The crossing signal was against her, but traffic was light and Sen. Susan Collins took the opening, striding briskly across Farmington’s Main Street to shake hands with a group of shoppers on the opposite sidewalk.

The 49-year-old Collins waded into the crowd, clasping hands and flashing a smile. Down the street she went, entering stores, shaking hands with patrons and workers and commenting on the issues of the day.

As Collins walked though the downtown business district, passing cars honked their horns and pedestrians offered greetings. Hers is a familiar face to Mainers, a far cry from eight years ago when the one-time congressional aide and obscure bureaucrat finished a distant third in the race for governor.

Two years later, fate dealt Collins a winning hand when she prevailed in a scrappy three-candidate primary to emerge as the Republican Party’s nominee to replace four-term U.S. Sen. William Cohen, her former boss.

A few months later, she won election over former governor Joseph Brennan and two other candidates with 49 percent of the vote.

Now Maine’s junior senator is locked in a spirited battle with former Maine Senate Majority Leader Chellie Pingree, who stands in the way of Collins’ quest for a second six-year term. If Collins wins, she will continue in the footsteps of the person whose Senate seat she now holds, the legendary Margaret Chase Smith, the very senator who years ago fired Collins’ ambition when she was a young high school student from Aroostook County.

In her senior year at Caribou High School, Collins was one of two Maine students selected to participate in a William Randolph Hearst Foundation Senate Youth Program and spend a week in Washington, D.C.

“That was when I met Margaret Chase Smith,” she recalled during a recent interview. “Margaret Chase Smith had me come into her private office and she spent almost two hours talking with me. And that had a profound influence on my life. She talked to me about her Declaration of Conscience against [anti-communist Sen.] Joe McCarthy, she talked to me about the need for a strong national defense. … I remember when I was leaving her office that I was so proud that she was my senator and I also remember thinking that women could do anything.”

Collins didn’t always imagine herself a senator, but early on she developed a liking for public service. Through high school, she participated in student government and many other extracurricular activities. Politics was all around her. On her father, Donald’s, side, five generations of Collinses served in the Legislature. Her mother, Patricia, was mayor of Caribou for a time and head of that city’s school board.

Growing up in Aroostook County, Collins also took part in the potato harvest. Back in the 1960s, much of the crop was picked by hand by schoolchildren across The County, and Collins worked the fields beginning at age 10.

“It was some of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life. But it was so good for us. … I learned the value of a dollar, I learned to work hard and to be responsible,” she said. “It’s extraordinarily hard work but it’s a wonderful example of the community coming together.”

While in college, Collins served as an intern for U.S. Rep. William S. Cohen. It was 1974, the year of Watergate and the articles of impeachment that prompted President Nixon to resign rather than contest a trial in the Senate that he knew he could not win. Cohen, a Republican, served on the House Judiciary Committee that approved three articles of impeachment against Nixon.

“He was a freshman congressman on the Judiciary Committee under enormous pressure and I saw him stand up for his principles and do the right thing. That impressed me,” she said.

Little did Collins know that two decades later she would be asked to sit in similar judgment against another president, Bill Clinton.

The Republicans in the House and Senate were already at odds with Clinton by the time the newly elected Collins arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1997. She was thrust into the fray from her position as head of a Senate subcommittee investigating the Democratic Party’s campaign fund-raising practices.

In one memorable exchange, an alleged influence peddler told the committee how it paid to be nice to the female employees at the White House because Clinton had charmed them all.

“This is one woman he hasn’t,” Collins told the witness.

When it came to impeachment proceedings the next year, however, Collins voted against convicting Clinton, an action that still rankles many in her party. Collins defends her vote, but added that she found Clinton’s behavior defenseless and reprehensible.

“I was so furious at the president for putting our country through this ordeal and for dishonoring his office. Yet, I knew I had to set aside my personal feelings and apply the constitutional test,” she recalled. “Based on all the research I did … and listening to all the testimony, I could not conclude that his offenses met the constitutional standard for high crimes and misdemeanors.”

From the moment she arrived in Washington, D.C., Collins has made an effort to stake out a centrist position in a Senate whose majority has shifted from one party to the other in a few brief years.

“It’s always been close,” Collins said of the gap between the majority and minority parties in the Senate.

“What I anticipated and found to be true is that those senators who are willing to work with people on both sides of the aisle are the most effective and are central in deciding the outcome of many issues. I’ve worked with Democrats and Republicans on a host of issues. Of the bills I’ve introduced, I think 85 percent of them have had Democrats as well as Republicans as co-sponsors.”

Although she relied on her dozen years of experience as a Senate staffer to navigate the halls of power, there was no way to prepare for the responsibility of casting critical votes on crucial issues.

One of those issues is the threat of war with Iraq. During a recent campaign swing through Rumford, Collins met for lunch with a group of supporters and outlined her reasons for supporting President Bush’s request for congressional backing on his effort to oust Saddam Hussein and disarm his weapons of mass destruction.

“It was a very difficult decision,” she said. “It’s the most weighty decision a senator can make to allow the president to use military force if diplomatic efforts fail.”

Collins said she initially had doubts about the urgency of moving forward against Iraq. She said she held numerous meetings with the nation’s intelligence agencies on Iraq’s weapons capabilities and with Secretary of State Colin Powell over the need to maintain a united front in the diplomatic struggle to convince the United Nations to move on Saddam.

“Secretary Powell convinced me we had to express a willingness to wage war,” she said. “It is very clear that Saddam is trying to secure the materials for a nuclear bomb. … I think the president deserves credit for forcing the issue. … I do hope that we can avoid war.”