AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine’s lone congressional Republican is supporting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy as he faces a hardline effort to remove him, but two Democrats who may face a big decision are not revealing their hand for now.
The Senate is not involved in the fight between McCarthy and U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Florida, but U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, commented on it Monday morning in an interview with WVOM’s George Hale and Ric Tyler.
The appearance came after McCarthy, who is from California, chose to rely on Democrats to pass a 45-day government funding bill Saturday to avert a shutdown. McCarthy dropped conservatives’ demands for spending cuts, leaving out aid to Ukraine but meeting President Joe Biden’s ask to increase federal disaster assistance by $16 billion.
Collins, a centrist who plays a key role in spending talks as vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said she doesn’t think Gaetz will succeed in removing McCarthy and that she is “mighty glad” that she is not dealing with the issues in the lower chamber now.
“I support Speaker McCarthy, though I obviously stay out of the House leadership fight,” Collins said. “Matt Gaetz is not my idea of a good, responsible congressman, and he is creating a lot of bad chaos.”
Collins was the only member of Maine’s delegation to offer reaction to the tense situation in the House on Monday. Many eyes will be on U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a centrist from Maine’s 2nd District, who met with McCarthy last week on government funding but is also one of the vulnerable Democrats whom the House speaker is targeting in the 2024 election.
Gaetz did not share a specific timeline in a floor speech Monday but reiterated he plans to introduce a “motion to vacate” at some point this week. He would only need a simple majority to oust the speaker, benefiting from one of the rule changes McCarthy agreed to in January to assuage hardline Republicans after needing 15 rounds of voting to win the speakership.
Republicans control the House over Democrats by a 221-212 margin, with several McCarthy allies rallying to his defense against Gaetz’s criticism that he wrongly sought a spending deal with Democrats. However, Gaetz will also need members of the minority party to kick McCarthy out of the chair, meaning members closer to the center will be key in the vote.
Dozens of Democrats are reportedly considering voting “present” as a way of bailing McCarthy out after he struck the temporary funding deal, but Golden’s office did not respond to inquiries on the topic on Monday.
“It is going to be difficult for my Republican friends to keep calling President Biden ‘feeble’ while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy’s lunch money in every negotiation,” Gaetz said in a floor speech.
Maine’s other House Democrat, U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, who represents the reliably liberal 1st District, did not reveal Monday how she would vote on any motion to remove McCarthy as speaker. Some progressives have signaled they will not help him survive.
“As Americans witnessed, House Republicans’ constant infighting nearly brought the entire federal government to the brink, so the sooner they stop their civil war the sooner we can tackle the pressing issues our constituents elected us to fix,” Pingree said in a statement.
The motion to vacate has been used sparingly and with no success. Then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, resigned a few months after then-Rep. Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, filed such a motion against him in 2015 that did not come to a vote.
