Gov. Janet Mills suspended her campaign for the U.S. Senate Thursday, all but ensuring progressive oyster farmer Graham Platner will face Republican Senator Susan Collins in November.
The announcement marks a stunning denouement for the two-term governor and former attorney general and district attorney in the state. Mills was recruited by national Democrats to run and had the backing of Senate leaders, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. For months, Mills had been telling voters she was the more electable candidate against Collins, who has held the seat since 1997 and defied tough political headwinds before. But Mills had recently pulled down her TV advertisement buys, and polling of the race showed her trailing Platner by as many as 30 points ahead of the June 9 primary.
Mills did not mention Platner or the general election race in the announcement suspending her campaign, blaming her exit on a lack of financial resources she'd need to continue. Platner has outspent her $4.8 million to $1.5 million since entering the race, according to ad-tracking group AdImpact.
The governor pledged to spend the remaining eight months of her term fighting “relentlessly for the people of Maine.” “I step back from campaigning with unending love, admiration, and hope for Maine people—a people whose hearts are filled with love and whose integrity and humility are surpassed only by their kindness, generosity, and compassion," she said in the statement.
Despite a decorated political résumé, Mills’ age became a central fault for her when she entered the race. At 78, she would have been the oldest freshman senator in U.S. history, and she was asking voters for support in a moment when many Democrats say the party needs generational change. The contrast with 41-year-old Platner only sharpened those anxieties.
Now even more attention turns to Platner to see if the Democratic gamble on a political newcomer pays off. He has faced significant scrutiny over a series of deleted, inflammatory Reddit posts made between roughly 2013 and 2021, after he served four tours of duty—three in Iraq with the Marines and a fourth in Afghanistan with the Army National Guard. On the campaign trail, he's found himself constantly explaining those statements and a tattoo he got in the Marines in 2007 while on leave in Croatia, which has been identified as a Nazi symbol. Platner has said he did not know the significance of the design when he got it etched on his chest drunkenly with fellow infantryman. He covered it up in October but continues to face questions on the trail.
Mills and her supporters have warned that Platner's baggage could cost Democrats in a matchup against Collins. “If you’re headed into a difficult general election you need to be reaching voters who don't know you and who you can convince not to vote for the person they've known for decades,” Emily Cain, a former state representative in Maine and Mills supporter, said. “How much of your time do you want to be spent apologizing?”
Platner's lead in the polls only grew as Mills ran attack ads against him featuring some of his past social media posts. As he barnstorms the state, he's focused on economic issues and pitched the need for working-class people in the halls of Congress. Two stars of the progressive movement—Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont—have both endorsed his campaign. Platner's also repeatedly addressed his Reddit rants head-on across more than 50 town halls.
"I will continue to very publicly take accountability for the fact that I used to believe some really stupid stuff," he said of the Reddit posts at an early April town hall in Orono. "I came out of the infantry. I lived in a world of essentially intense masculinity with some real strange value sets. And you know, I spent 10 years doing that. It bleeds into your being."
Maine voters have a long tradition of ticket-splitting in the purple state. Collins has repeatedly outrun the top of her party’s ticket, winning reelection in 2020 when the state backed Biden. She’s widely viewed as focusing her office on constituent services and her role as chair of the powerful Appropriations Committee, through which she is able to bring back money to Maine.
Platner had already been pivoting toward the general election, focusing his stump speech more on Collins, while a pro-Collins super PAC has spent $2 million in attack ads against him.
Asked earlier this month about the prospect of Mills suspending her campaign, Platner told TIME, “This is a campaign to beat Susan Collins. It is also a campaign to entirely change how people in Maine engage with politics, and that is a project that, quite frankly, looks the same regardless of who we're running against.”
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