Tom Allen—Maine

On the surface, it would appear that Susan Collins' seat in the Senate is safe. She's more popular with her home-state voters than many other Republican Senators are these days, and her ability to work as part of a legislative tag-team effort with her well-connected colleague Olympia Snowe has served both of them in good stead. But since Maine's well-known and widely respected six-term Congessman Tom Allen entered the race against her, Collins' poll standings have trended steadily downwards while his have been steadily rising. If anyone can remove her recalcitrant roadblock from the Senate right of way, Tom Allen is the one who can do it.

Tom is a native of Portland and a lifelong Maine resident, a Rhodes scholar with a Harvard Law degree, a former staffer for Governor Ken Curtis and Senator Ed Muskie, the former Mayor of Portland, and he has received no less than 55% of the vote in any of his six elections to the US House of Representatives. (In 2006, he won re-election with over 60% of the vote without running a single TV ad. That's some serious vote-getting chops.)

Legislatively, Tom has always been very strong on environmental protection issues, pushing back against the Bush administration's attempts to roll back EPA and other earth-friendly regulations. He's been a strong advocate of rolling back the Bush tax cuts and a pay-as-you-go offset system to keep government spending in line with government income. Health care, clean energy, campaign finance reform, and small business support have been signature issues of his during his House career. In other words, he firmly believes that what's good for people and good for the planet is what's good for the country, too.

Along those lines, Tom is also quite active outside of the halls of Congress advising and serving on the boards of organizations like AmericaSpeaks, which uses innovative tools to engage citizens in their government and vice versa; the Roosevelt Institution, the nation's first progressive think tank for students; and the Population Institute, where he serves alongside such diverse luminaries as Joan Baez, John Kenneth Galbraith, and a certain rather tall Senator from Massachusetts.

Tom Allen has never been afraid to stand up for what's right and stand against what's wrong. Unlike Collins, who has never met a right-wing saber she wasn't ready to help rattle, he's been a vocal and vigorous opponent of the Bush administration's disastrous war in Iraq right from the start.

Unlike Collins, who campaigned for Rick Santorum and cast the deciding vote that restored Trent Lott to power, he votes for what he believes in rather than who he's cut back room deals with. Unlike Collins, who cherry-picks her connections and avoids actually listening to her constituents except in carefully-scripted Potemkin appearances, he's a staunch supporter of the things that matter most to all citizens of Maine -- not just to some of them.

Susan Collins is a bad Republican who's got to go. And Tom Allen is a really good Democrat who's just the guy to get her gone for good this year.

Tom Allen for Senate campaign site

Congressman Tom Allen official site

Tom Allen GovTrack legislative page

Tom Allen Congresspedia entry