Maine Senator GOP Senator becomes a King maker?

Republicans who had privately fretted about her demise offered hearty congratulations, professing to have always known she would survive. Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia, reached out wanting to know how soon he could get a meeting with his fellow moderate to begin breaking through the impasse on a coronavirus relief package. And President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. made a brief call to congratulate a former Senate colleague and legislative ally whose vote he will badly need to push through his agenda and staff his administration.

The ring-kissing reflected the prime perch of Ms. Collins, who, after having survived the steepest re-election challenge of her career with a comfortable margin, has emerged more powerful than ever, poised for a fifth term in which her brand of bipartisan deal-making will be crucial.

The question is how Ms. Collins, who has long held sway as one of the few swing votes in a narrowly divided Senate, will use that power. She has drawn brutal criticism in the past from Democrats who say she courts compromise, only to ultimately side with the Republican Party line. Now with Republicans bent on blocking any policy accomplishments by a Biden administration, Ms. Collins will be under immense pressure from both sides for her pivotal vote.

“We will be able to encourage the president not to be drawn to the far left,” Ms. Collins said in an interview in Washington, calling her election and Mr. Biden’s an endorsement of divided government that vindicated her moderate approach.

“I think that’s a message the American people were sending, that they want more centrist politics pursued, and they don’t want to go to the far left, so that too provides me with an opportunity,” Ms. Collins said….

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