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.

"It's a big secret to everyone who looks at voting records, too," Collins retorts. She voted with the GOP 50% of the time in 2007, according to the non-partisan Congressional Quarterly, and with Bush 61% of the time.

She points to Allen's 98% record of supporting Democratic Party positions. (He voted with Bush 4% of the time last year, according to Congressional Quarterly.) "The person who tows the party line is clearly Tom, not me," Collins says. "I am very much in the mainstream of New England moderate Republicans."

Voters "don't believe that Susan Collins is a lapdog for Bush," says Christian Potholm, a political scientist and pollster at Bowdoin College in Brunswick. "Unless Bush were to bomb Portland between now and the election, I don't think that argument could get any traction."

Collins stresses her ability to work across party lines: sponsoring a bill implementing the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 Commission with Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, and port-security legislation with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

If that sounds like Obama's message about working together, "it is," says Steve Abbott, her campaign manager. "People more than anything else are sick of the hyperpartisanship."

Collins, like many Republicans in challenging races, skipped the party's convention last month in St. Paul.

Allen also faces the challenge of making himself known in Maine's huge 2nd Congressional District — the one he doesn't represent.

At nearly 30,000 square miles, it's the largest district east of the Mississippi. "You have to spend years going around there to get well-known," Potholm says. Allen also has to overcome the traditional split that leads residents of northern Maine to view anyone from the Portland area with a skeptical eye.

Neither candidate has run negative ads, although outside groups have done so. "The Collins phenomenon is parallel to the Palin phenomenon," says Sandy Maisel, a political scientist from Colby College in Waterville, referring to Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. "It is very hard to attack someone who is a nice person — and she is viewed as a nice person in the state."

He points out it's hard to get voters to fire an incumbent without giving them a good reason why. "It is clearly a philosophical decision … but one that may cost (Allen) the election," Maisel says.

A test of civility may come soon: On Sunday, Collins and Allen face off in the first of a dozen scheduled debates.

Democrats hope to win Collins' seat to move them closer to a 60-vote majority in the Senate, which would prevent Republicans from blocking legislation with a filibuster. Democrats have a 51-49 voting edge.

"What they failed to understand is that Collins is very well-defined with voters," says Jennifer Duffy of the non-partisan Cook Political Report, a political newsletter in Washington. "They see her as hardworking, putting the state's interests first."

"It's true that in some states voters are inclined to believe that any Republican is a Bush ally," Duffy says. "Not so much here."