Senator Susan Collins of Maine said in a new interview that she did not “regret” her vote to confirm Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018 but was “disappointed” that he later helped overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
“I do not regret that vote,” Ms. Collins, widely seen as the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election this year, said when asked about the episode by News Center Maine. “I do disagree with Justice Kavanaugh’s vote.”
Ms. Collins, one of only two Republican senators who support abortion rights, noted that liberal justices whose confirmations she had also supported — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — voted against overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“When I look at a justice, I look at their qualifications, their integrity, their background, their experience in reaching a decision,” she said. “Obviously, I’m disappointed in that decision.”
Maine has since moved to legalize abortion at all stages of pregnancy. But Democrats believe the issue — and Ms. Collins’s support for President Trump’s judicial nominees — will undercut her backing among moderates in both parties, and particularly among female voters, who make up the majority of the state’s electorate. Women, particularly older women, are considered a key swing voting bloc in Maine.
Ms. Collins, long considered one of the most moderate members of the Senate, is locked in a tight race against Graham Platner, an oysterman who has energized Democrats despite facing a series of controversies over his past statements and conduct. The race is widely viewed as central to Democrats’ uphill push to take back the Senate.
Ms. Collins handily won re-election in 2020, more than two years after she delivered a detailed 43-minute Senate floor speech explaining her rationale for backing Mr. Kavanaugh.
Since then, Ms. Collins has said she felt “misled” by Justice Kavanaugh and shared notes showing she received private assurances from the justice that he posed no threat to the landmark abortion rights ruling.
Ms. Collins has voted for seven of the nine justices on the current court. Justice Clarence Thomas was confirmed before she entered the Senate, and she opposed Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation because Republicans rushed it through the Senate in the weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
While abortion rights powered Democratic victories in 2022, the issue failed to energize voters to the same degree two years later.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, focused on abortion rights more than any other presidential candidate in history, placing the issue at the center of her campaign. Yet while voters backed referendums to protect abortion rights in their states, they also elected senators who had vocally supported restrictions, as well as Mr. Trump, who has taken credit for overturning Roe.
But in 2026, Democrats in Maine are again trying to seize on the overturning of Roe to propel Mr. Platner’s campaign.
In ads and campaign speeches, Mr. Platner has used Ms. Collins’s vote for Justice Kavanaugh as a key plank of his argument that the senator has helped advance the Trump administration’s agenda.
“Susan Collins is only bipartisan when it doesn’t matter,” the narrator says in a new Platner campaign ad.
