Site taking donations for Senator Collins opponent was overwhelmed

Senator Susan
Collins
Chip Somodevilla/Getty
Images

• A website collecting money to fund a rival to Senator
  Susan Collins (R-Maine) has crashed on Friday shortly after she
  announced her support for confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the US
  Supreme Court.
• The site was created to raise money for whoever decides
  to challenge Collins for her Senate seat in
  2020. 

Minutes after Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) announced her
decision to vote in favor of confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the US
Supreme Court,
a site raising money for Collins’ as-yet-unnamed-and-unknown
political opponent in her next election crashed.

Collins was one of the big undecided votes in the judge’s
controversial nomination. In an effort to convince Collins that
there would be consequences if she voted to support him, a group
of people from Maine launched a crowdfunding campaign on a site
called Crowdpac.com.

The campaign asked people to pledge money to back whoever
challenged Collins in her 2020 election if she voted in favor of
Kavanaugh. If she didn’t vote for Kavanaugh, then the pledges
would be void.

It isn’t 100% clear why the site crashed but one possible
explanation is that it was so overwhelmed with people rushing to
donate to the campaign that the website’s internet connection
couldn’t take the traffic which pushed it offline. It is also
possible some other reason caused the crash. Denial of service
attacks are a common method that hackers used to overwhelm
websites, for instance.

Business Insider verified that the site was down and Crowdpac
didn’t immediately answer our request for comment.

As of September 12, when
the Wall Street Journal reported on this fundraising effort,
it had already raised more than $1 million from 37,000
pledges. There were some questions whether this fundraising
effort  would violate federal bribery statutes, which
prohibit giving or offering anything of value to government
officials in exchange for any acts or votes.

According to Twitter user, Marty
Loughlin, right before the site crashed on Friday, it
had raised $2 million in pledges.
‏
Another page that vows to support whoever the Democrat will be
for Collins’ seat is still up and accepting
donations, though it’s not clear how many donations it has
racked up. 

In September, a spokesperson for Collins told the WSJ that
she wouldn’t be swayed by the fundraising tactic in any case.
“Senator Collins will make up her mind based on the merits of the
nomination. Threats or other attempts to bully her will not play
a factor in her decision making whatsoever.”