Collins Hits 10,000 Votes, and Still Found Time to Fund Trump's $70 Billion Deportation Machine

Every politician eventually discovers the one number that flatters them. For Susan Collins, it is 10,000.

Maine's senior senator cast her 10,000th consecutive Senate vote on Thursday, a streak unbroken since she entered the chamber in 1997.^1,5 The applause was bipartisan. Even Chuck Schumer rose to call it "an extraordinary streak by any measure."⁵ Margaret Chase Smith carried a rose; Angus King once handed Collins one. Fine. Showing up is a virtue. Now ask the harder question: showing up to vote for what?

Here's the part the milestone confetti conveniently buried. That same week, Collins helped Republicans move a roughly $70 billion package to fund Trump's immigration dragnet through the end of his term.³ The 53-46 party-line vote kicked off debate on the filibuster-proof "Secure America Act," which allocates $38.6 billion for ICE and $26 billion for Customs and Border Protection.^2,3 Collins said removing the ballroom-security funding was key to her voting to begin debate on the package.³ Translation: strip out the gilded ballroom, and she's aboard the deportation train.

Then comes the Collins two-step she's perfected over five terms. When Democrats tried to send the bill back to committee to block the DOJ's "anti-weaponization" slush fund, the amendment failed 49-50, with Collins, Jon Husted, and Dan Sullivan joining Democrats.⁴ A principled stand? Look at the scoreboard. Collins is known to vote with Democrats when she disagrees with Trump, and it almost always fails by a vote or two, which is the whole point. Her landmark 10,000th vote was that very motion to commit the package back to the Judiciary Committee.^4,5 A symbolic "aye" that changes nothing, cast for a bill she helped advance. That's not independence. That's choreography.

While Collins counts votes, her challenger is counting her money. Democrat Graham Platner's campaign slammed Collins this week over a high-earning stock portfolio, claiming she's worth up to $9.6 million, owns the eighth best-performing portfolio in the Senate, and pulls $342,520 a year in investment income while his own living comes from an oyster farm.⁷ Independent trackers put her in the same neighborhood (Quiver Quantitative pegs her net worth near $6.9 million), and her own war chest is just as fat: $1.5 million raised in the pre-primary FEC report filed May 28, against $9.7 million cash on hand.⁸ Nearly ten million in the bank for a senator who'd like you focused on her attendance record. Her challenger is no choirboy either: a Nazi-tied SS skull tattoo he's since covered up¹¹ and Wall Street Journal reporting that he traded sexually explicit messages with multiple women early in his marriage¹², but Platner isn't the one who just helped fund the deportation machine.

The race is no layup for either of them. A UMass Lowell/YouGov poll issued Thursday gives Platner a slight lead, 48% to 43%, among 650 likely Maine voters.⁹ The same poll shows 62% of Mainers disapprove of Trump and his approval sits at 39%.⁹ But the asterisk is real: Collins outperformed her polling in 2020, when rival Sara Gideon led in the polls and Collins won with nearly 51%.¹⁰

So congratulations on the streak, Senator. Ten thousand votes, never a sick day. The question Mainers get to answer on November 3 isn't whether Susan Collins shows up. It's who she shows up for: the oyster farmer or the slush fund. Count that vote. MUCK YOU.