Senator’s Maine offices have been flooded with calls and emails before confirmation vote but her intentions remain a mystery

In the end, whether or not the supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed could come down to the vote of one senator: Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine.

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Historically, she is popular with women. She attracts voters who are registered Democrats. She opposed Trump’s candidacy for president, saying that he could make the world “more dangerous”. And she has vowed not to support a supreme court nominee who demonstrates hostility to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

But on Kavanaugh, she has remained mostly silent and her intentions are still a mystery.

Unsure of how she will vote, activists here in her home state have been feverishly pressuring her to oppose the judge, whose controversial nomination amid a flood of sexual misconduct allegations could see a Senate vote begin as early as Friday. It is a local campaign that could have profound national implications if they persuade her to vote against her party line.

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The senator’s Maine offices have been overloaded with phone calls and emails. Activists drop off postcards and notes from women across the state. Others have sent thousands of coat hangers – a symbol of the return of backstreet abortions should Roe fall. Sit-ins at the senator’s offices have resulted in arrests. And some activists are raising money to fund Collins’s political opponent if she does not vote against Kavanaugh.

“People keep saying that women are angry, that they’re frustrated,” said Diane Russell, a former state representative who has helped organize pressure on Collins. “It’s not anger – it’s rage. It’s abject rage.”

Maine activists began pushing for Collins to oppose Kavanaugh when he was first nominated, fearful that he would overturn Roe. That pressure has only intensified since allegations of sexual assault and misconduct surfaced against him.

The national divide over Kavanaugh appeared to sharpen on Tuesday when Donald Trump, speaking to a cheering crowd in Mississippi, gleefully mocked Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford.

All I could do was look her in the eye and say please. I said it with tears in my eyes. And I'm certain she was teary-eyed Catherine Perreault

On Wednesday, Collins called Trump’s remarks “just plain wrong”. That followed on from an earlier call by Collins for the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh to be broadened to include Julie Swetnick, the nominee’s third accuser. But she has still not indicated how she will vote on Kavanaugh.

“It isn’t just about the supreme court or what is Collins going to do,” said Amy Halstead, the co-director of Maine People’s Alliance, a progressive group that is trying to persuade Collins to vote against Kavanaugh. “Mainers want an elected official who is going to side with them. And if she doesn’t do it, I think the energy in Maine to replace her is incredibly high.

To further pressure Collins, Maine People’s Alliance has joined with Mainers for Accountable Leadership and the national Be a Hero Fund to raise a “war chest” of money that they will donate to Collins’s Democratic challenger in 2020 if the senator does not vote against Kavanaugh. By Wednesday, the fund had reached nearly $1.8m.

Last month, Collins called the fundraising “the equivalent of an attempt to bribe me to vote against Judge Kavanaugh”. She said it would not influence her vote and that it “demonstrates the new lows to which the judge’s opponents have stooped”.

Last week, a group of Maine women traveled to Washington by bus to try to meet with Collins. While they were initially rebuffed, the senator later met briefly with five of them.

“I never thought she actually would [meet us] because we’ve been calling, we’ve been writing letters, we’ve been dropping off coat hangers, raising money, getting arrested at her offices – I think a lot of Maine women have felt completely ignored,” said Amanda O’Brien, a 37-year-old psychiatric technician from Portland. “But we went down because sometimes the situation is so dire you just can’t take no for an answer.”

Catherine Perreault, a 46-year-old office administrator, also met with the senator. She used her time to stress that sexual assault is “pervasive” in America, even in the rural corner of the state they are both from.

“I felt she was receptive. I think that anyone can pretend at listening and being sincere, but I didn’t feel that from her,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest In August, before the allegations against Kavanaugh surfaced, a poll found 49% of Maine voters thought Collins should vote no. Photograph: Cj Gunther/EPA

Perreault says she was motivated to take action when she saw so many women coming forward with stories of their own experiences with sexual assault in the wake of the allegations against Kavanaugh.

As the women departed, Perreault begged Collins.

“All I could do was look her in the eye and say ‘please’ … I said it twice with tears in my eyes. And I am certain she was teary-eyed too at that point,” she said. “I could be wrong, maybe that’s what I wanted to see, but I felt like this hit her. At the very least, we felt heard.”

According to O’Brien, Collins told the group that she understands why survivors of sexual assault do not always come forward.

“I’m happy she called for the investigation, but we need to keep the pressure on. We need to keep calling, we need to keep getting arrested, because anything short of a no vote is a direct attack on women, people of color, the LGBTQ community and all other marginalized people,” she said.

O’Brien believes the stakes could not be higher for women’s rights. “The whole country is counting on us, her constituents, to make sure she shows up and does the right thing,” she said.

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But also at play is Collins’s own political future.

In her 2014 re-election, Collins secured the vote of 66% of women in the state as well as 39% of registered Democrats according to CNN exit polling. Voting to confirm Kavanaugh could lose some of those votes while voting against Kavanaugh could lose her support among Republicans in the state, which Trump lost by a narrow margin.

In August, before the sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh publicly surfaced, a poll from Public Policy Polling found that 49% of Maine voters thought Collins should vote against Kavanaugh’s confirmation while 42% supported his confirmation.

Carol Sanborn, a 59-year-old paralegal from Dresden, Maine, has previously voted for Collins. As the head of a local machinists’ union, she opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination from the start, seeing his past court rulings as anti-worker. That opposition has only been exacerbated by the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct and what she saw as Kavanaugh’s “unhinged’ testimony before the Senate judiciary committee last week.

While she voted for Collins and her union endorsed the senator, the Kavanaugh vote could change that.

“I would have some serious misgivings about voting for her again if she approved his nomination,” she said. “She is in a tough spot. She will lose votes either way – it’s just a matter of which votes.”