Susan Collins Biography, Net Worth, Husband And Other Interesting Facts

Quick Facts

When you talk about the most powerful women in the United States Senate you won’t fail to mention the name, Susan Collins. She currently serves as the United States Senator for Maine. She is a Republican and is the Chair of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, the dean of Maine’s congressional delegation and was formerly Chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Also, she has served in other subcommittees like the subcommittee on Defence,  subcommittee on energy and water development, subcommittee on agriculture amongst many others. In addition, she has an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Bates College given to her as a result of her bipartisan work in the Senate.

Susan Collins Biography

Susan Collins was born Susan Margaret Collins on December 7, 1952, in Caribou, Maine as one of six children. Her father was a well-decorated World War II veteran who also served in both the House of Representatives as well as the Senate while her mother served as mayor of Caribou. Her family is of English and Irish descent and she has an uncle who sat on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court and also served in the Maine Senate. As a  teenager, Susan attended Caribou High School and became president of the student council, by her senior year of high school, she was already a participant in the U.S. Senate Youth Program.

She also visited Washington, D.C. for the first time and then met with Maine’s first female United States Senator, Margaret Chase Smith who was also a Republican. They bonded and Margaret became Susan’s mentor and role model. After graduation from Caribou High, she began studying at the St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York where she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national academic honor society. In the course of time, Susan graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in government in 1975.

Career

After graduating, she became an assistant to the then U.S. Representative and Senator William Cohen and was also a staff director of the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee on the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. In 1987, Susan was appointed by Governor John R. McKernan, Jr., to be Commissioner for the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. In 1992, she became the New England regional director for the Small Business Administration, a job given to her by then-President George H. W. Bush, and in 1993, she moved over to Massachusetts to become Deputy State Treasurer of Massachusetts under Joe Malone.

The aspiring congresswoman returned to Maine in 1994 to run for the gubernatorial seat as the first woman to have been nominated by a major party for the Gubernatorial seat of Maine, however, she later lost to Angus King. Later that year Susan founded the Center for Family Business at Husson College, Bangor, Maine and from there resumed her political pursuit in 1996, this time around she went for the seat in the U.S. Senate which she won. Since then she has been reelected in 2002, 2008 and again in 2014 defeating her various opponents. She is widely considered a  member of the Republican Party with moderate political views and also a heavyweight in the U.S. Senate.

Susan Collins is equally an avid member of quite a number of organizations within the Republican Party including; The Wish List, Republican Majority For Choice, Republicans for Environmental Protection among others. Regularly, she has received endorsements from the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that majors in LGBT rights and played important roles including helping to keep Bill Clinton in office when the U.S. Senate held an impeachment trial for him. Also, she supported a proposal made by Tom Daschle banning any abortion that tampers with the fetus when it was able to live outside the womb.

Net worth

Susan Collins was recently named as one of the ten most powerful Women in Washington and she has so many awards and honors to show for it including the “Congressional Sea Services Award,” “Spirit of Enterprise Award,” “Legislator of the Year Award” among others. This afforded her the opportunity to speak at a good number of public events where she is paid. In addition to her earnings as a senator as well as her investments, Susan is thus worth well over $4 million.

Who is Her Husband?

Susan Collins is an epitome of what it means to be a career woman and never really had time for marriage as all she did was focus on her career. However, at 59 she married a man named Thomas Daffron on August 11, 2012.

Thomas Daffron was formerly COO of Jefferson Consulting Group. He was a former reporter who worked as a top staff for numerous Congressmen. Their relationship goes way back as he once hired her as his intern when she was just 21. The marriage is a rare one as one can hardly find a couple wedding at such age but Susan and Thomas seem to be enjoying every bit of their time together.

Other Interesting Facts

1. Susan Collins is a senior United States Senator as well as the most senior female senator in the Congress.

2. She has never missed a vote ever since she became a senator. Her long consecutive voting streak is over 6,000 votes.

3. One thing that she has made clear is that she is a pro-choice Republican who strongly supports abortion rights movements.

4. Currently, she happens to be the most bipartisan senator in the United States Congress noted for being able to quickly find a common ground of compromise with other colleagues from other parties despite their ideology and beliefs.

5. Also, she has donors top of whom are General Dynamics (a defense and weapons industry), Cohen Group (a business firm) and Elliott Management (an investment management firm which owns the largest activist fund in the world).

Also Read: Top 10 Richest People in the world with full biography and details.