Susan Collins says she intends to run for reelection in 2020

GOP Sen. Susan CollinsSusan Margaret CollinsGOP Sen. Collins shows support for parts of House-passed funding package Senators warm to immigration deal as shutdown solution Cracks beginning to show in GOP shutdown resolve MORE (Maine) says she intends to run for reelection in 2020, though she hasn't announced a final decision.

"That is my intention," Collins told Time in article published Thursday when asked about running for a fifth term in the Senate.

If she runs she is expected to be a top Democratic target as the party tries to chart a path back to the Senate majority.
 
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Progressives, and even some of her own supporters, fumed over her decision to support Supreme Court Justice Brett KavanaughBrett Michael KavanaughSupreme Court to take up gerrymandering cases The system of checks and balances is finally waking from its two-year slumber Senate GOP names first female members to Judiciary panel MORE last year, when she provided him with the 50th vote needed to be confirmed.
 
Collins gave a roughly 45 minute speech before casting her vote explaining why she was supporting him despite sexual assault allegations. Kavanaugh has denied the accusations against him.

"I believe that she is a survivor of a sexual assault and that this trauma has upended her life," Collins said on the Senate floor, referring to Kavanaugh's first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

But Collins said other individuals allegedly at the party, where Ford says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s, could not corroborate Ford's account. And, she warned, that if senators rejected Kavanaugh over the accusations it would be "hugely damaging to this confirmation process."

A fundraising effort by Maine People's Alliance and Mainers for Accountable Leadership briefly crashed the Crowdpac website and has raised more than $3.7 million for a potential Democratic opponent in 2020.

Collins, who was first elected to the Senate in 1996, won her 2008 reelection bid by more than 22 percentage points. That margin widened to 37 points in 2014.