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1996 United States Senate election in Maine

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1996 United States Senate election in Maine
← 1990
November 5, 1996
2002 →
 
Nominee Susan Collins Joseph E. Brennan
Party Republican Democratic
Popular vote 298,422 266,226
Percentage 49.18% 43.88%
Collins:      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%      80–90%      >90%
Brennan:      40–50%      50–60%      60–70%      70–80%
Tie:      40–50%
U.S. senator before election

William Cohen
Republican

 Elected U.S. Senator

Susan Collins
Republican

The 1996 United States Senate election in Maine was held November 5, 1996. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator William Cohen was tapped by the Clinton administration to serve as Secretary of Defense. To replace him, U.S. Representative Joseph E. Brennan won the Democratic primary while political consultant Susan Collins won the Republican primary. A competitive general election ensued, but Collins ultimately won out over Brennan, keeping the seat in the Republican column. With Collins' election to the Senate in 1996, Maine became the third state after California and Kansas to have two sitting female senators, and the first to have two elected female Republican senators.

Brennan and Collins both ran in the 1994 gubernatorial election, and each won their respective party's nomination, but lost the general election to independent Angus King, who would be elected in Maine's other Senate seat in 2012 and become a Senator in 2013, serving alongside Collins.

Following his departure from the Senate, Cohen was appointed United States Secretary of Defense by President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 2001.

This was the last U.S. Senate election in Maine to see a Democrat carry any Maine county until 2020, when Collins lost Cumberland and Knox counties to Sara Gideon; Collins was re-elected in 16-county landslides in 2002, 2008, and 2014, while Maine's other seat saw similar 16-county landslides for Republican Olympia Snowe in 2000 and 2006 and for Independent Angus King in 2012.

Democratic primary

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Candidates

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Results

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Democratic primary results[1]
Party Candidate Votes %
Democratic Joseph E. Brennan 48,335 56.68%
Democratic Sean Faircloth 21,204 24.87%
Democratic Richard A. Spencer 10,236 12.00%
Democratic Jean Hay Bright 4,524 5.31%
Democratic Jerald Leonard 939 1.10%
Democratic Write-ins 35 0.04%
Total votes 85,273 100.00%

Republican primary

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Shortly before the primary, allegations emerged in The Boston Globe, Portland Press Herald, and Bangor Daily News that state senator W. John Hathaway had sex with his twelve-year-old babysitter on multiple occasions in 1990.[2] Hathaway vehemently denied the allegations, and blamed opponent Robert A.G. Monks for planting the story,[3] though the mother of the girl corroborated it.[2] Monks admitted to sending a private investigator to Hathaway's former residence of Huntsville, Alabama to look into the story. Ultimately, both stories proved to benefit Susan Collins, who won over 55% of the primary vote.[4]

Candidates

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Results

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Republican primary results[5]
Party Candidate Votes %
Republican Susan Collins 53,339 55.50%
Republican W. John Hathaway 29,792 31.00%
Republican Robert A. G. Monks 12,943 13.47%
Republican Write-ins 33 0.03%
Total votes 96,107 100.00%

General election

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Results

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United States Senate election in Maine, 1996[6]
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Republican Susan Collins 298,422 49.18% −12.16%
Democratic Joseph E. Brennan 266,226 43.88% +5.24%
Independent John Rensenbrink 23,441 3.86% N/A
Constitution William P. Clarke 18,618 3.07% N/A
Write-in 70 0.01% N/A
Majority 32,196 5.31% −17.39%
Turnout 606,777
Republican hold

Results by county

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County Susan Collins
Republican		 Joseph Brennan
Democratic		 All others Margin Total votes cast
# % # % # % # %
Androscoggin 20,881 44.0% 22,888 48.3% 3,654 7.7% -2,007 -4.3% 47,423
Aroostook 19,269 55.4% 13,462 38.7% 2,072 5.9% 5,807 16.7% 34,803
Cumberland 59,647 46.0% 60,979 47.0% 9,163 7.0% -1,332 -1.0% 129,789
Franklin 7,000 47.9% 6,612 45.3% 1,000 6.8% 388 2.6% 14,612
Hancock 14,602 55.4% 9,504 36.0% 2,270 8.6% 5,098 19.4% 26,376
Kennebec 25,375 45.3% 26,849 47.9% 3,843 6.8% -1,474 -2.6% 56,067
Knox 9,516 51.0% 7,416 39.8% 1,724 9.3% 2,100 11.2% 18,656
Lincoln 9,859 53.9% 6,986 38.2% 1,446 7.9% 2,873 15.7% 18,291
Oxford 12,482 47.7% 11,929 45.6% 1,747 6.7% 553 2.1% 26,158
Penobscot 38,865 55.1% 27,814 39.4% 3,831 5.4% 11,051 15.7% 70,510
Piscataquis 5,057 56.3% 3,429 38.2% 494 5.5% 1,628 18.1% 8,980
Sagadahoc 8,119 48.5% 6,989 41.7% 1,648 9.8% 1,130 6.8% 16,756
Somerset 10,742 46.8% 10,730 46.7% 1,501 6.6% 12 0.1% 22,973
Waldo 9,235 53.6% 6,415 37.2% 1,577 9.1% 2,820 16.4% 17,227
Washington 8,233 53.8% 5,981 39.1% 1,077 7.0% 2,252 14.7% 15,291
York 39,822 47.9% 38,231 46.0% 5,079 6.1% 1,591 1.9% 83,132
Totals298,42249.2%266,22643.9%42,1296.9%32,1965.3%606,777

Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic

See also

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References

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  1. ↑ "Maine Primary Election Results - June 11, 1996 - U.S. Senator - Democrat - Summary by County". Archived from the original on October 18, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
  2. 1 2 "Maine Senate candidate fights sex charge - UPI Archives". UPI. Retrieved April 1, 2026.
  3. ↑ Rimer, Sara (June 6, 1996). "POLITICS: THE SENATE;Maine Candidate Again Faces 1990 Child-Sex Accusation". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved April 1, 2026.
  4. ↑ Weinsten, Joshua L. "Monks' cultivated reputation is gone with the election". The Portland Press Herald. Allegations that W. John Hathaway sexually abused an adolescent girl harmed one of his rivals for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate more than they hurt Hathaway. After spending $1.8 million of his own money, Robert A.G. Monks placed third in a three-person race for the nomination Tuesday. Hathaway, a one-term state senator tainted by accusations that he had sex with his children's babysitter several years ago, fared better, fin ishing second behind the winner, Susan Collins. The final, desperate week of the campaign was so bleak for Monks that he conceded defeat at 8:40 p.m. only 40 minutes after voters left the polls. On Monday, the day he ran a full-page advertisement in the Portland Press Herald, his campaign manager acknowledged Monks would likely lose. Monks' carefully cultivated reputation as a patrician candidate cut from the same cloth as Margaret Chase Smith and Edmund Muskie both of whom he ran against in the 1970s is gone. Now he is seen as having participated in the dirtiest campaign in modern Maine history. "It's a campaign and week unlike anything I've ever seen in Maine," said Sandy Maisel, a professor of political science at Colby College. "It was the lowest level that Maine politics have sunk to." Christian Potholm, a political sci-ence professor at Bowdoin College, said Monks "just fell down like a stone." The allegations about Hathaway broke last Wednesday in newspaper stories in the Portland Press Herald and The Boston Globe. Hathaway immediately took the offensive, accusing Monks of tipping the newspapers to the information that law enforcement officials in Alabama had investigated Hathaway for alleged sexual abuse of his chil dren's babysitter. Hathaway, who spent $600,000 of his own money on the campaign, effectively shifted the focus of the debate from his alleged sexual mis-conduct to what he described as Monks' role in making the allega tions public. During a press conference on Wednesday, an agitated, angry Monks railed about Hathaway's spin. But he acknowledged sending a pri-vate detective to Alabama, where the former state attorney general once investigated Hathaway's relationship with his children's babysitter. In his Tuesday night concession speech, Monks expressed wonder at the turn of events. Surrounded by the heaviest of Republican heavy hitters state Senate President Jeff Butland and House Republican Leader Walt Whitcomb, among others he said that "time and distance will offer me some vindication." He said that as recently as a week ago, he was in "a virtual dead heat" with Susan Collins, who won the nomination, slightly ahead. He fretted that Hathaway, who ran scathing television advertisements accusing Monks of "25 years of lies" was the real dirty trickster of the campaign. "People have lost trust in our polit- ical system today because they see their political leaders acting more and more like John Hathaway does," he said. But Monks himself had engaged in some negative campaigning. Among other things, he ran advertisements attacking Collins as a career bureaucrat. Many Mainers believed that by sending a private investigator to Alabama, Monks was playing dirty politics, Potholm said. "Whatever is true or not true about John Hathaway, people know that Bob Monks... hired a private investigator. It is the private investi-gator part that is souring Republican voters."
  5. ↑ "Maine Primary Election Results - June 11, 1996 - U.S. Senator - Republican - Summary by County". Archived from the original on November 15, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
  6. ↑ "Statistics of the Presidential and Congressional Election of November 5, 1996" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on May 25, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2013.
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