AUGUSTA, Maine — Nearly a decade ago, Angus King joked that he and Susan Collins were the only two U.S. senators who had joint letterhead as he endorsed the Republican senator’s campaign for a fourth term.
By Friday, a lot had changed. Former Maine Republican Party Chair Demi Kouzounas told conservative radio host Ray Richardson that she decided to run against King in 2024 after getting a call from Collins on Monday, setting up a longshot attempt to oust a former two-term governor who has never lost an election.
The announcement was perhaps more notable for laying bare a frayed relationship between Maine’s two senators. It is far from the first rivalry to emerge between members of the state’s congressional delegation, who have generally stood by an informal pledge to not actively campaign against each other for reasons of collegiality.
It is still officially being observed. Collins will make no formal endorsement in the 2024 race, her spokesperson said. But Kouzounas said she was not running until the overtures, and Richardson said he talked to Collins and staff about it. The day’s events led King’s office to nod to the delegation’s usual practice in a statement reacting to Kouzounas’ run.
“While [King] is disappointed that [Collins] appears to have actively recruited a Republican candidate to run against him, … he certainly intends to continue to work with [her] on behalf of Maine, just as he always has in the past,” spokesperson Matthew Felling said.
Kouzounas, who ran the state party during Collins’ hotly contested 2020 campaign against Democrat Sara Gideon, is a friend of the senator, whose office said Collins often talks with candidates who are interested in running for higher office.
“She believes that it is important for the Republicans to have a quality candidate in the U.S. Senate race,” spokesperson Annie Clark said.
King and Collins were rivals toward the beginning of their political career. In 1994, he ran for governor as an independent after a long history as a Democrat. But former Gov. Joseph Brennan locked down that party’s nomination. Collins emerged from a fractured eight-way Republican primary damaged over her more moderate views on social issues.
The independent was able to split the parties and win narrowly. King has been bulletproof in elections since then, easily winning reelection in 1998 and going on to win his two Senate terms in 2012 and 2018. He was at 60 percent approval in a national poll last year, registering as the nation’s fifth-most popular senator. Collins was at 44 percent.
King endorsed Collins during the 2014 race. Things were far different in 2020, when the national parties locked horns in a record-smashing $200 million race for Collins’ seat. King officially stayed out of a race that had large implications for then-Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York. Yet King’s wife, Mary Herman, appeared in a Gideon ad.
The two Democrats in Maine’s congressional delegation registered support for Gideon in different ways. Centrist U.S. Rep. Jared Golden 2nd District gave her a donation, while U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of the liberal 1st District endorsed her. Pingree won that seat in 2008, four years after running unsuccessfully against Collins.
There are lots of examples of historic rivalries in Maine’s delegation. Collins and fellow centrist Republican U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe had one that spilled into the style pages of The Washington Post, noting their Capitol Hill nickname of “The Sisters” in a nod to “their public synchronicity and their private conflict.” Members have run against each other in the past.
Former U.S. Sen. William S. Cohen, a Republican from Bangor, was asked to campaign for his party’s 2nd District candidate in 1994. The Democrat in the race was John Baldacci, whose Bangor family was close with the Cohens. Cohen did a few of the things he was asked to do, but Baldacci remembered Friday that he could have done more.
That has been the general attitude in the Maine delegation, said Baldacci, who won the seat and later became governor. He added that it would be difficult to work on Maine’s priorities in Washington while campaigning against colleagues. But he noted competition between members and their staff, also nodding to the effect of political slights both real and perceived.
“We tend to have memories like elephants,” Baldacci said.