Elected 1996, seat up 2002 Born: Dec. 7, 1952, Caribou Home: Bangor Education: St. Lawrence U., B.A. 1975 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: single

Career:

• Professional: Legis. Aide, U.S. Sen. Bill Cohen, 1975-87, Staff Dir., Oversight of Gov. Mgmt. Subcmte., 1981-87; Professional & Financial Regulation Comm., 1987-92; New England Regional Dir., U.S. Small Business Admin., 1992; ME Dpty. Treas., 1993; Exec. Dir., Ctr. for Family Business, Husson Col., 1994-96.

DC Office: 172 RSOB 20510, 202-224-2523; Fax: 202-224-2693; Web site: www.senate.gov/~collins

State Offices: Augusta, 207-622-8414; Bangor,207-945-0417; Biddeford,207-283-1101; Caribou,207-493-7873; Lewiston,207-784-6969; Portland,207-780-3575.

Committees:

• Aging (Special).
• Armed Services: Emerging Threats & Capabilities; Personnel; Seapower.
• Governmental Affairs: Government Management, Restructuring and the District of Columbia; International Security, Proliferation & Federal Services; Investigations (Permanent) (RMM).
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions: Children & Families (RMM); Public Health.

Susan Collins, Maine's junior Republican senator, was elected in 1996, the first time she won elective office. She grew up in Caribou, in potato-growing Aroostook County, about as far northeast as you can get in the United States, closer to the capitals of New Brunswick and Quebec than to the capital of Maine. Her family is in the lumber business, and also in politics: Her father was a state senator, her mother a mayor and her uncle a state Supreme Court justice. Right after college, she got a job as an intern with William Cohen, then a congressman on the Judiciary Committee who voted to impeach Richard Nixon. She was a Cohen staffer for 12 years and served as the staff director for the Senate Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management on Governmental Affairs, which Cohen chaired from 1981-87. After Republicans lost their majority, Collins returned to Maine to work five years for Governor John McKernan as a financial regulation commissioner. In 1992 she was New England administrator of the Small Business Administration, and by 1994 she had announced her candidacy for governor. It was a disastrous campaign: She won the Republican nomination, but was overshadowed by independent Angus King, and ran third, with only 23% of the vote. She then became the executive director of the Husson College Center for Family Business.

Then in January 1996 Cohen surprised almost everybody by announcing he would retire from the Senate--almost as big a surprise as his selection as Defense secretary by Bill Clinton a year later. But there was a precedent in Maine for a third-place gubernatorial finisher to be elected senator: George Mitchell was similarly humiliated in 1974, then, after being appointed senator in 1980, won smashing victories in 1982 and 1988. The most visible candidate in the Republican primary was Robert Monks, an entrepreneur and business owner who had run losing races against two senators, Margaret Chase Smith in the 1972 primary and Edmund Muskie in the 1976 general. In 1996 he spent $2.1 million--a huge sum for a Maine primary--but got nowhere. Collins promoted her similarity to Olympia Snowe and Cohen, and called for a balanced budget amendment, line-item veto and term limits (and pledged to serve no more than two terms). She won the primary with 56%, carrying at least 50% in every county, to 31% for John Hathaway and only 13% for Monks.

The other familiar face belonged to Democrat Joseph Brennan, a product of working class Portland, first elected to the legislature in 1964, elected governor in 1978 and 1982, then to Congress in 1986 and 1988. But he lost races for governor in 1990 and 1994, with 44% and 34% of the vote, and he was called, somewhat unfairly, ''an old-time, backroom Democratic politician'' by a Democratic activist. The going was uphill: More votes were cast in the Republican primary than the Democratic for the first time since 1982; Democrats had topped 50% in governor races only once since 1966; Governor Angus King's independent platform in 1994 was much more Republican than Democratic. Brennan attacked Collins for backing only a 50-cent minimum wage increase, wanting to increase estate tax exemptions from $600,000 to $1 million, and for favoring repeal of the assault weapons ban. Collins responded by reiterating her stands and citing her experience, and added, ''The next time you hear Joe speak, just close your eyes and ask yourself what year you're in. It could be 1964, the year he first ran. The world has changed, but Joe Brennan's ideas haven't.'' Collins raised much more money and won 49%-44%, losing very narrowly the counties around Portland, Lewiston, and Augusta, and carrying everything else. Interestingly, she led among men and he led among women; Brennan ran strongly among the elderly, Collins among college graduates--suggesting that she was more the wave of the future.

Collins has compiled a middle-of-the-Senate voting record; she has joined most Democrats on issues including the 1999 tax cut, campaign finance regulation and the partial-birth abortion ban. She has generally been quieter than Olympia Snowe, but their records are much the same, and Collins was if anything more visible during the impeachment process. She read history and constitutional law, coming up with an obscure article that argued the Senate could vote on findings of fact separately from removal; she and Snowe pushed a plan to have such separate votes, to no avail. She said that much of the evidence weighed against Clinton, but in the end voted against removal. Her first great cause in the Senate was campaign finance reform; she was beaten by a millionaire in 1994, faced two of them in the 1996 primary and had only meager finances herself ''When I ran for the Senate, I seriously debated whether I could afford to keep my $160-a-month health insurance,'' she said. She said that limitations on self-financing candidates were a ''cornerstone'' of any reform for her. These limits weren't included in the bill (they are plainly unconstitutional under Buckley v. Valeo), but Russ Feingold persuaded her to vote for the campaign finance bill he was sponsoring with John McCain, despite heavy pressure from Majority Leader Trent Lott. ''I do consider myself to be a good Republican,'' she said at one point. ''I'm just one of those troublesome New England Republicans.''

Troublesome to the tobacco industry, at least: In 1997 she and Richard Durbin sponsored an amendment that made settlement costs non-deductible, costing the industry $50 billion. And troublesome to both parties: She insisted that investigations of campaign finances should look at misdeeds of both parties, though there was evidence of far more violations by the Clinton-Gore campaign; at the Fred Thompson hearings on campaign finance, she also probed deftly at some of those, spotlighting the Buddhist temple fundraiser. Right off she became chairwoman of Governmental Affairs' Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and probed into Medicare fraud, investment scams, unsafe food, Internet ripoffs and fraudulent telephone billing--slamming and cramming--day trading, direct mail sweepstakes, property flipping, lead paint. Collins sponsored with Jay Rockefeller a bill for better counseling and communication for patients in advanced stages of disease, endorsed by Rosalynn Carter. Collins has backed the Republican version of HMO reform, and has sponsored her own version with John Breaux, arguing for leaving ''treatment decisions in the hands of doctors, not lawyers,'' with internal and external appeals processes to resolve complaints. She has sought to change the Medicare rules to allow more home health care payments, to reform the evaluation of organ procurement organizations and to set up a National Registry on Juvenile Diabetes. She co-sponsored a law with the late John Chafee to help older foster children move toward independence and passed an amendment to keep vocational education funding separate from other education programs. Her proposal for deductions for the first $2,700 of interest paid on college loans made it, in modified form, into the 1997 tax cut, and she passed a law in 2000 banning distribution over the Internet of computer programs to make fake IDs.

Collins has worked on local issues--for limiting giant trawlers from fishing for herring and mackerel, for national weather bouys, for low-income heating assistance, against Canadian potato easements and Chilean salmon trade restrictions, against alleged dumping of apple juice concentrate and for USDA purchases of blueberries, for tax deductions for fishermen buying safety gear. She sought a National Weather Service office for Caribou, pointing out that since it is surrounded by Canada it does not receive weather warnings from adjacent Weather Service offices as most other American communities do. With others in the Maine delegation, she protested the designation of Atlantic salmon as an endangered species. She got fishermen included in Chapter 12 of the Bankruptcy Act, which covers farmers. Maine is a border state, and Collins tends to border issues. She protested when the Justice Department threatened to assign assistant U.S. attorneys in Maine to states on the Mexican border, and she has called for increasing Canada's $50 limit on duty-free purchases in the United States.

Collins's visible role in impeachment and her response speech to Bill Clinton's 2000 State of the Union address (his longest ever; she had to wait) have made her more visible than many freshman senators. She is up for re-election in 2002, one of only three Republican senators running in a state carried by Al Gore in 2000. Mentioned as possible opponents are state Treasurer Dale McCormick, Bob Dunfey, former head of the New England GSA Office, Democratic Senator Chellie Pingree, sponsor of the state's controversial prescription drug law, and Chris Harte, former President of the Portland Press Herald. If Pingree or McCormick is the Democratic nominee it will be the first Maine all-woman general since 1960.

Cook's Call:
Potentially Competitive. Although Collins' poll numbers do not rival those of her Senate colleague Olympia Snowe, there is not much evidence that any vulnerability she might have extends beyond the political demographics of the state. Former state Senator Chellie Pingree is running and businessman Chris Harte is contemplating a bid. Either may be able to give Collins a spirited race, but she starts as the clear favorite.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	25	43	0	43	42	80	63	80	76	80	31
1999	25	--	0	67	21	--	58	76	64	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	50%	--	49%		48%	--	50%
Social	51%	--	48%		49%	--	46%
Foreign	16%	--	77%		48%	--	48%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. Y 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit N 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards Y 4. Phase Out Estate Tax Y 5. Review Movie Violence Y 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks N		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion	N
8. Broaden Hate Crimes List	Y
9. NATO War in Serbia	N
10. Table Cuba Travel Ban	Y
11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty	N
12. Perm. Trade with China	Y

Election Results
1996 general	Susan Collins (R)	298,422	(49%)
	Joseph E. Brennan (D)	266,226	(44%)
	Other	42,129	(7%)
1996 primary	Susan Collins (R)	53,339	(56%)
	W. John Hathaway (R)	29,792	(31%)
	Robert A.G. Monks (R)	12,943	(13%)
1990 general	William S. Cohen (R)	319,167	(61%)
	Neil Rolde (D)	201,053	(39%)

Campaign Finance
1996	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Susan Collins (R)			$1,621,475
Joseph E. Brennan (D)			$976,805