A Politico story has us contemplating Maine having the two most powerful U.S. senators in the country.

The story is built around the premise that the Senate, which is currently Republican-controlled, could end up in a 50-50 split between the major parties.

“That could be a nightmare in the making for whoever wins the White House,” reads the article. Cabinet nominees would have to run a partisan gauntlet — inevitably throwing a new administration into an early quagmire of controversy — and the vice president would cast the deciding vote if Senate members deadlock.

But it could be a huge gift for Maine. Republican Sen. Susan Collins is already in a very powerful position because of her seniority and the fact that she is among the Senate’s most moderate Republicans. That means she occasionally votes against her party, which positions her to be a powerful swing vote.

Independent U.S. Sen. Angus King is in a similar position, though he caucuses with and almost always votes with Democrats. In a 50-50 Senate, he could wield considerable power. When he took office in 2013, King generated a bit of political drama about whether he would caucus with Senate Democrats, then the majority, or Republicans. Two years later, the question of which party’s caucus King would join prompted a lot less speculation but still drew attention from some pundits. At the moment, he appears firmly aligned with Democrats. Facing re-election in 2018, King, who has built a political career on independence and building bipartisan coalitions, won’t want to be linked to the epic partisan gridlock that could define a 50-50 Senate.

That’s the other side of this coin. An evenly divided Senate could give just about any senator the opportunity to go rogue against his or her party and stop everything from legislation to Cabinet appointments to Supreme Court nominees. Collins indicated she isn’t going to play that game.

“I hope we’re not going to get into blocking Cabinet members for the sake of blocking them,” she told Politico.

Thanks to Collins and former Republican U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe — who was another relative moderate — little old Maine has enjoyed arguably oversized political power in the Senate before. At one time, both Snowe and Collins were ranked by some publications as being among the most powerful women in Washington.

What’s the benefit of that for Maine? Though there is a long list of our senators’ accomplishments that benefited Maine, by design they operate mostly at the national and international level, obviously. Still, having the political spotlight shone on Maine’s representatives once in a while is a good thing for a state whose reputation among people from away is rooted around lobsters, snow and a governor whose outbursts often draw international attention.

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