Susan Margaret Collins is a U.S. Senator from Maine, serving since January 3, 1997, and Maine's longest-serving member of Congress and longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate. Born in Caribou, Maine, into a sixth-generation lumber business family founded in 1844, she is one of six children of Donald Collins (1925–2018), a decorated World War II veteran, mayor of Caribou, and Maine legislator, and Patricia McGuigan Collins, a former mayor of Caribou. Her uncle, Samuel W. Collins Jr., served on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and in the Maine Senate. Collins attended Caribou High School, where she was student council president and participated in the U.S. Senate Youth Program (1971), and earned a Bachelor of Arts in government, magna cum laude, from St. Lawrence University in 1975, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Her pre-Senate career included roles as staff assistant to U.S. Senator William Cohen (1975–1987), staff director for the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs (1981–1987), commissioner of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation (1987–1992), New England regional director for the U.S. Small Business Administration (1992), deputy state treasurer of Massachusetts (1993–1994), Republican nominee for Governor of Maine (1994, finished third), and founding director of the Center for Family Business at Husson University (1994–1996). Reelected in 2002, 2008, 2014, and 2020, she has held key committee positions, including chair of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (2003–2007), chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging (2015–2021), and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee (2025–present). Known as a moderate Republican, she has been pivotal in close votes, including voting against the ACA repeal (2017), against Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation (2020), to convict Trump in his second impeachment (2021), and against Pete Hegseth's confirmation. Of Irish-American heritage and Catholic faith (attends Mass; honored with the Claddagh Award by the Maine Irish Heritage Center in 2017), she married lobbyist Thomas Daffron on August 11, 2012, at Gray Memorial United Methodist Church in Caribou; they have no children. Her Senate salary is approximately $174,000 annually, with an estimated net worth of $2.3M–$6M (2024). She has faced controversies, including a 2026 STock Act violation accusation for failing to disclose her husband's $15,000–$50,000 Big Pharma investment, a 2020 ethics complaint for alleged misuse of her Senate office for campaign fundraising, and 2019 accusations of accepting illegal staff donations to her campaign. Contact: Washington, D.C. office at 413 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DC 20510 (+1-202-224-2523); Portland office at 200 Middle Street, Suite 801, Portland, ME 04101 (+1-207-618-5560); Bangor office (+1-207-945-0417).