Frenetic Days for Sen. Susan Collins are Just a Way of Life
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 – Sen. Susan Collins typically wakes up at about 6:45 a.m., is in the office by 8:30, and often does not leave until after eight at night. She takes a thick briefing book home with her and works for another two hours before plunking down to bed at about midnight.
“There are times when I look at the size of the briefing book and I groan because I know it’s going to be a late night,” she says.
“The volume of work, particularly now that I’m chair of a major committee, is huge and it requires constant work to keep up,” she says. “There’s generally no time in the day to do it.”
What is a typical day on Capitol Hill for Maine’s junior senator? Collins agreed to be followed by a reporter on Wednesday, Nov. 16. Collins knows the halls of Congress better than her staffers do. Her frenetic daily schedule is reflected in the swift pace at which she walks. And she thrives on her demanding schedule.
9:50 a.m.
Sen. Collins has already attended a breakfast on the House side, cleaned out her briefing book, and prepared for today’s hearing of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which she chairs.
After the hearing, there are back-to-back constituent meetings and then floor votes. Tonight she will attend a dinner about U.S. competitiveness that will go until nine. Collins, who has gone to a dinner every night this week, was hoping to skip the one, but, she says, after Majority Leader Bill Frist sent her a personal email encouraging her to go there really was no other choice.
Collins has homes in both Bangor and Washington. In Washington she lives a 10-minute walk from the Capitol in a townhouse with one room per floor and the kitchen in the basement. Her friends call it “the doll’s house,” she says, because it is so small. On weekends she commutes ? sometimes it takes up to five hours ? to her home in Bangor, always traveling back on Sunday rather than Monday to make sure not to miss a vote if a flight is delayed.
Soon it is time to leave for the hearing and she hustles down the halls of the Dirksen Senate office building.
Collins is part of a walking club with Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Thursday mornings at 7 a.m. they walk from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and back. Trying to get into shape, Collins says, has led her to join a women’s-only gym in the Senate, where she walks on the treadmill and lifts weights.
Just prior to the hearing, the seventh in a series investigating the government’s poor planning and response to the disaster, Collins greets the witnesses ? executives from the private sector ? in the small room behind the hearing area. They will testify today about how their companies prepared and responded to Hurricane Katrina more effectively than the government.
Collins, wearing a deep purple suit with black velvet trim around the collar, a thick silver chain around her neck and low-heeled black pumps, soon has the male executives laughing.
“I even had someone at the Department of Homeland Security concede that Wal-Mart saved more lives than FEMA and the Red Cross combined,” Collins says after the two-hour hearing has concluded, her heels clip-clopping hurriedly back to her office.
Noon
“Oooooh.”
Sen. Collins is genuinely surprised when she is greeted upon her return to her office by a large bouquet of colorful flowers. “Now, I have no idea where these gorgeous flowers came from.”
Her excitement drops a barely-noticeable notch after silently reading the card, as if for a moment she might have been hoping for something more interesting.
A group of former Merchant Marines known as the Just Compensation Committee was obviously pleased with how Collins co-sponsored a bill to have Merchant Marines who were deployed during World War II receive veterans benefits.
Collins needs to prepare for a 12:30 luncheon with executives from Maine-based New Balance Athletic Shoe Inc., which is the last remaining athletic shoe maker in United States. But she always seems to have a few minutes to chat.
Collins has two cars: a green 1998 Honda Accord that she drives while in D.C. and a white 1997 Subaru Outback that she uses in Maine. “I tend to drive my cars until they die,” she says. “Some of my friends would say I’m overly frugal.”
On one side of her office is what Collins calls her “Heroes Wall,” which includes a picture of moderate Sen. John Chafee (R-R.I.) who took Collins under his wing, she says, and also a signed picture of Margaret Chase Smith, Collins’ role model, who served in the Senate from Maine from 1949 to 1973.
Collins now really needs to do some work.
12:25
Sen. Collins, her chief of staff and press secretary head out to her luncheon in the Capitol. Her black pumps have been replaced by New Balance running shoes that were made at the factory in Norridgewock.
The underground subway that connects the Senate office buildings to the Capitol looks like the people-mover at Epcot Center in Disney World. As the subway twists and turns, Sen. Collins talks about her favorite place to eat, the River Drivers Restaurant in Millinocket. She loves the lobster-stuffed haddock and the lollipop lamb chops.
It turns out that the lunch started at noon, not 12:30. Sometimes I need a clone, she says.
We are rushing around the back halls of the Capitol, the kind of places only someone like Sen. Collins, who worked for former Sen. William Cohen for 12 years, would know about.
“Do we know where we’re going?” she asks her staff as she leads the pack to the luncheon room.
“No,” is the answer.
“Good job you guys,” she tells her staff. “I’m the one who knows where we’re going.”
Collins greets the 20 or so New Balance executives, who are there to discuss trade issues. The lunch is closed so the trailing reporter is ushered outside the room with the press secretary Kevin Kelley, a former New England Cable News correspondent who reported from Portland prior to arriving in Washington just this past summer.
She’s a perfectionist, Kelley says about Collins. “She is never unprepared.”
1 p.m.
Sen. Collins needs to do a satellite interview from the Senate recording studios located in the basement of the Capitol at 1:40. She does not have time to return to her office in Dirksen so she heads to her “hideaway” instead. A hideaway is an office just off the Capitol dome that is awarded to senators based on their seniority. Only about 60 senators have them.
We climb the winding, spiral stairway up to the office. Inside the office the ceiling is sloped. There is a picture on the wall? taken in 1996 just after Collins had won the Republican Senate primary ? of Collins with the first President Bush and Mrs. Bush at their compound in Kennebunkport. “It was quite thrilling,” she says of having lunch with the former president.
1:35
Sen. Collins is on her way to the basement of the Capitol for the interview with WAGM, a Presque Isle television station, about the future of the weather forecast station there.
1:45
The senator emerges from the interview room once again in her black pumps as the deputy press secretary ferries the New Balance running shoes back to her office in a blue gift bag.
As she walks back to her office, Collins talks about being a woman in the Senate.
Initially a female senator has to prove that she belongs here, Collins says: “After you jump over that initial barrier I think your colleagues accept you. By and large I just don’t think about it.”
Her social life, she says, consists of a lot of friends. She is also quite close to her five siblings and her parents who live in Caribou where she grew up.
“I have the flexibility to, with my schedule, work very hard that I would not have if I had children,” she says later.
2:05
Once back at her office in Dirksen, the senator returns phone calls.
2:35
Collins heads back to the Capitol for the second time that day for three roll call votes. Constituents who have come to meet with her will be brought over to the Senate reception area just outside of the Senate floor in the Capitol.
“You can never be sure what your schedule is going to be like,” Collins says. The votes were not scheduled until about 1 p.m., she explains.
Waiting for the subway once again, she bumps into Sen. Herb Kohl, the Wisconsin Democrat who also owns the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team.
“She’s a great senator,” Kohl says. “She’s respected by people on both sides of the aisle equally well. She’s not only smart but she’s got a nice common sense about her, an everyday quality that people relate to.”
“She’s single, I’m single,” he adds.
3:10
Sen. Collins meets the members of the Maine chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons.
“I think she’s done a wonderful job for the people of the state of Maine and seniors in particular,” says Les LeFond, state president of the association.
3:45
Next, Collins meets with Phoenix Research, a newly established Maine company that has developed a research ship specializing in mapping and coastal and marine geology. The ship will be ready for charter in 2006. Collins tells Phoenix that when they are ready she will draft an introductory letter to government agencies and some universities in Maine that might be interested in contracting out the vessel for research purposes.
4:15
The press secretary gets word on his Blackberry (which does not work in all parts of the Capitol) that there may be more votes; some may go as late as 11 p.m.
Meanwhile Collins sits outside the floor of the Senate chatting with Newsweek reporter Howard Fineman.
4:25
Back to Collins’ office. How does she relax?
She loves to cook – blueberry muffins and cakes, chicken with Mediterranean salsa and “a really good” apple tart ? and she loves to watch the food network on Saturday mornings.
Does she ever get awed by the famous members of the Senate?
“I feel awed when I see the Capitol building lit up at night. I don’t feel in awe of the people that I work with,” she says. “I feel like they’re my colleagues.”
Upon returning to her office, Collins says that she will return a call to a reporter, meet with her legislative director about a tax bill and prepare for a hearing she will chair tomorrow. By the time she is through it will be time for the dinner she is to attend at 6:30.
As is fairly typical, she will get home at about nine, and as always, go through her briefing book for two hours before bed.
But wait: Change in plans.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) has spoken about the need for an independent commission to investigate the response to Hurricane Katrina. The GOP leadership has asked Collins to go to the floor and talk about her committee’s findings on the matter.
“I may do it,” she says, “it depends on the time on the floor.”
Is it always this busy?
“Honestly, it’s usually even busier.”
Senator Collins’ Favorites
Favorite book : “Empire Falls” by Richard Rousseau. “I loved that book. He combined a sense of Maine with both humor and tragedy all in one book.”
Book she is reading now: Collins tends to have a book going in both Maine and Washington. In Washington she is reading “The World is Flat,” by Tom Friedman. In Maine she is reading “Wicked,” by Gregory Maguire.
Favorite movies: “Casablanca” and “The Wizard of Oz.”
Favorite political figure: Margaret Chase Smith, William Cohen (for whom she worked for 12 years) and John Chafee of Rhode Island.
Favorite fast food: “I’m not a big fast-food person” but if she had to pick she would say Quiznos chicken sub on a whole wheat bun with zesty grill sauce.
Favorite restaurant: The River Drivers Restaurant in Millinocket.
Favorite drink: Iced tea with lemon.
Favorite vacation spot: Her camp at Lake Cold Stream Pond in West Enfield.
Favorite things to do to relax: Kayaking, cooking (she loves watching the food network), and reading.
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