Annie Clark is a key adviser to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the Senate’s most effective bipartisan dealmakers, who is expected to take over as chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee if Republicans win back control of the chamber in November. As the top Republican spokesperson for the Appropriations Committee, Clark will be in the center of the storm when the debate over the annual spending bills takes center stage this fall. Reporters know that Clark, who has worked for Collins for more than nine years, is the Maine senator’s biggest defender. She’s tough when she clashes with a reporter, but she’s accessible, always armed with the facts and always out in front of developing stories.   Clark is often found talking to reporters in the bank of six elevators or the Ohio Clock Corridor just off the Senate floor. She’s been battle-tested in a way that few have been on Capitol Hill. Collins has been at the center of the biggest Senate battles of the past decade, and Clark has been at her side through those big, historic moments, such as Collin’s pivotal vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2017 and for confirming conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court in 2018. Clark was also Collins’s campaign communications director during her 2020 reelection victory, when Collins became the only Senate incumbent in 2016 and 2020 to win a state that her party’s nominee for president lost. A day doesn’t go by in which reporters don’t have a question for Collins, and Clark has helped her boss navigate the tumultuous media landscape for the past nine-plus years. The Maine senator has a propensity to take on and answer all questions. She doesn’t shy away from hardballs as some of her colleagues prefer to do, which makes the job of working in her communications office a thrill ride. Colleagues and staff describe Collins’s mind like a “steel trap” — she remembers details from years ago. This means working for her requires having a lot of information at your fingertips, something that Clark excels at. Democratic and Republican colleagues are always chasing Collins for her vote, and reporters are always chasing her for quotes. Clark is always there to make sure the press gets the story right.