Susan Collins remains forever unconcerned. One of the Republicans’ most reliable meme generators isn’t fretting over Janet Mills’s entry into the race for Maine’s Senate seat.
She has Graham Platner to thank for this moment of Zen. The oyster farmer and Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran turned the governor’s waltz into the race against Collins into a 2026 Democratic primary battle. Phenomenal crowds have shown up—eight months before the election—to hear from one of the most charismatic newcomers to surge into Maine politics in recent memory.
While most Maine Democrats would rather see off Mills—who, should she win, would be 79 years old when she takes office in 2027—into a comfortable retirement, they are more sanguine than national Democrats are about the development that pits two appealing candidates against each other.
Collins’s campaign has downplayed the reconfigured Democratic contest as “very chaotic.” But excitement isn’t chaos. What should concern Collins is that the anger surging in Maine over the dismal state of the United States could launch her into retirement.
Collins has a known-quantity appeal for older voters and Republicans who’d never vote for a Democrat. Often underestimated as vulnerable, the five-term senator is a survivor. She won her 2020 race by nearly nine percentage points. She’s the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, the literal bring-home-the-bacon Capitol Hill power-broker prize. And yet, with the White House pulling all the strings in a deflated Congress, any power she could have wielded has instead left her with all the influence of a freshman legislator. Back home, her infrequent public events this past summer, ones that should have been low-key affairs, like a ribbon-cutting for a new roadworks, have degenerated into shouting fests featuring irate voters.
“This the first time I’ve ever found myself saying Susan Collins is in big trouble, and part of it is people are actually tired of her—and not just Democrats,” says Alan Caron, a former strategic messaging consultant who ran for governor in 2018 as an independent. “She couldn’t be running at a worse time.”
MAINE HAS A LONG-STANDING POLITICAL DIVIDE between the small towns of the northern forests and mountains and the southern seacoast communities. The deep polarization strangling the country is just as pronounced in this idiosyncratic state. Most registered voters are Democrats, comprising more than a third of the state’s one million voters; the remaining two-thirds almost equally split between Republicans and unenrolled voters. Yet as Democratic candidates have lost some of their historic crossover appeal in the rural north, the southern seacoast has turned a deeper shade of blue.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has emerged as a mentor of sorts to Platner. But as furious as the Vermont independent may be about Mills’s decision—he publicly urged her to stay out of the race—age is likely to be less of an issue in the Democratic primary in a place with the highest median age in the country—and most Mainers over 65 vote. Collins herself is only five years younger, so age issues would fade out if a Collins-Mills contest comes to pass.
More importantly, neither Mills nor Platner faces the “real Mainer” stress test that helped bring down former Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, the Rhode Island-born and -raised Democrat who lost to Collins in 2020. “They’re going to have more difficulty making those people seem like they’re not like us,” says Caron. “So that weapon comes out of Susan Collins’s arsenal.”
Being the House Speaker for four years was not as good as “being from Maine,” says Michael Franz, a Bowdoin College professor of government and legal studies. Multigenerational lineage takes on an importance here that’s absent in many other states. But the timeline has shifted, and Mills may be out of step with the current Democratic primary electorate as “a little too moderate,” Franz adds.
Over her eight-year tenure, Mills has navigated her fair share of crises, coming into office tasked with repairing a state government bureaucracy that had been decimated by former Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s scorched-earth campaign. She implemented Medicaid expansion by executive order and presided over rebuilding the state’s health care system. But that system is still in crisis. Five of Maine’s 24 rural hospitals are at the brink of closure; federal budget cuts promise to put more of them in the same condition.
Mills has been a staunch supporter of abortion and reproductive rights. But she has frustrated transgender rights advocates even after her see-you-in-court moment at the White House by failing to dive into the fray over state policies back home.
Another veto did away with tax increases on high-income earners despite indications of public support. Tariff pressures have come down hard on this northern border state. Tourism suffered this past summer under Canada’s travel boycott and Canadian travelers’ fears about ICE despite her efforts to mend fences with the premiers of Atlantic Canada. Her relationships with Maine’s Native American tribes have been volatile. She vetoed a bill that would prevent the state government from seizing tribal lands by eminent domain.
State lawmakers passed a bill providing specific parameters for local police in their interactions with ICE, but Mills hasn’t signed it and is waiting until next year to address her reservations about the complex bill.
Older and reliably Democratic voters will probably stick with Mills, the first governor to face off against the president. “She’s established her bona fides against Trump,” says Franz. “She’s not just going to be a Joe Manchin Democrat.” But voters bent on seismic change will look past the two-term governor. “She’s certainly progressive on some issues, and is a Democrat, for sure,” he adds. “But she has often taken stances on things that frustrate many progressive Democrats, and that will be looming large over this campaign.”
GRAHAM PLATNER IS THE HARBORMASTER and planning board chair in the town of Sullivan, north of Bar Harbor. His comparative youth, age 41, and real talk laced with a generous helping of cuss words has reshaped the political ecosystem. It’s a feat that would be impressive in most states but is phenomenal in a small, tradition-bound one like Maine. Or as a UAW state official put it, “Graham directly addresses the hard issues in a straightforward and relatable way.”
After his August launch, hundreds of people RSVP’d to small venues, forcing last-minute shifts to larger ones. His campaign reports recruiting 11,000 volunteers; he’s secured the support of the United Auto Workers, the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, and Maine State Nurses Association.
Should he make it to Capitol Hill, Platner aims to tackle a broad range of issues, from health care, climate, ending “billionaire tax dodging,” and veterans affairs, to raising the minimum wage and federal LGBTQ anti-discrimination measures and more. He’ll have his work cut out for him debating Mills, a former attorney general, on any one of them.
But Caron believes that the Democratic nomination won’t be won on policy chops. “Experience is a liability in this climate,” Caron says. “It will win a certain bloc of voters who are older and who value that more. But you’ve got a lot of people out there that just want to throw the bums out.”
More than a few of those people are furious young Democrats. For them, Mills’s debut was another entry in Chuck Schumer’s gerontocratic/incumbent protection program. The frustration with senior politicians holding back the next generation already well into middle age has younger operatives excited by Platner’s potential.
But that potential has been dinged, even for a vote that’s still a long ways off. Since everything is almost forever on the web, it doesn’t matter how many posts a candidate like Platner deletes. This week, a CNN investigation featured a trove of Reddit posts that offer a window into Platner’s period of deep disillusionment during the early years of the pandemic. He hurled condemnations of police, described himself as “a vegetable-growing, psychedelics-taking socialist,” and came down hard on what he termed rural whites’ racism and stupidity. “Living in white rural America, I’m afraid to tell you they actually are,” he said echoing comments once made by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In a CNN interview, he fessed up fast, gingerly walking back some statements (on racism) but not others (on January 6th).
Others are unfazed by the CNN episode. One Redditor commented, “Alternate headline: Yet Again, Platner Spits Facts.” But his stint with the private security contractor Constellis/Blackwater no doubt has opposition researchers and investigators working overtime.
The third Democrat in the race, Jordan Wood, is former Rep. Katie Porter’s (D-CA) onetime chief of staff. He’s pulled in a healthy $3 million in contributions and wants to see debates held in each of the state’s 16 counties. He faces a serious challenge being heard over the din of Mills and an even harder time raising money going forward.
“It’s going to be just a frenzied state of mailings and videos and ads,” says Franz. “You’re going to see a lot of outside spending, dark money, and super PAC spending.
Within 24 hours of her announcement, Mills had raised $1 million, while Platner kept up with $500,000 during the same time period. So far, he’s raised more than $4 million. But there’s grumbling over the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee putting their dollars behind Mills’s campaign almost instantaneously. To make the June 9, 2026, primary even more interesting, Maine uses ranked-choice voting.
“We know who Janet Mills is, we don’t yet know who Platner is, but a lot of people are impressed, so he’s going to be a big factor here,” says Caron. “Either one of them could win the primary, and I think either one of them will beat Susan Collins.”