Can Pork-Barrel Spending Save Susan Collins?

“I’m the first Maine senator in nearly a century to chair the Appropriations Committee, and I’ve been able to bring $1.5 billion to Maine to support projects just like this one,” said Senator Susan Collins in late October, beneath overcast skies, standing in front of a massive radio tower at the police station in Winthrop, a town of about 6,000, not too far from Augusta, the state’s capital. The tower, funded largely through money Collins secured through her chairmanship, was a particularly prominent example of what she talks about incessantly: her ability to deliver federal dollars to Maine. “Collins highlights federal funding in closing pitch to voters” blared the headline in the Portland Press Herald, Maine’s largest circulation newspaper. 

It’s no surprise that Collins, the five-term incumbent, would make such old-school spending her final argument to Maine voters, as she faces a formidable challenge from Troy Jackson, the former president of the Maine Senate, who secured the Democratic nomination after the collapse of Graham Platner. 

Candidates don’t usually get in the weeds about committee assignments, but because Collins chairs Senate Appropriations, the chamber’s largest and arguably most powerful panel, she has reason to crow. Even as committee power has, in recent years, been diminished by massive omnibus budget bills forged through closed-door leadership agreements rather than the how-a-bill-becomes-a-law committee process outlined in Schoolhouse Rock and countless textbooks, Appropriations is a special money-dispensing creature. It’s how the late Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican, financed legendary largesse like the famed bridge to nowhere, and how the late Senator Robert Byrd brought home the bacon to to West Virginia. Neither ever faced a serious challenge at home, nor have other recent Senate Appropriations Chairs such as Washington’s Patty Murray and Vermont’s Patrick Leahy. 

As a blue wave readies to make landfall, Collins is the only Republican representing a state that voted against Donald Trump three times, albeit Maine’s unique apportionment of Electoral College votes allowed him to pick up one delegate in each of his races. This is a blue state, but the 73-year-old has held on because of adroit skills and, increasingly, seniority, in a small state that has long punched above its weight in national politics with Senators who accumulate seniority like Margaret Chase Smith (the famed anti-Joe McCarthy Republican), Edmund Muskie (future Secretary of State), and George Mitchell (Senate Majority Leader). Collins was a congressional aide to Senator Bill Cohen (later Defense Secretary) for a dozen years in the 70s and 80s. She’s worked Senate hallways for 50 years, knows how to get federal funds, and does it well. The question now is: as the last GOP senator from New England, can the appropriations gavel save her from a wave?

An instructive example comes from the last time a Senate Appropriations Committee chair faced a powerful challenger. And while comparisons across time and geography aren’t exact, they’re still instructive. 

In 1980, 75-year-old Warren Magnuson was completing his sixth Senate term and, like Collins, chaired the appropriations committee. The Washington State Democrat was adopted and raised in North Dakota by second-generation Scandinavians. He followed a high school girlfriend to the University of Washington in Seattle and made a career in the western port city as a lawyer, special prosecutor, and reformer who served in the state house in Olympia, then rode FDR’s coattails to the U.S. House in the 1936 Democratic landslide. In 1945, he entered the U.S. Senate, where he served on the Commerce Committee and alongside his better-known Senate colleague from the state, Henry “Scoop” Jackson. The two were sometimes called “The Gold Dust Twins” because of all the federal dollars they brought home or the “senators from Boeing,” a nod to the then-Washington-based aviation giant.

Magnuson got the appropriations gavel in 1977 and wielded it on behalf of Washington state. In 1980, everyone knew it would likely be a good year for Republicans, as high inflation and unemployment, plus the Iran hostage crisis, pummeled Jimmy Carter’s popularity. On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted, sending lava and pulverized rock 80,000 feet and melting glaciers. The eruption, the deadliest and most destructive volcanic explosion in the lower 48 in U.S. history, spurred mudslides as far as 50 miles away and covered much of the region in volcanic ash. Washington’s rich agricultural harvest of apples, wheat, peas, and other crops was devastated, as was much of the timber industry. 

The volcano gave Magnuson, the most senior member of Congress, an opportunity to show what seniority could do. He quickly held special hearings and helped pass a nearly $1 billion supplemental special-assistance bill, a huge sum for the time. 

But pork couldn’t stop the Republican wave. 

That autumn, Republicans flipped twelve Senate seats, capturing the chamber for the first time since 1954 in the GOP’s largest gain since 1946 and the biggest Senate swing since 1958. Nine Democratic incumbents were defeated in the general election, while three others lost in their primaries. The defeats decimated the Senate’s liberal establishment, including Foreign Relations Chairman Frank Church of Idaho, Select Intelligence Chairman Birch Bayh of Indiana, George McGovern of South Dakota, Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, John Culver of Iowa, and Magnuson.

Seniority was no shield. Church had served 24 years in the Senate and chaired the committee that investigated the CIA; he lost by less than a point. Bayh had 18 years and the Intelligence gavel; he lost by seven and a half. Talmadge had 24 years and the Agriculture chairmanship, and lost by two. Each could make a version of Magnuson’s seniority argument, and each lost—Magnuson by a wider margin than almost any of them. Being older and more senior was a liability in an anti-Democratic, incumbent year. His tripping and stumbling in front of photographers on his way to announcing aid for the state didn’t help. 

Questioned in 1981 about the defeat, Warren Featherstone Reid, Magnuson’s top aide, framed the outcome strictly through a national lens—pointing to the presidential debate during the campaign’s final week, which tanked Democratic participation, and Carter offering his concession at 6:50 p.m. Pacific time while voting remained open out West. His assessment conspicuously omitted any mention of Mount St. Helens. His boss, “Maggie,” became the longest-serving member of Congress to have their career ended by losing a reelection bid rather than death or retirement, a record that persists. That the Senate giant lost to Slade Gorton, a not-particularly-compelling attorney general, only added to the humiliation. 

Collins could still prevail. The wave may not prove big enough to end her political career as it did Magnuson’s, and Jackson is not the strongest candidate. He’ll almost certainly garner fewer votes than Hannah Pingree, the Democrat who is a shoo-in to be Maine’s next governor. But if Collins loses, despite her role as Appropriations chair, it will remind everyone that winning federal largesse isn’t enough to save even the most agile incumbent drowning in a wave.

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