Growing up with, and apart from, Susan Collins | Opinion

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Peter Nalli has lived in southern Maine for 25 years. He is an independent consultant who has worked in education, policy, politics and economic and community development.

It’s hard to change your mind about someone you once respected. When I hear Sen. Susan Collins speak, some part of my brain (or heart) still wants to believe the 30-year-old pitch of a humble and hard-working County girl devoted to public service.

Susan Collins became a United States senator when I was in sixth grade at North
Yarmouth Memorial School. As an 11-year-old, I recall a vague sense of pride that our state
had sent two women to the Senate (someday, there might be a woman president!).

There was also a feeling that Sen. Collins might march down the trail blazed by Margaret Chase Smith, who ranks with Stephen King, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Miss Rumphius in the pantheon of Pine State heroes.

Arriving at college in 2003, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan roared away. Surprisingly few of my new classmates had heard of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain or Miss Rumphius. By now, I was a registered Democrat, but my general pitch about the glory of my home state focused on Mainers’ independence of thought and spirit, evidenced by two women senators who seemed to think for themselves.

My first political rally was a pro-choice march in Washington, D.C., where I joined dozens of classmates outraged by infringements of Roe v. Wade. I kept noting to friends (probably obnoxiously) that Maine’s senators would always protect a woman’s right to choose.

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In 2006, my parents paid me to paint their bedroom a shade of mauve. From a radio balanced on the stepstool, I listened to all the hearings for Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He called Roe v. Wade “important precedent” that “required considerable respect” and Sen. Collins voted to confirm him.

Twelve years later, now 33 years old, I pulled my car over on Route 2 in Mexico, shocked.

The Androscoggin glinted through fall foliage as I listened to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford carefully and credibly describe how Brett Kavanaugh had pinned her down and sexually assaulted her. Days later, listening to the radio at camp, my jaw dropped again as an unhinged Brett Kavanaugh pitched a fit to the Senate Judiciary Committee, a childish and noxious display that surely disqualified him for the nation’s highest court.

A week later, back in Portland, a friend called to say that Susan Collins was voting to confirm Kavanaugh and I thought they were joking. The following summer, Collins attended a fundraiser at the Northeast Harbor mansion of Leonard Leo, a D.C. architect of the plan to create a MAGA Supreme Court.

When I was 37 years old, the Supreme Court that Susan Collins created voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending a woman’s federal right to access an abortion if she needs one. Justices Kavanaugh and Alito joined the majority and Collins expressed dismay.

The Supreme Court that Susan Collins created has ruled that lawlessness by a president is legal because he is president, that protections for clean air and water should be gutted, that the Voting Rights Act is irrelevant and that a tax and economic system prioritizing corporations and billionaires is sacrosanct. It’s a Supreme Court and a set of rulings for Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Leonard Leo, not for the people of Aroostook County, York County or many Mainers in between.

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In the system that Susan Collins helped create, healthcare is more expensive, workers have fewer rights and the most powerful and richest are a protected class with policies designed to make them richer. She still gets money for projects in Maine and occasionally votes against her party. Just enough to keep us on the hook.

I was 40 years old when ICE surged in Maine and masked federal agents abducted a civil engineer with a work visa at the Top of the Old Port parking lot in Portland. He was snatched by government agents with his car left running, the driver’s side window smashed, his phone on the ground, his bag and keys on the passenger seat. Stories of others abducted from their schooling, jobs and neighborhoods spread quickly. Masked agents threatened peaceful protesters, drove to their homes and told them they were now in a federal registry.

Susan Collins could have curtailed ICE funding, demanded new conditions on enforcement,
investigated the thuggish behavior or exercised her supposed power. Instead, she called her
colleague, then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and asked them just to stop. She didn’t solve the
problem, she hit snooze. The following year, ICE agents gunned down an innocent man in
Biddeford.

Susan Collins keeps boasting about her power in Washington, but a senseless war in Iran is raging, unregulated artificial intelligence is about to wreak havoc on our economy and well-
being and health insurance, housing and fuel costs are soaring. The Supreme Court she built is
shredding the foundations of our constitutional order and, according to reports, there will likely
be another Supreme Court vacancy next year.

I stopped bragging long ago that Maine has a moderate or independent-minded senator. I’m now 41 years old and we need change.

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Tagged: columns, election 2026, senate 2026