Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly thinking of supplanting Sen. Susan Collins as the top Republican appropriator, which would be a provocative move with major implications for Maine.
McConnell, the 82-year-old Kentucky senator, is stepping down as Republican leader after the 2024 election but plans to serve his term ending in early 2027. If his party wins a majority this year, he is considering becoming the chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Axios reported Friday, citing sources close to party leaders.
Collins’ ascension on the panel that controls most government spending from defense to money for local fire stations was a key part of her pitch to voters during a contentious 2020 election against Democrat Sara Gideon. She began the top job in 2023 and quickly put Maine in the top spot for earmarks in the upper chamber despite being one of the smaller states.
McConnell was elected to the Senate in 1984, 12 years before Collins. He serves on the committee now but can invoke seniority and bump her if he wants. Collins “fully anticipates” that she will be in the top slot next year, Annie Clark, her spokesperson, said in a statement.
“Of course, it is Senator McConnell’s prerogative to make his own decisions given his seniority,” Clark said.
McConnell’s office declined to knock down the rumors in a statement that said the leader is focused on finishing this Congress as leader and securing a majority in November.
There is precedent for such a move. In 1988, the legendary West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, D-West Virginia, stepped down as majority leader to take the appropriations gavel. When he did, he jumped Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye in the hierarchy. When Byrd gave up the spot 30 years later at age 91, Inouye got it. He was 84 years old.
Collins is at a different point in her career at age 71. She filed paperwork after her victory nearly four years ago to run again in 2026. The Republican was once broadly popular, but she won in 2020 despite a narrower coalition that relied on a conservative base with just a small group of cross-party supporters.
She is also aligned with McConnell, whose campaign apparatus backed Collins vociferously during that partisan campaign sparked by Democratic opposition to her 2018 vote for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He defended her when former President Donald Trump blasted her later in the campaign as “not worth the work.”
“Day after day, year after year, our senior-most appropriator has demonstrated through her dedication, if you do your homework, you show up to vote, most everything else will fall in line,” McConnell gushed after Collins cast her 9,000th consecutive vote in April.
