In Maine, Collins an elusive target for Democrats

— -- LEWISTON, Maine — Jimmy Simones greets a customer at his family's restaurant with this: "Crude prices are down. We're happy."

The price of oil, in a state where 80% of homes use it for heat, has supplanted politics as the lunchtime topic at Simones' Hot Dogs, a 100-year-old fixture here in the downtown of Maine's second-largest city.

It can take a Maine homeowner 1,000 gallons of heating oil to get through the winter and, at nearly $4 a gallon, residents here are dreading cold weather.

"There are some people that are going to freeze this winter because they have no money," says Betty Spugnardi, lunching at Simones' with her husband John.

Those high prices, a struggling economy and anger at President Bush have Democrats believing they could pick off Susan Collins, one of Maine's Republican senators. After all, Maine has voted Democratic in presidential elections going back to 1988. The governor and both House members are also Democrats.

Collins is running for a third term even though she had promised to serve only two. She's a target of the national Democratic Party, which has sent money and staff to help Rep. Tom Allen, a 12-year Democratic House veteran.

She is a Republican in a state where independents and Democrats outnumber GOP voters. In the presidential race, Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain by 14 points in the latest state opinion poll.

So why isn't she in trouble? The same poll shows Collins sailing ahead by 19 points.

Allen can't seem to convince upstate voters that Collins is the closet conservative he says she is.

Collins voted to give Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq in 2002 and supported his tax cuts. She voted to confirm Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts. She opposes a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq, saying it would "embolden our enemies."

"People in Maine don't have a clue as to how she actually votes," Allen says.

Many Maine voters, like their New Hampshire neighbors, are conservative when it comes to taxes but less so about social issues. Allen has tried hard to undo Collins' moderate image, portraying her as a Bush supporter.