It’s so on brand for Sen. Susan Collins to be in a pressure cooker over how she’ll vote in a showdown riveting the nation. This time, it’s unclear how the battle over President Donald Trump’s effort to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court will affect the Maine Republican’s bid for a fifth term. It comes six weeks from an Election Day when Trump might lose and Democrats could win Senate control, and it’s further complicating perhaps her toughest reelection race. A day after Ginsburg, 87, succumbed to cancer, Collins said Saturday that Ginsburg’s replacement should be nominated “by the President who is elected on November 3rd.” She said the Senate shouldn’t vote until after the election. She told reporters Tuesday she’d oppose any Trump pick if the vote occurs before Election Day, not because of the nominee but out of fairness. She cited Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s 2016 decision to block President Barack Obama’s effort to fill a court vacancy that occurred nine months before Election Day, claiming the next president should make the selection. Ginsburg died 47 days before the coming election. “I now think we need to play by the same set of rules,” Collins said. Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski are the only GOP senators to say they’d vote no, not enough to derail a nomination in the Republican-run chamber. But for Collins, 67, a no vote could risk support she’ll need in her reelection from conservative Republicans demanding fealty to Trump. At the same time, she can’t afford to alienate independents and cross-over Democrats who value moderation. If the Senate’s Supreme Court vote occurs before Election Day, Collins’ position will be magnified as an issue in her race. Even if it doesn’t, her stance will be high on voters’ minds. “It ties her into a pretzel,” said Dan Eberhart, a major GOP donor to Trump and Senate candidates, though not directly to Collins. “She needs the base, but she also needs the center or she will lose.” Trump plans to announce his selection Saturday. McConnell, R-Ky., has said the Senate will vote this year but hasn’t specified when. Democrats hope the nomination fight will remind liberal voters of Collins’ support for Trump’s controversial last Supreme Court pick, Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It might also focus progressives on how abortion rights and President Barack Obama’s health care law could be threatened by a conservative-dominated Supreme Court. The justices plan to hear arguments on a GOP effort to annul the health care law the week after Election Day. Collins’ Democratic opponent, Sara Gideon, began airing a TV ad Tuesday saying “our children and our grandchildren” will be affected by Trump judicial nominees the McConnell-led Senate is rubber-stamping. “We have to change the people who make him majority leader. That includes Sen. Susan Collins,” Gideon says. Until Tuesday, Collins’ carefully worded statements hadn’t specified how she’d vote if McConnell forced the issue. “People don’t know what she stands for,” said Lauren Passalacqua, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the party’s Senate political arm. She also cited Collins’ refusal to say if she’ll vote this year for Trump, with whom she’s had a fraught relationship. Republicans say Collins’ stance illustrates an independence that Maine voters have long prized. “Our state and our country […]

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