Demonstrators gathered in Maine on Tuesday as Republican Sen. Susan Collins introduced President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Protesters appeared outside Collins’ offices in Portland, Bangor and other locations to voice objections to her support of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. The protests happened around the same time Collins joined Alabama Republican Sen. Richard Shelby in introducing Sessions to the committee in Washington.

Collins says that she’s known Sessions since the two were sworn in to the Senate on the same day, and that she considers him to be qualified despite “vigorous debates and policy disagreements.”

“I can confidently vouch for the fact that Jeff Sessions is a person of integrity, a principled leader and a dedicated public servant,” she said Tuesday.

A protest leader, Diane Russell, a Portland Democrat, said Sessions opposes marriage equality and has made racist statements in the past.

“I can’t believe that Sen. Collins would support the most racist, homophobic, anti-woman, anti-immigrant person to be the attorney for the people of the United States. It’s a true betrayal of the trust of Maine voters,” Russell said Tuesday.

In Washington, Sessions testified that as attorney general his job would be to uphold the law even in instances where his views run contrary to Supreme Court rulings, such as the landmark Roe v. Wade decision on abortion.

“The office of the attorney general of the United States is not a political position, and anyone who holds it must have total fidelity to the laws and the Constitution of the United States,” he said.

He also strongly denied allegations of racial animosity that derailed his 1986 federal judicial nomination, and called the accusations part of an unfair caricature.

He said he does not support a ban on Muslims coming into the U.S., as Trump called for early in his presidential campaign. Sessions promised that as attorney general he would crack down on illegal immigration and “radical Islamic terrorism.”

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