Janet Mills ends Senate campaign in Maine, paving way for Graham Platner to win Democratic nomination

Washington — Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday that she is suspending her campaign for Senate, all but ensuring Graham Platner will get the Democratic nomination to take on incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine in one of November’s most important Senate races.

“While I have the drive and the 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 require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement. 

Maine is a top target for Democrats in the 2026 midterm elections, since Collins is the only Republican senator from a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024.

Collins issued a short statement after Mills’ announcement: “I’m sure this was a difficult decision for Governor Mills, and I thank her for her decades of service to the people of Maine.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had recruited Mills, the only Democrat to have won statewide in Maine in 25 years, to challenge Collins. But her age — she will be 79 when a new Congress convenes next year — had been a concern for Democrats in the state. Platner, a 41-year-old oyster farmer and political newcomer, announced he would challenge her for the nomination. 

An Emerson College poll in March found Platner leading Mills by 27 points, a sign of the strength of his campaign. Platner raised $4 million in the first three months of 2026 alone. 

In a statement reacting to Mills’ decision to drop out, Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, the head of the Senate’s campaign arm, called her a “formidable governor,” and said they would work to support Platner’s campaign.

“Democrats are dedicated to fighting back against the chaos of the Trump administration by defeating the Republicans who enable his harmful agenda and that includes Susan Collins. 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,” the statement from Schumer and Gillibrand said.

In Mills’ statement suspending her campaign, she said she had decided to run because she believed “Maine people were getting a bad deal from Washington and because the President of the United States was threatening our democracy and pushing our nation to the brink of disaster. I still believe that today.”

Platner has faced some setbacks in his bid so far, including the discovery of controversial comments he made on Reddit about his time in the military and about women, as well as a tattoo that resembled a Nazi insignia. He apologized for the online comments and said he had unknowingly gotten the tattoo while stationed in Europe, and later covered it up.