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Chuck Schumer may hope Maine Gov. Janet Mills wins the Democratic nomination to run against Susan Collins next fall, but Mills is still starting off by keeping her distance from him.
If Mills makes it to the Senate by navigating a tough primary and then beating Collins, she says Schumer will need to prove he’s worth her support to remain Democratic leader.
“Nobody in the state of Maine has asked me about Chuck Schumer. And I’ve actually met with him only once in my life, seven or eight months ago. And I’ve made no promises, no commitments, to anybody running for leadership,” Mills told Semafor in an interview.
“My vote is not guaranteed to Senator Schumer or anybody else; they’ll have to earn it,” she added.
The two-term governor’s decision to run for the Senate seat will no doubt cheer Schumer — and it instantly makes Maine’s campaign into one of the most important in the nation. First Mills will test whether Democrats have changed their electability calculus by taking on a crowded primary field, including 40-year-old oysterman Graham Platner, who opposes Schumer as leader.
If Mills wins the nomination, she’ll face a five-term incumbent who has defeated every kind of Maine Democrat in previous races, from a popular congressman to the statehouse speaker. Mills says she’s different, having stood up to Trump directly and beaten Republicans in elections.
“Her record of winning elections has been taking on untested candidates. Those are the people who’ve lost to Susan Collins. I am not untested,” Mills said. “I’m the only person in this primary who’s actually won an election. Not only that, I’ve won two tough statewide elections.”
Still, Mills’ candidacy will answer plenty of questions about the Democratic Party. She’s running against brewer Dan Kleban, former congressional aide Jordan Wood and Platner, who is drawing large crowds. Backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, he’s also drawing praise from other Democratic senators.
Sanders has called senior Democrats’ recruitment of Mills “disappointing.”
Mills is 77 years old — still seven years younger than Sanders, who just won another six-year term. Mills said she considered age as she deliberated this summer and fall.
“It wasn’t a done deal in my mind, but I kept thinking, ‘I just can’t sit idly by while Donald Trump hurts Maine people and Senator Collins fails to stop him’,” Mills said.
“I just couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do this. I have choices. I could just serve out the rest of my term and go to camp and fish and read books. But that’s not who I am.”
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Mills enters the race at a strange moment — the government has been shut down for two weeks and Collins is among the aspiring dealmakers trying to figure out how to reopen it.
In her interview with Semafor, the governor criticized the dysfunction that led to the shutdown and the lack of a plan to revive expiring health care tax credits. Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, and Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, are among the few Democratic caucus members who have joined Republicans in voting for the House’s stopgap funding bill.
Mills did not say directly whether she would join them.
She replied that “it isn’t rocket science to be able to do at least a continuing resolution and preserve health care, preserve the tax credits on which thousands of Maine people rely for their health insurance. I think they can do both.”
“I would vote for continuing health care. I would vote to extend the tax credits, whether it’s a separate bill or part of the current negotiations to extend the continuing resolution. But I think it’s strangely dysfunctional that Congress and the White House can’t get this done,” Mills added.
Mills and Collins have historically enjoyed a friendly relationship — at times even more so than Collins and former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, whom Mills defeated in 2022. That will all change now.
Semafor asked Mills to expand on her remark this summer that Collins is in a “tough position” on President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Mills said that “somebody asked, ‘Is she doing enough?’ I said: ‘I appreciate what she is doing.’ But obviously not what she isn’t doing.”
Collins still breaks regularly from Trump, opposing his tax cuts legislation this year because of its Medicaid cuts. She also voted against spending rescissions and the confirmation of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Mills is focusing on Collins’ votes for several other Trump nominees: Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Education Secretary Linda McMahon.
“Maine has a tremendous legacy of US senators who stood up for democracy, Republicans and Democrats, from Margaret Chase Smith to Bill Cohen and George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe,” Mills said.
“And I just think that Senator Collins has not lived up to that legacy, not lived up to the moment. And I am able to do that.”
Room for Disagreement
When Semafor talked to Platner earlier this fall, he argued that beating Collins necessitates a fresh approach.
“If you don’t get a candidate that’s going to inspire and energize a lot of the independents — many of whom, I will say, sat out the last election because they’re just disgusted with the establishment political system of this country — if you don’t get a candidate that can do that, you are running a serious risk of losing, yet again, to Susan Collins,” Platner said.
Burgess’s view
Mills is a blue-chip recruit, joining former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown at the top of Schumer’s roster of challengers. But her timing has set up a tougher primary than I’d have expected a year ago.
In particular, Platner’s entry into the race before Mills makes the contest much harder to predict, particularly in my small home state, where polling is notoriously difficult. Platner and Kleban have both said they will not exit the race to make way for Mills.
That makes her path harder than Cooper’s or Brown’s, who respectively face an open seat and an appointed incumbent in their races. Mills must beat back a Sanders-inspired candidate and several other Democrats, then defeat electoral unicorn Collins.
It’s rare that you can learn so much about the country’s politics in one Senate race, but Maine’s upcoming one might fit the bill.
Notable
- The two parties are already running shutdown ads in the state, Axios reports.