Susan Collins spurns Trump and will cast protest vote for Haley

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) plans to cast a write-in vote for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president instead of voting for the party’s presumptive nominee, former President Donald Trump.

The Maine senator said she plans to still support Haley in November, speaking to WGME, the local CBS affiliate in Portland, Maine.

“I will not be voting for either candidate. I’m going to write in Nikki Haley’s name,” Collins said during the interview. “She’s my favorite candidate and I think she would do a great job. She’s my choice and that’s how I’m going to express it.”

“Ultimately, I have to do what is right. I publicly endorsed Nikki Haley, and I very much wanted her to win,” she added.

Collins and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) announced they were endorsing Haley in early March. However, Haley exited the race shortly after the endorsement.

Collins’s comments reflect her contentious relationship with the former president. She voted to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting an insurrection in 2021.

“I cannot support former President Trump. I voted to convict him on the second impeachment charges, so I don’t think it should come as a surprise that I cannot support him,” she said in March after Haley had already suspended her campaign.

Biden won Maine with 53% of the vote in 2020, but Collins also won reelection. The senator is the only incumbent to win reelection in a state where her party’s nominee lost in both 2016 and 2020.

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Collins also said she would not be attending the Republican National Convention, citing a busy schedule.

“I didn’t go to the last Republican convention either; it’s been a number of years,” she said, sidestepping a question about whether her absence has to do with her refusal to endorse Trump’s presidential bid. “I always go to my state convention.”