For nearly thirty years, Angus King has ridden centrism to power. A former two-term governor of Maine and now a two-term U.S. senator, King has used a combination of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism to win votes. Since being elected governor as an independent, in 1994, he has simultaneously supported gay rights and vetoed minimum-wage increases. After being elected to the Senate, also as an Independent, in 2012, he has caucused and voted with Democrats, but built relationships with conservative Republicans. He calls the former Alabama senator and Trump Attorney General Jeff Sessions a “good friend.” That unorthodox stance has helped King in Maine—a state that is deeply divided between poorer, conservative, pro-Trump rural areas in the interior and wealthier, liberal, Democratic cities and coastal towns. “King is about as popular as anyone can be in a purple state in 2021. Job-approval polls consistently have him the most popular statewide officeholder,” Colin Woodard, a reporter for the Portland Press Herald who has covered King for years, told me. “He’s achieved this by ‘getting’ something fundamental about Maine’s zeitgeist, a desire even in this polarized day and age for someone to look at things in a practical, reasoned, and, yes, ‘independent’ way and make the best decisions for the state and the country.”

When it comes to getting the U.S. Senate to pass legislation that safeguards American democracy, though, King’s centrism is so far leading nowhere. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats began debating two voting-rights bills that King and others say are crucial to insuring that all eligible Americans have access to the ballot—and to enacting new laws that prevent Donald Trump, and others, from overturning future elections. For months, King has tried to secure support from G.O.P. moderates, but Republicans are expected to use the filibuster to block both bills, the fourth time that the Party has stymied Democratic election-reform proposals in the past year. For weeks, King, along with Democratic leaders, has tried to persuade Senators Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, to support changing the filibuster rules to allow the passage of the voting-rights bills. King told me in an interview, however, “Unless they have some kind of an epiphany, I don’t see them changing.”