Former national security adviser Susan Rice followed up on her Friday Twitter tease, saying she would decide after November’s midterms whether or not to challenge Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in 2020, according to a Monday Washington Post report.
“What moved me was a sense of outrage and frustration that somebody who fashions herself a moderate centrist, and somebody who cares for equal rights and LGBT rights and Roe v. Wade and all of this stuff, could in a very political fashion not just decide to vote for Kavanaugh but do it in a fashion that was quite dismissive of the concerns of many Americans and many Mainers,” Rice said at the New Yorker festival. “So it was on that basis that I decided I would think about it.”
“The last 20-so years I’ve been a homeowner in the state of Maine, so it’s not completely crazy,” she added. “My bottom line is I’m going to give it due consideration, after the midterms.”
On a stop at CNN during her cable news tour, Collins was dismissive of Rice.
“As far as Susan Rice is concerned, her family has a home in Maine, but she doesn’t live in the state of Maine,” Collins said. “Everybody knows that.”
Collins announced her deciding vote on Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh on Friday, assuring his confirmation.
During her media tour, Collins has maintained that she believes that professor Christine Blasey Ford, Kavanaugh’s first accuser, was assaulted by someone, but that there is no evidence confirming that her attacker was Kavanaugh. Blasey Ford said during her testimony that she is “100 percent” sure Kavanaugh was the man who attacked her.
Collins added in another interview that she hopes a “silver lining” from the vicious confirmation process will be that “more women will press charges” when they are assaulted. Blasey Ford, who was 15 when the alleged assault occurred, did not go to the police.
