As Congress barreled towards a government shutdown Tuesday evening, Gov. Janet Mills, former Gov. Paul LePage and various Maine candidates offered a glimpse into the polarizing nature of the debate on a short-term spending deal.
The Republican-controlled Senate was expected to vote around 5:30 p.m. Tuesday on competing plans from the GOP and Democrats to avert a shutdown that would begin Wednesday and affect Maine and federal employees in various ways. Shutdown odds were high after President Donald Trump’s meeting Monday with top lawmakers yielded no breakthrough.
The chief divide remained over Democrats wanting to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that expire at the end of the year and to reverse Medicaid cuts included in Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that he signed in July. Republicans insisted on their “clean” stopgap deal to fund the government through Nov. 21 before negotiating separately on the tax credits.
Shutdown threats have become routine in Washington, but this year’s logjam comes as the 2026 campaign season in Maine is well underway, resulting in candidates for the governor’s office, U.S. Senate and U.S. House sharing vastly different takes ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Gov. Janet Mills, who is termed out of office next year and considering getting in the Democratic race to take on U.S. Sen. Susan Collins in 2026, had warned earlier in September that health insurance rates are already jumping in Maine. More than 51,000 of the 61,000 Mainers insured on the state’s CoverMe.gov marketplace may see an average $258 increase in monthly premiums if the tax credits expire, while 9,500 Mainers would lose the credit, Mills said.
Mills wants the “Trump administration and Republicans in Congress to stop playing games with government funding and Americans’ health care,” spokesperson Ben Goodman said Tuesday.
“Republicans should keep the government open and ensure that people across Maine and America have access to affordable health care,” the governor’s spokesperson added. “It’s baffling to her that Republicans are so determined to prevent Americans from having affordable health care that they’ll shut down the government.”
LePage, the governor’s predecessor who lost to Mills in a 2022 rematch and is seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Jared Golden in next year’s 2nd District race, held a much different view of the shutdown spat. The Republican’s campaign strategist deferred Monday to a Facebook post LePage made Tuesday morning.
LePage posted a meme with an image from Disney’s “Cinderella” featuring the words, “Illegal Immigrants,” above the title character’s head as she tries on a slipper from what LePage’s post called “D.C. Democrats.” It was a nod to a false claim Trump has also made regarding Democratic demands that do not include health coverage for undocumented immigrants.
Sullivan oysterman and military veteran Graham Platner, a Democrat who has drawn national attention and big crowds to town hall-style events after announcing in August his campaign to beat Collins, used a Monday post on Instagram to air the view that more progressive members of his party have echoed in calling for Democratic lawmakers to not support a Republican deal without getting the tax credit and Medicaid funding demands included.
“Now we know they’re not going to do it,” Platner said of Republicans restoring Medicaid cuts, “but that’s why you have to ask for it and then message on it. Pretending that we’re supposed to still be in this world where we’re going to find some common ground with the Republican Party on these things, it’s insane, and it just makes us lose and continue losing.”
The stances of Maine’s congressional delegation were not a big question mark before Tuesday’s vote, given what members did during a failed series of votes earlier in September on dueling spending plans from each party. Collins and all Republican senators except U.S. Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska supported the GOP plan that failed 44-48, while the Democratic version also fell well short of the 60-vote threshold.
U.S. Sen. Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a 1st District Democrat, opposed the GOP version. Golden, the 2nd District moderate facing a potential primary ahead of any LePage matchup next year, continued his pattern of being the only House Democrat to vote for a Republican-backed spending deal, but Golden noted he is also sponsoring a bipartisan effort to extend the health insurance tax credits.
