Collins says GOP should move away from being about ‘just one person’

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) says that the Republican Party needs to get away from being about “just one person.”

Collins made the remark during a Tuesday interview with WMTW News 8 in Maine, as she was discussing her vote to convict former President Trump for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

“The Republican Party needs to go back to focusing on what we stand for, whether it’s opportunity, a strong national defense, smaller government, lower taxes, personal responsibility,” she said.

“I think we need to get away from the idea that the Republican Party is just one person and adherence to just one leader. Instead it’s principles, it’s fundamentals that bring us together,” the centrist Republican added.

The Senate voted 57-43 on Saturday to convict Trump of inciting the riot, but needed a two-thirds majority to be successful. Collins was one of seven GOP senators who joined every Democrat in voting to convict Trump.

The party has been grappling over what influence and role Trump, who has floated a 2024 bid, should have moving forward.

On the one hand, state Republican parties are pushing to punish those who sought to convict Trump. GOP Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (La.) have already been censured over their vote, while Collins is facing a possible one of her own.

However, some Senate Republicans, even those who voted to acquit, are ready to move forward from the Trump era.

Collins told WMTW that the GOP needs to “grow our party.”

“We need to grow our party. I am the last remaining Republican federal officeholder in all of New England. When I was first elected, there used to be 19 of us,” she said.