Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Tuesday that she’ll enter the race to defeat Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a top target in national Democrats’ bid to regain the Senate.
Mills was recruited by Democratic Senate leaders after her high-profile confrontation with President Donald Trump in February, a dispute that triggered a wave of retaliatory moves by his administration against the state. The exchange is featured in her launch ad.
In an interview, Mills said the interaction was a “jaw-dropping” moment that showcased Trump’s monarch-like aspirations. She said it also pushed her to consider running for a Senate seat that she previously never considered.
“When I was a little girl growing up in Farmington, my father always said you have to stand up to bullies. You can’t let them have their way or they’ll never stop,” she said. “And I think that’s what’s going on in Congress right now ... Congress is not standing up to him. Susan Collins is not standing up to him.
“I don’t think I could forgive myself if I didn’t give everything I’ve got to change what’s going on in a very dysfunctional government in Washington,” she said.
To defeat Collins, Mills will first have to navigate a potentially bruising primary. The contest already features more than half a dozen candidates, including two, Jordan Wood and Graham Platner, who are taking a more progressive tack. Platner is also channeling Democratic voters’ disillusionment with party leaders and has framed Mills’ candidacy as an example of their unwillingness to part ways with the “same old, tired playbook.”
Platner’s candidacy, endorsed by independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, is part of a national trend in which insurgent candidates are taking on Democratic incumbents or those favored by national party leaders. A few days before Mills’ announcement, Sanders said in a social media post that “it’s disappointing that some Democratic leaders are urging Governor Mills to run. We need to focus on winning that seat & not waste millions on an unnecessary & divisive primary.”
Mills, who will be 78 in December, said she looked forward to the primary and is eager to contrast her accomplishments as governor against the other candidates’ rhetoric. She highlighted her efforts to steer more of the state budget for local education, expanding Medicaid health coverage for low-income Mainers and providing free meals in public schools.
She also noted her long history of standing up for abortion rights, expanding access to the procedure after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision and making Maine a haven for women who live in states where the procedure is restricted or outright banned.
“I’m the only candidate in this race who has delivered on those things,” she said.
Mills has proven a formidable statewide candidate in her two successful runs for governor. In 2022, she defeated conservative firebrand and former Gov. Paul LePage to win her second term, holding her own in Maine’s conservative 2nd Congressional District.
The U.S. Senate race will present a new and daunting challenge.
Democrats haven’t won a U.S. Senate race in Maine since former Sen. George Mitchell won reelection in 1988. Collins has held her seat since 1996. Democrats’ ballyhooed and famously expensive bid to unseat her in 2020 sputtered to an 8-point defeat in a state that President Joe Biden carried by 9 points.
Democrats believe Collins is more vulnerable now. The Maine Democratic Party has repeatedly sought to highlight her diminished influence as chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee amid the Trump administration’s bid to consolidate power in the executive branch.
Her potential ascension to the budget panel was repeatedly highlighted by her campaign in 2020 as a way to sway Maine’s fickle — and often decisive — independent voting bloc.
Mills touched on that critique as well, saying Collins’ climb to the budget committee was a “big deal” but that she hasn’t used her position to push back against Trump’s bid to wrest more spending authority from Congress.
Democrats have also attacked her votes to confirm Trump’s controversial cabinet picks and to confirm judges they say are hostile to abortion rights.
Mills has been a staunch backer of abortion rights and expanded access to the procedure during her two terms as governor. Those efforts accelerated after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.
Abortion rights groups have rewarded Mills, backing her gubernatorial campaigns in 2019 and 2022. One group, Emily’s List, which supports women who advocate for abortion rights, intervened in the 2019 Democratic gubernatorial primary by sending $300,000 to a local group that then spent money on ads against Mills’ closest rival, Adam Cote.
Mills would be the oldest freshman elected to the upper chamber in modern history if she’s able topple Collins, who will be 73 in December. The governor acknowledged that age will be “a consideration” for some voters, but she thinks they’ll side with her experience, especially in the Democratic primary.
“I know I can take on this one last fight and get it done,” she said.
The governor’s entry in the race will likely discourage other Democratic hopefuls from running and it may force out already declared candidates.
Wood and Platner have vowed to stay in. Platner, asked recently about Mills’ seemingly imminent candidacy, told Maine Public that his campaign won’t change its approach much.
“We’re going to undertake the same project, no matter who gets in,” he said, adding, “This is a campaign to reshape the Democratic Party.”
Platner, an oyster farmer and military veteran, has said that his campaign is about building a movement and a political infrastructure that will endure after next year’s midterms. His campaign already claims 6,000 volunteers and his town hall appearances have drawn large crowds. It also claims to have raised more than $4 million in a little more than a month.
Wood, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., claims his campaign has raised a similar amount over a longer period.
Mills, a former prosecutor, served two stints as Maine's attorney general. The second came between 2013 and 2018 while Republican Gov. Paul LePage was governor. The two clashed frequently as LePage, often seen as a Trump prototype, pushed the bounds of executive branch power. Mills would later defeat him in her bid to secure a second term as governor.
Her fights with LePage set the stage for her February confrontation with Trump during a National Governors Association event at the White House. During the event, Trump called on Mills to obey his executive order banning transgender athletes from participating on girls' sports teams. Mills told him she would follow Maine law, which currently allows the practice. When he threatened to pull Maine's federal funding, Mills told him, “See you in court.”
With those four words, Mills went from a 77-year-old governor serving the last two years of her final term in a lightly populated state to an unlikely heroine of the Trump resistance.
Democratic groups have used the confrontation to fundraise ever since. Democratic leaders' efforts to draft Mills to challenge Collins also intensified. Mills often seemed ambivalent about jumping in the race, telling Maine Public in late July that she wasn't "born with a burning desire to be in Washington, D.C. — any month of the year" and lamenting its "chaotic" state during Trump's second term.
Her interest appeared to shift in recent weeks when she embarked on a blitz of public appearances in which she described her interest in joining the Senate race as a way to solve problems created by the Trump administration and the Republican controlled Congress.
"There's some very disturbing things going on, every day more so," she said. "And so, I'm thinking about that every day because, you know, you want to be able to solve problems. And we've got a lot of problems."
When asked later if she blamed Collins for those problems, she replied, "She’s in a tough position. I appreciate everything she is doing.”
The response was an opening for Platner.
"I do not appreciate everything that Susan Collins is doing,” he said.
Mills would later clarify that she has plenty of disagreements with Collins, but that she also maintains a working relationship with Maine's congressional delegation.
The looming primary contest in Maine is part of a larger pattern of insurgent Democrats in congressional contests running on a brand of economic populism long championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Several of the candidates, including Platner, are using similar consultants. One of his advisors, Morris Katz, is involved in candidate Zohran Mamdani's bid to become mayor of New York City. Another, Joe Calvello, is working with Dan Osborn, an independent running for a Senate seat in Nebraska, as well as Nathan Sage, a Democrat eyeing a Senate seat in Iowa. Calvello was also a top advisor on the campaign that helped Sen. John Fetterman win his seat in Pennsylvania in 2020.
Platner has been particularly critical of national Democrats, including their recruitment of Mills.
"Running candidates that are picked by D.C., running campaigns that are driven by D.C., I think that's a losing strategy," he said during a recent interview. "I think, what we're doing — which is really trying to build a campaign of Mainers, for Mainers — that's the way we win the state of Maine."
