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Janet Mills, Maine’s Democratic governor, didn’t have the money to fully prosecute her case against Graham Platner in the state’s Senate race. Republicans do — and it’s going to get ugly, fast.
Top Republican groups are pivoting quickly to launching a negative barrage at Platner as he seeks to defeat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. It’s a mission that’s taking on an almost militaristic tone given Maine’s outsized importance in the battle for the Senate majority.
“I can just tell you that we should have an all-out assault on the concept that somehow, some way, Graham Platner will squeak through. He has to be exposed,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., told Semafor.
Scott said Mills “obviously would have been more mainstream for Maine. And frankly, I care about the future of our country, and what is clear is Graham Platner should not, cannot, and will not be the future of the party or the country, because we’re going to stop that from happening.”
Senate Republicans’ primary super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, has reserved $42 million in fall ads. A sister nonprofit group, One Nation, is running a suite of ads now totaling $18 million.
“It’s a good thing Graham Platner isn’t a real oysterman from Maine because he’ll no longer be able to live in the state after we thoroughly beat the sh*t out of him,” said SLF executive director Alex Latcham.
Platner did not immediately comment but said Thursday he wants to work with Mills “to defeat Susan Collins and turn this seat blue again.”
Democrats have their own expanding ad campaign against Collins. The Democrat-aligned Senate Majority PAC has made a $24 million reservation for fall TV ads and also has a “significant” digital campaign, according to SMP spokeswoman Lauren French. Nonprofit Majority Forward has also spent several million in the state and is currently targeting Collins over Iran.
“Bring it on. Susan Collins is an anemic and tired candidate. Any semblance of a record has been swept aside after six years of voting against the interests of Maine and with Donald Trump 90% of the time.
She has become a caricature of her former self,” French said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee both supported Mills over Platner but suggested they will have his back against Collins. They said Thursday that “Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her.”
Neither the DSCC nor the NRSC have reserved ads in Maine yet. Collins has about $10 million on hand for her campaign, while Platner has raised nearly $12 million but spent most of it, with about $2.7 million on hand.
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Mills ran several ads hitting Platner for his Reddit posts, specifically one in which he suggested people should “take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f*cked up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to.” But the ad buys were far smaller than what Republicans have in store.
Scott, who was just in Maine for the state’s GOP convention, suggested Republicans’ campaign against Platner will be wide-ranging and cover his posts about rural white voters and Black people tipping less, as well as his biography. Platner is a military veteran and now an oyster farmer in Maine and a native of the state, though he briefly went to private school in Connecticut.
“He is dangerous. He seems to not like anybody, doesn’t like rural white people, thinks Black people are bad with their money, and frankly, it seems like he’s a phony,” Scott said. “I think that the words ‘phony,’ ‘privilege’ are incredibly important. And underscoring that for the next several months is what we will make sure happens.”
Burgess’s view
Republicans’ negative spending plans on Platner are hugely consequential, but they will also test the tolerance of the Maine electorate for negative campaigns. In 2020, Democrats tried to destroy Collins on the airwaves, running obscene amounts of ads for the small state.
Either way, Platner is in for more scrutiny than he’s ever received. And Democrats are watching closely to see how far their party goes in helping him over the next six months in this vital race.