprised" by his demand to increase the debt ceiling. 

In early February, you called the Trump administration's mass firings "indiscriminate."  You have yet to comment about the firings in the Social Security Administration, even while tens of thousands of your constituents are living on their retirement incomes. 

In late February, you called the decision to cut $4 billion in health research grants "devastating" and a violation of appropriations law. And now you have joined with the Democratic vice chairof the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, in writing a letter to Trump opposing cuts of $3 billion in recently passed emergency funding, again suggesting he is breaking the law: "He does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate."

Meanwhile, your popularity with voters has taken a nosedive.
Public Policy Polling recently reported only 24% of Maine voters now approve of you while 61% disapprove — worse approval numbers than Trump himself gets from Maine voters.

Republicans aren't happy because you are, famously. the most centrist Republican senator in the Senate. You are one of only two pro-choice Republican senators.

You began expressing concern about climate change more than two decades ago ("Like the canary in the coal mine, the climate changes already evident in the Arctic are a call to action."— Sept. 7, 2004).

You voted with President Barack Obama much of the time in 2013 as he began his second term, more than any other Republican, and in 2017, you voted against repealing Obamacare, helping kill Trump's pledge to get rid of it his first year in office.

Democrats aren't happy because too often you use words like "surprised" or "concerned" or "troubled" in response to Republican overreach instead of taking action. 

Republicans hold only a slim majority in the U.S.
Senate. If only three Republican senators switched parties and joined the Democrats, or even became independents and caucused with the Democrats, there would be no Senate majority. 

Every vote would become a toss-up.

So, here's the invitation: come join the Democratic Party. We need and will welcome Republicans who realize they have made a mistake. Or at least get off that MAGA horse and become an independent.

Stop following Trump as he leads us into deeper and deeper water. Be a leader — not in words but in deeds.

It is hard to imagine an action that could communicate better to the Republican Party that it needs to wake up and stop acting like it has a mandate to do whatever it wants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gordon Street, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist. He lives in Lincoln, Maine.