Susan Collins

Susan Margaret Collins (born December 7, 1952) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator for Maine since 1997. A member of the Republican Party, she is Maine's longest-serving member of Congress and the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate. Collins has chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee since 2025. Born in Caribou, Maine, Collins is a graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Beginning her career as a staff assistant for Senator William Cohen in 1975, she became staff director of the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs in 1981. Governor John R. McKernan Jr. then appointed her commissioner of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation in 1987. In 1992 President George H. W. Bush appointed her director of the Small Business Administration's regional office in Boston. Collins became a deputy state treasurer in the office of the treasurer and receiver-general of Massachusetts in 1993. After moving back to Maine in 1994, she became the Republican nominee for governor of Maine in the 1994 general election. She was the first female major-party nominee for the post, finishing third in a four-way race with 23% of the vote. After her bid, she became the founding director of the Center for Family Business at Husson University in Bangor, Maine. Collins was first elected to the Senate in 1996 and has been reelected every six years since. She chaired the Senate Special Committee on Aging from 2015 to 2021 and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs from 2003 to 2007. Collins is the dean of Maine's congressional delegation and was the only New England Republican in the 116th through 119th Congresses. She is one of only two Republicans to represent a Northeastern state in the Senate and since...