Maine House speaker announces challenge to Collins Senate seat

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The Hill

Sara Gideon, the Democratic speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, announced on Monday that she would seek her party’s nomination to challenge Susan Collins (R-Maine) for her Senate seat. 

Gideon is among the highest-profile Democrats to enter the Maine Senate race so far. She was widely expected to announce her campaign after the close of Maine’s first legislative session of 2019, which ended last week.

“Susan Collins has been in the Senate for 22 years. And at one point maybe she was different than some of the folks in Washington, but she doesn’t seem that way anymore,” Gideon said in a video announcing her Senate bid.

She pointed to Collins’s vote in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the 2017 Republican tax overhaul “where almost all of the benefits went to corporations and the wealthy.”