Maine’s two senators are among the crucial centrists whose decisions will weigh heavily on whether Colorado’s Neil Gorsuch is able to secure a filibuster-proof majority to claim the U.S. Supreme Court seat that’s been vacant for nearly a year.

Because the Senate requires 60 votes to end a filibuster and has only 52 Republicans, there are only two options for his successful elevation to the highest court: either winning enough votes or getting the Senate to change its rules.

The support of U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who is Maine’s senior senator, is reasonably certain given that she’s voted for him once before, when President George W. Bush nominated him in 2006 for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

Whether U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent in his first term, will go along is not a given. He is no doubt among those the GOP will try to sway.

King said his approach to Gorsuch’s nomination “will be consistent with my approach to considering Merrick Garland’s nomination last year: I will listen to the views he expresses before the Senate Judiciary Committee and carefully evaluate his record to understand his judicial philosophy and temperament.”

He added, “At the end of this process, I will make an independent judgment based on whether or not I believe he will interpret the law in accordance with existing statutes and precedent, and most importantly, in accordance with the Constitution.” 

Collins said that Gorsuch “is widely respected for his extraordinary intellect and has impressive academic and legal credentials” and she looks forward to the Judiciary Committee’s hearings “which will help provide a careful, thorough vetting of this nominee’s record.”

President Donald Trump said in introducing Gorsuch at the White House on Tuesday night that he hopes Democrats and Republicans “can come together, for once, for the good of the country.”

At the time of Gorsuch’s approval a decade ago, Collins was part of a group called the Gang of 14, seven Republicans and seven Democrats who agreed that they would not block floor votes on judicial nominees except in “extraordinary circumstances.”

In return, the GOP senators, including Collins, agreed they would not go along with any effort to end the filibuster for judicial nominations, the so-called “nuclear option” that some of the 55 Republican senators at the time thought they should do.

In the years since, the Senate has dropped the possibility of filibusters for most judicial nominations but retained it for Supreme Court picks. That’s why Gorsuch still needs eight Democrats to back him to avoid a filibuster.

Trump has said that if it’s necessary to kill the filibuster to get a Supreme Court pick through, senators should change their rules. Senate leaders, however, haven’t shown much desire to take that advice.

Trump’s nomination of Gorsuch aims to fill the court’s ninth seat, vacant since the unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia last February. Scalia, an eloquent jurist, provided both a reliable conservative vote and fiery opinions that powerfully laid out his legal reasoning.

“Justice Scalia was a lion of the law,” said Gorsuch, a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for two justices, Byron White and Anthony Kennedy, who’s still on the court at age 80.

Democrats remain angry that Garland, President Barack Obama’s choice to fill the court vacancy, never received even the courtesy of a committee hearing from the Republican-controlled Senate, let alone a floor vote. As a result, the court has limped along with eight members for 12 months.

“It’s unconscionable that Senate Republicans kept the seat unfilled for nearly a year for political gain,” said U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat who represents Maine’s 1st District. She said senators need to determine whether Gorsuch has “the character and courage to stand up against the president who nominated him.”

Though legal cases don’t usually follow the partisan divide closely, on many issues the court is heavily split, with Chief Justice John Roberts typically on the conservative end of the spectrum and more Democratic-leaning judges often lined up with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Trump vowed throughout the campaign to tap someone to fill any court vacancy who would provide reliable support for the more GOP-leaning justices.

In this case, the vacant seat was held by a strident conservative judge so the partisan alignment of the court, to the extent it exists, would remain the way it was before Scalia’s death unless Trump’s nominee surprises him by voting with the more liberal justices.

History is replete with examples of judges who turned out to be something quite different from the presidents and senators who put them on the court ever imagined.

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