EXCLUSIVE: Sen.Susan Collins, R-Maine, learned hard work in the dirt. When she was 10 years old, like several other children in Caribou, Maine, she left school to pick potato fields to aid farmers with the harvest deep in potato country in Aroostook County, dubbed "The County" by locals. "I remember my mother saying to me when I was going to pick for the first time at age 10, saying, ‘Now, Susan, this is really hard, back-breaking work, but you cannot quit. The farmers are depending on you, and you can't let them down,’" Collins told Fox News Digital.
"And those words have always stayed with me." SCHUMER’S ‘NUMBER ONE TARGET’ SAYS VOTERS WILL SEE HER DEMOCRAT SENATE CHALLENGER AS TOO EXTREMESen.Susan Collins blasts Democratic Senate candidate Graham Platner's mocking of a U.S.
wounded soldier as the two are headed toward a likely November showdown as old Reddit posts continue to resurface from Platner.(Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc.
via Getty Images; Joe Raedle/Getty Images)It’s that work ethic born in her hometown of Caribou, molded by her parents' separate stints as mayor of the small town in the county that helped shape her into the political titan she is today, propelling her to a record 10,000th straight vote in the Senate and a gavel atop the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.It’s also caused her to have the biggest target on her back in a highly contentious election cycle where Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is once again trying to flip her seat. Collins’ race has also become the most-watched and controversial of the cycle because of her unlikely opponent, Democratic nominee Graham Platner, who over the last several months has been rocked by scandal after scandal. Speaking to Fox News Digital on the drive between Bangor, Maine and Portland, one she's made several times since joining the Senate in 1997, Collins acknowledged Platner's rocky past and present but that she still was taking him seriously as an oppone...