Janet Mills Fires Self From Senate Campaign, So Vote For The Progressive With The Baggage. It's Important.
God gave us Senate elections in Maine to keep things interesting.
Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) dropped out of the race for US Senate Thursday, saying she wasn’t able to raise the campaign funds she’d need for the primary and for the general election contest against incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
In a statement, Mills explained her decision was a simple pragmatic choice: “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.”
Mills’s departure leaves oyster farmer Graham Platner, whose candidacy has drawn strong national support and huge piles of campaign donations, with a virtual lock on the Democratic nomination. Platner has remained popular with primary voters and contributors despite serious personal baggage that in the past might have sunk other candidates. While other Democratic candidates remain on the ballot, the polling and the money mean Platner’s almost certain to be the nominee to run against Collins, so Yr Wonkette will take our cue from the the bumper sticker that helped old corrupt Edwin Edwards beat literal KKK leader David Duke in the 1991 election for Louisiana governor: “Vote for the Crook. It’s Important.”
Platner, at least, isn’t a crook, and defeating Collins and taking back the Senate are essential to curbing Mad King Donald’s fascist attacks on democracy. But maybe don’t put “Get Your Noseplugs On And Vote For Platner” on a bumper sticker.
Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was quick to endorse Platner once Mills dropped out, opening up all the organizational and financial support that comes with the nomination. Schumer and fellow New Yorker Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, issued a statement saying they’re behind Platner because Collins has to go now. “After years of allowing Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” they wrote.
In an election year where Democrats are itchin’ for a fight against Trumpism, Platner may be the brawler for the moment.
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Mills was an early avatar of Democratic pushback against Trump shortly after his return to power. At a Governors Association dinner in February 2025, Trump lashed out at Mills over Maine’s policies allowing transgender students to play on the sports teams that match their gender identity, and demanded that she comply with his anti-trans executive order or he would pull all federal funding from the state.
Mills simply replied “I’ll see you in court,” and reminded us all that the short-fingered dictator can and must be told “no.” And once she actually saw him in court, Maine won.
Mills is also the only Democrat in almost 20 years who’s been able to win statewide office, but she got into the race well after Platner already captured the attention of voters looking for a fighter, and her campaign never really took off. At 78 and at heart a fairly conventional center-left politician, Mills, despite that much needed moment of defiance, simply didn’t make headway with voters tired of business as usual. While Platner promised he would oppose another term for Schumer as Senate Democratic leader, Mills was Schumer’s favored candidate.
Platner continued to consolidate support from voters who wanted new blood in the party, despite his goddamn SS Totenkopf tattoo and revelations of 2013 Reddit posts in which he’d written homophobic, racist, and sexist shit. Platner maintains that when he got the tattoo in 2007, during a drunken night on leave in Croatia, he and other Marines who chose the design thought it was only a badass scary warrior tattoo, and that when he learned it was a Nazi design last fall, he got it covered up with a Celtic design. He also said that he’s now “utterly horrified by” the old Reddit posts, and that it took him years of counseling to put such attitudes behind him.
“I can honestly say I did not know what the fuck I was talking about [expletive restored],” he told the Washington Post, adding, “I have been for quite some time on the opposite side of this conversation.”
As we discussed at the time, his contrition sounded both sincere and thorough, and good for him that he’s grown enough to reject terrible ideas. His willingness to talk about how he’s struggled to shed old awful ideas is admirable, although we’d still prefer a candidate who didn’t have a bunch of things to make amends for in the first place.
And as far as we can tell, Platner really is committed to the progressive policies he’s campaigning on, too, like taxing the super-rich and building an economy that’s fair for everyone. He’s for all kinds of things we support: unions, universal healthcare, taxing billionaires, ending Citizens United, a minimum wage hike, making housing more affordable, abortion rights, transgender people’s rights, public schools, protecting Social Security and Medicare, and even support for postal banking.
So yeah, we still have doubts about Platner, but now that he’s effectively the Democratic candidate, hell yes we back him over Collins. That really isn’t difficult. If he defeats her and contributes to Democrats retaking the Senate, that’s what we need right now. It’s important.
Here’s Jen Psaki’s MSNOW interview with Platner Thursday night. She noted the quick endorsement from Schumer, pointed out that the minority leader had asked Mills to run, and that until yesterday, Platner was the outsider candidate. Psaki asked what Platner’s relationship with Schumer is now that things have suddenly changed.
Platner said he’d spoken with Schumer briefly after the endorsement, and that pragmatism is what’s important now: “Nothing brings people together like beating Susan Collins,” Platner said. “There is no Democratic majority in the Senate without getting rid of Collins.”
Here’s that interview, which as a skeptic about Platner after the tattoo story broke, I found reassuring at least.
The guy really does have the rhetorical chops for a tough campaign — it’s what attracted us to him in the first place. What’s more, he seems well suited to withstand whatever attacks the GOP throws at him, including bad faith attacks about that goddamn tattoo and his past social media posts. It’s an absolute certainty that Collins’s campaign will hammer him on those right up to Election Day, even as she supports — with grave concerns — the guy who blithely muses about murdering an entire civilization.
So hell yes, let’s elect Graham Platner to the Senate. And if he turns out to suck, then hell yes, primary him all to heck in 2032.
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Platner was beating the living shit out of Mills in the polls, so there's that. And in a matchup with Collins, he's about +9, where Mills was dead even or under.
And Chuck Schumer can go fuck himself.
I'm not going to allow purity into my politics any time soon. Fascism vs democracy is the laser focus.