Leuthy says the group is “aggressively progressive” but avowedly nonpartisan-an important distinction in a state with an active Green Independent Party and an electorate that can be “quite distrustful of political parties.” Trump may have prompted Suit Up Maine’s formation, but he’s not its only target. Over the course of several months, she turned the group into a volunteer-run organization called Suit Up Maine, which produces explainers, legislation guides, and talking points for voters and activists around the state. Shocked and dismayed in the weeks after Trump’s election, Leuthy formed a Facebook group of other equally dismayed Mainers and began posting calls to action. SUSAN COLLINS TRIALShe was one of just two Senate Republicans to vote in favor of allowing witnesses in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial but ultimately voted to acquit him, saying that Trump had learned an important lesson and would be “much more cautious in the future.” These actions have taken a toll: In January, Collins clocked in as the most unpopular senator, period. Collins made an eloquent defense of Planned Parenthood with her 2017 vote against the ACA repeal, then gave an equally impassioned speech in favor of Brett Kavanaugh, who’d go on to set the stage for a possible future rollback of abortion rights in his June Medical Services v. Collins opposed Betsy DeVos for secretary of education but only after casting an essential vote to send her nomination out of committee and onto the Senate floor. She memorably cast a decisive vote against the GOP’s attempted repeal of the Affordable Care Act in 2017-but a few months later, she voted for the GOP tax bill that repealed the individual mandate. In the more consequential votes, Collins’ record has been mixed. “I thought Susan Collins was going to serve in an Olympia Snowe model. And she had a way of working in a diplomatic fashion that I think a lot of Mainers really appreciated,” Leuthy said. She admired Olympia Snowe, Maine’s long-serving Republican senator who retired in 2012 out of frustration with Senate partisanship. In 2014, when she last voted for Collins, Leuthy was an avid news consumer and regular voter, but not an activist. Her daughter raises sheep, which they board at a nearby farm. Leuthy lives in Camden, a coastal town with a picturesque harbor and a ski area that hosts a national toboggan championship every year. “I thought it was really important to have women in the Senate who were Republican, who were pro-choice, who would protect reproductive rights and be a check to the men in the Republican Party,” Leuthy said. Like many Mainers, Leuthy, 48, took pride in not voting a straight party ticket that year. Six years ago, Karin Leuthy, a registered Democrat, voted for Republican Sen.
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