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Two Maine Republicans
Just killed heating assistance for our entire state. 
11 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
or provide a link to a story about this heartless act? It would be much appreciated. 
These Maine republicans need to have their names dragged through the mud. They were elected to serve the people, not make their lives more difficult and deadly. 
Unfortunately the newspaper has a pay wall, but you copied the link perfectly.
Do Democrats Who Supported Susan Collins in 2020 Regret Their Vote? Nope.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/01/17/do-democrats-who-supported-susan-collins-in-2020-regret-their-vote/
Mary Ann Lynch, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, is a model Democrat. She began her political career as a staffer for Democratic Governor Joe Brennan and has supported the party with donations and volunteer work for more than 40 years. In the past two elections, she voted a straight Democratic slate—Joe Biden, U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree, Governor Janet Mills—with one exception. Last fall, with control of the Senate on the line and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings a traumatic recent memory, Lynch cast a ballot for Republican Senator Susan Collins. She has no regrets. “I’m a ticket splitter,” Lynch told me. “I don’t often split, but I do split. I vote for the person who I feel would be the best for Maine and for the country. Instead of saying we need more Democrats or more Republicans, I would say we would need more people like Susan Collins who reach across the aisle to get things done.”
Lynch does not share the ominous feeling, increasingly common among Democrats, that time is running out. A paper-thin majority in Congress is likely to disappear next year, leaving just months to pass paid family leave and protect voters from conservative attempts at disenfranchisement. As the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pettifog and delay, many Democrats wish for just one more Senate seat. And as Texas and other states pass restrictive abortion laws unchecked by the Supreme Court, frustrated Democrats turn to voters in Maine, who returned Collins to the Senate last fall despite her vote for Kavanaugh and the Republican tax bill, and ask: Why?
Exit polling indicates that 13 percent of Collins’s support in 2020 came from registered Democrats. Women overall broke for Collins over her challenger, Sara Gideon, 49 to 46 percent. How did these constituencies make a decision seemingly so against their own interests? How do they feel about it now? Ask them, and their answers often evoke nostalgia for things lost—paper mills, union jobs, and a bipartisan, collegial Congress. They also share a lack of urgency about the slow-moving constitutional crisis instigated by Donald Trump, a sign, along with the election of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia this fall, that Democrats will have to do more to win than point to Trump’s misdeeds, especially now that he’s off the ballot.
snip
Collins’s votes in the Senate since her reelection have been just fine with Green, too. This summer, she helped defeat the For the People Act, arguing that its sweeping voting rights provisions—making Election Day a federal holiday, restoring eligibility to felons who’ve served their sentences, keeping names on voting rolls, automatically registering eligible voters—went far beyond preserving the right to vote. Green wasn’t convinced either that such sweeping action was necessary in response to laws such as Georgia’s, which forbids giving water to people waiting to vote. (With many polling places closed in Black areas, lines are often long.) Should people be allowed, Green mused, to give voters even such small gifts as a bottle of water? “What is that law saying? I don’t know,” he said. “Leave it to Susan. I trust her.”
snip
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2022/01/17/do-democrats-who-supported-susan-collins-in-2020-regret-their-vote/
Mary Ann Lynch, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, is a model Democrat. She began her political career as a staffer for Democratic Governor Joe Brennan and has supported the party with donations and volunteer work for more than 40 years. In the past two elections, she voted a straight Democratic slate—Joe Biden, U.S. Representative Chellie Pingree, Governor Janet Mills—with one exception. Last fall, with control of the Senate on the line and the Brett Kavanaugh hearings a traumatic recent memory, Lynch cast a ballot for Republican Senator Susan Collins. She has no regrets. “I’m a ticket splitter,” Lynch told me. “I don’t often split, but I do split. I vote for the person who I feel would be the best for Maine and for the country. Instead of saying we need more Democrats or more Republicans, I would say we would need more people like Susan Collins who reach across the aisle to get things done.”
Lynch does not share the ominous feeling, increasingly common among Democrats, that time is running out. A paper-thin majority in Congress is likely to disappear next year, leaving just months to pass paid family leave and protect voters from conservative attempts at disenfranchisement. As the likes of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pettifog and delay, many Democrats wish for just one more Senate seat. And as Texas and other states pass restrictive abortion laws unchecked by the Supreme Court, frustrated Democrats turn to voters in Maine, who returned Collins to the Senate last fall despite her vote for Kavanaugh and the Republican tax bill, and ask: Why?
Exit polling indicates that 13 percent of Collins’s support in 2020 came from registered Democrats. Women overall broke for Collins over her challenger, Sara Gideon, 49 to 46 percent. How did these constituencies make a decision seemingly so against their own interests? How do they feel about it now? Ask them, and their answers often evoke nostalgia for things lost—paper mills, union jobs, and a bipartisan, collegial Congress. They also share a lack of urgency about the slow-moving constitutional crisis instigated by Donald Trump, a sign, along with the election of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia this fall, that Democrats will have to do more to win than point to Trump’s misdeeds, especially now that he’s off the ballot.
snip
Collins’s votes in the Senate since her reelection have been just fine with Green, too. This summer, she helped defeat the For the People Act, arguing that its sweeping voting rights provisions—making Election Day a federal holiday, restoring eligibility to felons who’ve served their sentences, keeping names on voting rolls, automatically registering eligible voters—went far beyond preserving the right to vote. Green wasn’t convinced either that such sweeping action was necessary in response to laws such as Georgia’s, which forbids giving water to people waiting to vote. (With many polling places closed in Black areas, lines are often long.) Should people be allowed, Green mused, to give voters even such small gifts as a bottle of water? “What is that law saying? I don’t know,” he said. “Leave it to Susan. I trust her.”
snip
