PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Protests have coincided with Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins’s introduction of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general before the U.S. Judiciary Committee.
Demonstrators appeared outside several of Collins’s offices in Maine to protest her support of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. The protests happened around the same time Collins joined Alabama Republican Senator Richard Shelby in introducing Sessions.
Collins has said she considers Sessions to be qualified.
Collins says she’s known Sessions since the two were sworn into the U.S. Senate on the same day. She’s called him “a person of integrity, a principled leader, and a dedicated public servant.”
A protest leader, Diane Russell, a Portland Democrat, said Sessions “opposes marriage equality.” She also claimed that he made racist statements in the past.
