PORTLAND, Maine — Hopes among Democrats for a fresh contender to challenge Graham Platner have officially faded.
Governor Janet Mills took a trip to Boston to pay her respects at the funeral of the late Representative Barney Frank, while many Democrats across the nation quietly wished she would step in to rejuvenate the party’s efforts in Maine by restarting her Senate campaign against Platner, who has been mired in controversy.
Once a leading Democratic candidate for the Senate, Mills abruptly halted her campaign in late April after falling behind in polls to the contentious oyster farmer, Platner. At 78, Mills recently reminded voters that her name remains on the ballot, even as Platner’s campaign faces numerous allegations of misconduct, including claims from former partners.
Despite these challenges for Platner, Mills chose not to reignite her campaign, leaving anxious Democrats without a new viable candidate, and instead spent the night before the election attending a funeral.
“There’s a misconception that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’ but I merely paused active campaigning,” Mills shared with the Lewiston Sun Journal earlier this month. “I am still on the ballot.”
Ironically, Frank himself had backed Mills in the Senate race and, while in hospice, publicly expressed his qualms about Platner.
“I worry a little bit about the tendency on the Democratic side to fall for the flavor of the month,” Frank told Politico. “There is this flirtation or this attraction of people who are new and who are very good at articulating a response to the anger, but without talking about what you do about it.”
Under state law, candidates have to file to withdraw from the ballot 70 days before a primary, which, in this case, was the end of March.
“Mills sits vetted and scandal-free, with her only baggage being a list of accomplishments and a record of effective scorn for the president,” one Democratic operative noted, referencing the Maine governor’s battles with Trump executive actions.
Mills has refrained from endorsing anyone in the Maine Senate race. Multiple allies have privately urged her to get back into the Senate race as Democrats sweat over Platner’s viability in a general election.
The Maine governor has declined to do so, but her ballot position is widely seen as a way to gauge a potential Democratic protest vote against Platner, who is the party’s presumptive nominee at this point.
“I think if Platner is anywhere in the 60s he’s in trouble in terms of support,” a Democratic operative aligned with Mills told The Post.
Two other Democrats, David Costello, and write-in hopeful Andrea LaFlamme are also vying for the Maine Senate seat, but have lagged behind Platner dramatically in most polling.
Mills had been grappling with lackluster financial resources and a significant polling gap that motivated her to cease active campaigning.
Backed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Mills launched her campaign last October, months after Platner had kicked off his. Some critics argued she jumped into the race too late to gain traction.
Since suspending her campaign, Mills has made only a few public appearances to tout various accomplishments, such as legislation barring cellphones in classrooms, and to celebrate dairy farmers.
Now Democrats are doubtful that Platner can defeat incumbent Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) — a win that is paramount to Schumer’s hopes of reclaiming the Senate.
While Platner is ahead of Collins in the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate by 7.4 percentage points, she has a history of massively overperforming polls.
There’s also anxiety that the horny oyster farmer might have more skeletons in his closet than is currently known.
Last week, Platner was rocked by a bombshell report about his unsettling past behavior toward his former girlfriends.
One of them, Lyndsey Fifield, a GOP operative, alleged that Platner pulled her out of a cab by the wrists and at another point twisted her arm behind her back before locking her in a room. Platner has denied being physical.
The New York Times, which broke the story, also reported it reviewed past text messages she sent to a confidant describing his Nazi tattoo, before it was publicly known he had one.
The skull and crossbones tattoo on his chest resembled a Totenkopf, or “death’s head” symbol that the Nazi SS used, and Platner revealed he got it while inebriated in Croatia in 2007, but has insisted he had no idea about its ties to the Nazis.
Before the Fifield accusations broke, the Wall Street Journal reported that Platner was sexting with other women while married. He had tied the knot with his wife in 2023.
Then there’s the laundry list of his Reddit posts where he suggested a Purple Heart veteran didn’t deserve to live, defended urinating on a dead Taliban body, mused about doing unholy things to porta potties, and more.