Campaign to unseat Collins underway

Crowd-sourced fund raises millions to defeat Maine Senator Susan Collins in 2020

By Andrea Germanos, staff writer for Common Dreams

A crowd-sourced fund to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in 2020 crashed Friday afternoon after traffic spiked and donations surged as she was delivering a speech on the Senate floor explaining why she would join nearly all of her GOP colleagues in voting "yes" on controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

On the campaign funding platform Crowdpac, father and activist Ady Barkan joined forces with advocacy groups Maine People's Alliance and Mainers for Accountable Leadership to raise pledges for Collins' not-yet identified Democratic opponent if she supported President Donald Trump's high court pick. 

As of at 3:40pm ET Friday, it had raised $2,020,366 in pledges, an increase from the $1,804,551 it had amassed by Wednesday. A week ago, the total was $1,605,182.

While the site crashed, Barkan announced on Twitter that another portal existed to fund Collins' 2020 opponent:

Demanding Collins be "a hero" and vote "no," the campaign declares that her vote would

decide whether a rubber stamp for Trump's anti-healthcare, anti-woman, anti-labor agenda gets confirmed to the Supreme Court–costing millions of Americans their healthcare, their right to choose, and their lives.

If you fail to stand up for the people of Maine and for Americans across the country, every dollar donated to this campaign will go to your eventual Democratic opponent in 2020. We will get you out of office.

The people of Maine have made it clear that they want you to vote NO on Kavanaugh, and we're counting on you to do the right thing.

After more than a 45 minutes of remarks on the chamber floor, however, Collins—who's faced increased protests from constituents as well as the broader American public—made clear that she would not.

Following her announcement, Mainers for Accountable Leadership and the Maine People's Alliance said in a joint statement, "Thousands of Mainers wrote, called, visited, protested, begged and pleaded with Susan Collins to do the right thing—to be a hero—and vote no. She ignored them. For years she has claimed to be an independent, a different kind of Republican, but today she shattered that facade forever. Her vote will reverberate long after she has left the Senate."

"Susan Collins' legacy will forever be tied to Brett Kavanaugh and we will never let her forget it," the groups added. "We have raised more than $2 million for her next opponent and we are committed to defeating her in 2020."