SUSAN COLLINS

About Susan:

First elected in 1996, Senator Collins has earned a national reputation as an effective legislator who works across party lines to seek consensus on our nation’s most important issues. For the past six consecutive years, Senator Collins has ranked as the most bipartisan member of the U.S. Senate by the Lugar Center and Georgetown University.

Senator Collins ranks twelfth in Senate seniority and is the most senior Republican woman. She chairs the Senate Aging Committee and the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee. She also serves on the Intelligence Committee as well as the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. In June 2019, she cast her 7,000th consecutive roll call vote, becoming the third Senator in U.S. history to reach this milestone.

Senator Collins has had a long-standing interest in health care. In 1997, she founded the Senate Diabetes Caucus and has led the effort to more than triple federal funding for diabetes research. As the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Alzheimer’s Disease, she has worked to increase funding for Alzheimer’s research and to strengthen support for family caregivers. She is also a tireless advocate for education and has visited and read to children at hundreds of hundreds of schools across Maine.  A champion for America’s small businesses, Senator Collins is proud of the 100 percent rating she receives from the National Federation of Independent Business, our nation’s leading small business organization.

Senator Collins was born December 7, 1952, and raised in Caribou, Maine, where her family runs a fifth-generation lumber business, founded by her ancestors in 1844.  A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of St. Lawrence University, she is married to Thomas A. Daffron and resides in Bangor, Maine.