Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign wants to help fellow Democrats win races beyond the White House. And it will apparently target one of Warren’s colleagues in the Senate.
In a letter to supporters Tuesday, the Warren campaign announced it would invest resources in a number of competitive races — including Maine’s 2020 Senate race, where Republican Senator Susan Collins will be up for reelection. That means the campaign for Warren, who is a senator from Massachusetts, will be working to unseat one of the women currently serving with her in the Senate.
The news came in a memo outlining a broader strategy to focus on state and local races in addition to Warren’s White House bid. Campaign manager Roger Lau said the Warren campaign will hire state directors and organizers to help Democrats keep control of the House, take back the Senate and win key state legislature races.
“Remember: this election is about more than just beating Donald Trump — he’s just the worst symptom of a corrupt system,” Lau wrote. “If we want to make big, structural change, we need to make sure Democrats control the U.S. House and Senate and win important gubernatorial and state legislative races across the country.”
The memo says the Warren campaign will also focus on races in Illinois, California and Georgia.
A spokesman for the Collins campaign said in a statement to CBS News: “Add this to the already long list of out-of-state interests trying to tell Mainers how to vote.”
Collins has served in the Senate since 1997, and is currently the only Republican senator in a New England state. Though generally considered a moderate, Collins has been a decisive vote on some of the most contentious issues in the Trump presidency, such as her support for Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation. The Kavanaugh vote in particular set off strong opposition to Collins’ reelection, with a crowdfunding campaign raising more than $4 million for her “future opponent” before anyone even announced a run against her.
Collins faces several potential Democratic challengers, including Maine’s House Speaker Susan Gideon.
