(USA TODAY) — Will Republican Susan Collins of Maine face pushback after the swing vote senator said she'll support Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court? Looks like she may already have a Senate challenger.
"Me," Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama's National Security Adviser and United Nations Ambassador, tweeted Friday in response to a former White House colleague asking who might challenge Collins in a Senate race.
Collins, who would face re-election in 2020, received criticism from many liberals soon after she announced on the Senate floor that she plans to back Kavanaugh during Saturday's final vote.
Jen Psaki, former Obama White House communications director, posed the question on social media after Collins' announcement: "who wants to run for Senate in Maine? there will be an army of supporters with you."
Rice was quick with her one-word reply.
The post picked up on Twitter, with thousands of shares and likes. Shortly after, the former diplomat tweeted again, clearing up that she wasn't making an announcement just yet, but left the door open for a run.
Rice said she was "deeply disappointed" with Collins' vote, adding "Maine and America deserve better."
Rice, speaking Sunday at the New Yorker Festival in New York, said she would think about running against Sen. Collins.
“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, according to an account by the Associated Press. “So it was on that basis that I decided I would think about it.”
Collins was dismissive of Rice as a potential challenger during an appearance Sunday on CNN, saying "as far as Susan Rice is concerned, her family has a home in Maine, but she doesn’t live in the state of Maine. Everybody knows that.”
Rice says her ties to the Pine Tree State “are long and deep.” She says her grandparents came to Maine in 1912 from Jamaica and that she has owned a home in Maine for "20-so years."
Collins was one of four wavering senators who were the deciding votes on Kavanaugh's nomination. Sens. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, both said Friday they'd back Kavanaugh.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, was the only Republican to vote against a procedural vote on Kavanaugh's nomination Friday, and she later said, "it just may be that in my view he’s not the right man for the court at this time."
Kavanaugh faces sexual assault accusations from multiple women, all of which he denies.
Rice was in Maine at the College of the Atlantic in August talking with COA Champlain Institute about diplomacy and speaking from her time as National Security Advisor and UN ambassador.