Her withdrawal paves the way for Graham Platner to challenge Senator Susan Collins, and reflects the energy of the Democratic Party’s left as well as voters’ unease with older candidates.
Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, the Democratic establishment’s choice to run for the Senate seat long held by Senator Susan Collins, a Republican, suspended her campaign on Thursday, saying she no longer had the financial resources to compete against Graham Platner, a progressive political newcomer.
Her exit paves the way for Mr. Platner, an oysterman who has led her in polls, to become the Democratic nominee in one of the most important Senate races in the country.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Ms. Mills said in a statement.
Her exit is a blow not only to the two-term sitting governor but also to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and the Democratic Party establishment that he leads. Mr. Schumer, the minority leader, has for almost two decades chosen his party’s Senate candidates with little internal opposition.
In a year when Democrats have grown increasingly bullish about their chances to win back a Senate majority, several of Mr. Schumer’s handpicked candidates have struggled to gain traction in their primary contests.
In addition to Ms. Mills, Mr. Schumer and his political apparatus have backed Senate candidates in Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota who face formidable challengers in upcoming primary elections.
No Democratic Senate primary has drawn as much attention as Maine’s. But Ms. Mills, whose delay in entering the race last year raised questions about her hunger for the job, could not catch up with Mr. Platner’s fund-raising or standing in polls of Maine Democrats. Her campaign announced it had raised $2.6 million during the first three months of 2026, a relative pittance for a top-tier Senate candidate backed by Mr. Schumer and the party establishment.
Mr. Platner, an oyster farmer making his first run for public office, is an untested political commodity who has nevertheless proved popular with the party’s online donors. His town-hall meetings across Maine have drawn large crowds and even bigger audiences on social media.
A key subtext of Mr. Platner’s campaign was the idea of generational change in the party. Mr. Platner is 41; Ms. Mills is 78 and has been in elected office in Maine on and off since 1980.
Ms. Mills and her allies tried to knock Mr. Platner out of the primary with a series of damaging stories and then advertisements about offensive things he had written online about women and rape, along with revealing that he had a tattoo on his chest that resembled a Nazi symbol. Mr. Platner later obscured the image with a new tattoo.
Original article
Comments