Janet Mills ends Senate campaign in Maine, paving way for Graham Platner to win Democratic nomination
Washington — Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday that she is suspending her Senate campaign, while ensuring that Graham Platner secures the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in one of November’s most important Senate races.
“While I have the drive, the passion, the commitment and the experience, and above all the fight, to keep going, I simply don’t have the one thing political campaigns need today: financial resources,” Mills said in a statement.
Maine is a prime target for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, since Collins is the only Republican senator from a state won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had recruited Mills, the only Democrat to win statewide in Maine in 25 years, to challenge Collins. But her age — she will be 79 when a new Congress convenes next year — was a concern for state Democrats. Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and political newcomer, announced he would challenge her for the nomination.
An Emerson College poll in March found Platner leading Mills by 27 points, a sign of the strength of his campaign. Platner has raised $4 million in the first three months of 2026 alone.
In a statement reacting to Mills’ decision to drop out, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, head of the Senate campaign arm, called her a “tremendous governor” and said they would work to support Platner’s campaign.
“Democrats are determined to combat the chaos of the Trump administration by defeating Republicans who support his harmful agenda, including Susan Collins. After years of enabling Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” the statement from Schumer and Gillibrand said.
In Mills’ statement suspending her campaign, she said she decided to run because she believed “Mainers were getting a bad deal from Washington and because the President of the United States was threatening our democracy and pushing our nation to the brink of disaster. I still believe that today.”
Platner has faced some setbacks in his candidacy so far, including the discovery of controversial comments he made on Reddit about his time in the military and women, as well as a tattoo that resembled a Nazi insignia. He apologized for the online comments and said he unknowingly got the tattoo while stationed in Europe and then covered it up.
