ORONO — The bleachers are packed at the University of Maine homecoming game and Susan M. Collins is mixing business with pleasure.

Like Black Bear quarterback Emilio Colon, she scans the field of spectators in search of an opening and squints against the brilliance of the Saturday afternoon sun.

Colon is looking for points. Collins is looking for votes. Both are playing to win.

Hampered by a few team injuries, Maine reversed its fortunes and ended a nine-game losing streak with a victory over the University of Delaware. Collins hopes to do as well against Democratic contender Joseph E. Brennan and independent candidates Jonathan Carter and Angus King. She continues to cope with a series of setbacks that have impeded the Republican nominee’s drive toward her goal of becoming the state’s first woman governor.

The most recent shock wave rattling the campaign arrived after her brother, Michael, brought some unexpected attention to the Collins name. Charged in connection with a $1 million marijuana distribution scheme, Michael Collins’ arrest was announced last week on the same day his sister was holding a major press conference in Bangor on her proposed restructuring of the state welfare system.

It was the latest in a growing list of pitfalls that threatened to throw the third-ranked candidate off balance. Since June she has confronted:

An unsuccessful state supreme court challenge of her residency qualifications by Falmouth activist Mark Finks.

A provocative inquiry by a Waterville newspaper columnist who questioned whether the 41-year-old unmarried gay rights proponent was a lesbian.

A high-profile protest by GOP ultraconservatives against the candidate’s support of a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

A financial snub from her old boss, Gov. John R. McKernan, who along with some prominent southern Maine Republicans, is preoccupied with raising money for Rep. Olympia J. Snowe’s U.S. Senate race.

At Saturday’s game, Collins accepted a lot of best wishes from empathetic football fans. It was typical of the response she has received since last Thursday when she confronted her brother’s drug problems by diving neck-deep into the campaign she likes to call her “job.”

“You know people were coming up to me in the grocery store to say they were thinking of me,” she said. “People have been very warm and very fair. I’m trying to keep talking about the real issues of the campaign and I feel as though we’re on track.”

At her home in Standish — after a day of campaigning that began at 8 a.m and wrapped up at 11 that night — Collins considers the enormity of the consequences that unforeseen circumstances have had on her first run at elective office.

“It’s been hard,” she said. “More so than anything else that’s happened, this latest incident hurts because it’s a member of my family. But I try to look at the campaign as the job I have to do and a cause I am committed to and not let myself be derailed. It’s easier when I’m out there campaigning just because it’s so busy.”

After a career of behind-the-scenes patronage jobs in Augusta, Boston and Washington, Collins has stepped into Maine’s political limelight. As the first woman in the state to be nominated for governor by a major party, she is simultaneously a pioneer in state politics and the descendant of Maine pioneers and politicians. Her 19 years in government are punctuated by a remarkable ability to recognize the right moves at the right time and an uncompromising loyalty to friends and family.

The ties that bind

In Caribou, a handshake still carries as much weight as a notarized contract. Hard work, a sense of community and a respect for traditional family values intertwine to form a common thread in the fabric of Aroostook County life. The third of six children, and a descendant of one of the area’s founding families, Collins never needed to look beyond her scrapbook for political inspiration.

Her grandfather had served in the Legislature as did her father, Donald. Her mother, Patricia is a former mayor of Caribou (as was her father before her), and a past chairwoman of the University of Maine trustees. Her uncle Sam is a former state senator and retired justice of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court. The Collins family traces itself back to the pre-Revolutionary War era and its successive generations blazed trails into northern Maine and the state’s Down East interior.

She grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, an era marked by Aroostook County’s realization of the economic benefits to be reaped from the newly named Loring Air Force Base. There was a boost in construction from Presque Isle to Van Buren and the family lumber business prospered.

“Growing up in Aroostook was wonderful,” Collins said. “I can’t imagine a better place to grow up — particularly during those years. We spent summers at Madawaska Lake in our old-style logging camp. I learned to swim and water-ski there. They were just terrific years.”

There are people in Aroostook County who had to pick potatoes for a living. Collins wasn’t one of them, but she harbors a deep respect for those who must work hard for decent wages. She was encouraged by her parents to do her best in school and she excelled in her classes. Outside, however, the potato field was the great equalizer.

“It’s an example of the whole community pulling together to help the farmer get his crops in,” she said of the seasonal harvests. “It’s a real community effort. It doesn’t matter if you’re the doctor’s son or from a poor family. Everybody picks potatoes. All my friends picked potatoes and I did, too. We thought it really taught you how to work hard and learn the value of a dollar.”

St. Lawrence and William Cohen

During her senior year at Caribou High School, Collins was one of two students selected to visit Washington, D.C., as part of the Senate Youth Program. She spent most of her time with Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, Maine’s former U.S. senator and a source of inspiration for Collins.

As part of the program, she received a $1,000 scholarship that was linked to a required study concentration in history or government. Her uncle, a teacher in New York state, recommended that she investigate St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.

Collins was intrigued by the challenge of leaving Maine to finish her education, yet reassured by St. Lawrence’s small enrollment and the familiar rural qualities of upstate New York. During the summers, she returned to Caribou to work in the public library and occasionally helped out a young Bangor Republican who was making his first run at the 2nd Congressional District. After Collins graduated magna cum laude from St. Lawrence in 1975, U.S. Rep. William Cohen hired her as a legislative staff assistant.

Last week Cohen described his employee of 12 years as a person able to combine warmth and graciousness with impressive efficiency and thoroughness. She became, he said, an invaluable member of his congressional team “almost immediately.”

“I came to rely on Susan as the years went on and promoted her in time to be my staff director of an important Senate subcommittee that works on identifying and correcting fraud,” he said. “… Thanks to her efforts, I was able to achieve much success in changing how the government does business.”

Riding wave of transition

In 1987, as Collins entered her final year with Cohen, state and national politics were again in transition. While the Republicans were about to lose control of the U.S. Senate, John R. McKernan emerged as Maine’s first GOP governor in 20 years. McKernan’s headhunters were beating the bushes for competent candidates to serve in the governor’s Cabinet. He recruited and hired Collins as his choice for commissioner of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation.

Collins encountered greater managerial challenges as a department head in state government than she experienced in Cohen’s office. She discovered the art of separating valid arguments from the static of partisan rhetoric. Collins quickly built a reputation for standing behind her staff’s decisions. To her delight, that support has been reciprocated by many of her former employees. Ann Clark and Carol Leighton have bolstered their promises of votes for Collins with cash contributions.

“I couldn’t possibly say enough good things about her,” said Clark, a state Professional and Financial Regulation secretary. “She’s extremely hard working. She’d make a wonderful governor.”

Carol Leighton, a manager in the department’s real estate division, worked with Collins for five years.

“I found her to be just a superior manager,” she said. “Not only is Susan organized and has what people describe today as vision, the incredible thing about her is how she inspires other people to find the best solutions to problems or issues.”

Although normally preoccupied with the issuance of professional licenses, Collins’ department also had oversight for the Bureau of Insurance, an agency through which McKernan sought to reform the state’s Workers’ Compensation policies. She became embroiled in a legislative dispute in 1991 when the governor sought to tie Workers’ Compensation reform to the passage of the state budget. The acrimonious debate resulted in a stalemate and the now legendary 17-day shutdown of state government.

Sen. Gerry Conley, D-Portland, recalls the tenacity with which Collins argued for McKernan’s Workers’ Compensation reforms during meetings with members of the Legislature. Conley, a Portland lawyer, attributes part of the blame for the state shutdown on Collins, who he described as “a very tough negotiator.”

“She understood Workers’ Compensation,” he said. “She struck me as being extremely bright. But I also felt she had absolutely no heart. She would get what she knew the governor needed at any cost — even if it included shutting down state government. I didn’t agree with her at all. I thought it was a terrible thing to shut down the state and put these people out of work over an unrelated issue.”

“I think he’s a bit harsh,” Collins said in response to Conley’s remarks. “He had a financial interest in that whole debate as well. I didn’t make the decisions (that shut down state government).”

Early in 1992, Collins left the State House and signed on to become President George Bush’s regional director of the U.S. Small Business Administration. Her arrival and departure from Augusta were on her terms.

“I obviously served five years in state government, so it’s not as if I came in, did a year and blew town,” she said. “But I felt I had accomplished a lot … I had modernized my department and gave it a real sense of consumer orientation. I reformed Workers’ Compensation and went through two major Workers’ Compensation battles and helped to improve the law. I was proud of what I had accomplished.”

Collins also gives herself high marks for her short stint as the regional SBA director. Like other political appointees, she received her termination notice from President Bill Clinton by fax machine shortly after he took office. She looks back at her SBA tenure with a sense of pride, particularly in the increase of federal loans to Maine businesses facing severe credit crunches.

Barbara Manning, a press officer with the SBA, said Collins was perceived as a good regional administrator. Manning declined to elaborate on the candidate’s management style, citing the political patronage aspect within the agency. Collins’ old SBA job is filled now by Pat McGowan, who failed twice in his efforts to dislodge Olympia Snowe from her 2nd Congressional District seat.

Knowing the Bush appointment would terminate with a Clinton victory, Collins began putting out feelers for new opportunities. The prospects in Maine appeared bleak, but there were offers from other New England states. Ultimately, she found a niche as the deputy treasurer for the state of Massachusetts in an $85,000-a-year job working for the state’s current treasurer, Joe Malone.

Collins kept in shape by climbing the stairs of the Massachusetts State House as a press liaison for the treasurer’s office. She also was given responsibility for a couple of investment projects designed to increase financing opportunities for small businesses. It was a chance to reassess her career and to consider the possibility of seeking the GOP nomination for governor in Maine.

She returned often to her home in Standish. It remains as much of a refuge as a residence and the place where she entertains friends, cooks or just settles into a good novel.

There are also moments at Standish when Collins weighs the sacrifices demanded by her fast-paced career. Sometimes, she says, 1975 seems like yesterday when the tomorrows held unlimited opportunities for a husband and family.

“I still very much hope to meet the right person and to get married,” she said. “I’ve often thought how extraordinarily difficult it would be to undertake the race for governor if I had young children. I think a lot of people would be critical if I were running with small children. They might, with some justification, wonder if I was neglecting them.”

A chance at the Blaine House

Resolved to give the gubernatorial primary her best shot, Collins launched her campaign in January and sought to define herself as a candidate in the minds of Maine voters. Her plans for stabilizing the state budget, promoting Maine businesses and tightening up the state’s welfare programs frequently have been lost in the din created by her critics who seemed bent on forcing her to wage a defensive campaign.

After winning 21.3 percent of the GOP vote in a grueling eight-way primary, Collins had hoped to spend the summer concentrating on campaign strategy. Instead, she had to ward off an assault from right-wing elements within her own party. Collins’ support of equal rights in housing, credit, public accommodations and employment for homosexuals and her pro-choice stance on abortion are shared by her three male opponents. Yet, groups like Concerned Maine Families and the Christian Coalition targeted only Collins in their cross hairs.

It was, she said, one of the occasions in the campaign in which her critics clearly held gender-based opinions.

“It was because I was a woman,” she said. “There are have been some instances in this race when I feel as though I have been subjected to a double standard.”

A rejection by the GOP far right was already a foregone conclusion in Collins’ mind. What really surprised her — and continues to create a drag on her campaign — is the absence of financial support from many of the state’s well-heeled Republicans. There’s also the cold shoulder she’s gotten from her former boss, Gov. McKernan. Collins has accumulated a little more than $400,000 thus far, while Brennan and King each has raised about $1 million.

McKernan, who did not return calls last week, has not contributed a dime to Collins or even offered a letter of support. Even Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld anteed up $250 for the Collins effort. Other Maine Republican heavyweights — such as defeated gubernatorial nominees Judy Foss and state Rep. Sumner Lipman, R-Augusta — also have withheld any cash contributions.

On the positive side, former gubernatorial candidates Sens. Pam Cahill, R-Woolwich; Charlie Webster, R-Farmington, and Rep. Paul Young, R-Limestone, all have assisted Collins during campaign swings in their areas. Republican nominee Jasper Wyman, the former Maine Christian Civic League director and conservative icon, tried in good faith to mediate a disastrous encounter between Collins and members of the party’s far right. Mary Adams, a Garland political activist who also sought the GOP nomination, has given Collins $100 and is a frequent volunteer at the candidate’s Bangor headquarters. Lipman did appear with Collins at an Augusta luncheon fund-raiser.

“I think it is just very hard for some of the candidates who were better known than I, spent more money, felt they were going to win and then were unable to pull it off,” Collins said. “Most have been helpful, some have been truly outstanding. I think Democrats, in general, do a better job of putting aside primary differences and pulling together.”

Kevin Keogh, an unsuccessful bidder for the GOP’s 1st Congressional District nomination and former state chairman of the Maine Republican Party, admitted to being “dismayed” and “disappointed” by the lack of response to the Collins campaign among some pockets of Republicans. Borrowing from David Letterman’s “stupid pet tricks,” Keogh said he regretted some GOP members felt compelled to perform “stupid Republican tricks.”

“One of the most disappointing things in my tenure as party chairman was to find that — in the end — Republicans didn’t always stand up for each other.”

In the last six weeks before the election, Collins plans to politick nonstop, renewing her emphasis on eastern and northern Maine. She says she will do more to point out her perceived shortcomings of Angus King, the independent candidate from Brunswick who has been trying to convert her supporters.

Susan M. Collins

Personal: Single, never married.

Education: B.A. in government from St. Lawrence University, Canton, N.Y. Class of 1975, magna cum laude.

Experience: Deputy treasurer of Massachusetts, 1993; New England administrator, U.S. Small Business Administration, 1992-1993; commissioner, Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation, 1987-1991; staff director, U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Oversight Government Management, 1981-1987; member of Sen. William S. Cohen’s staff, 1975-1981.

Office sought: Governor. Opponents are Joseph Brennan, Democrat; Angus King and Jonathan Carter, independents.