LEWISTON, Maine — Lobbyist Tony Buxton talked to Gov. Janet Mills by phone Wednesday night, offering to raise more money for a U.S. Senate primary that was on life support.
“Hold off,” she said.
Mills did not otherwise preview the decision she made at 8:45 a.m. to drop out of the race. It all but guaranteed a historic victory for political newcomer Graham Platner over a 78-year-old governor who was born into Maine’s civic arena. Democrats from here to Washington quickly coalesced behind him in the high-stakes race against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.
It was the product of Mills’ late entry and a series of miscalculations by her allies and national Democrats. A governor that had long restrained her party in Augusta prompted pent-up frustration among unions and progressives who discovered a talented standard bearer in Platner. He criss-crossed the state and backed her into a corner she could not escape.
Her last gasp was a March ad blitz focused on Platner’s old, offensive Reddit posts that rocked his campaign when they were disclosed in October. But his polling lead remained steady. Republicans are beginning to pick his record apart. Some Mills allies still think her theory that he is unelectable will be proven in the end.
By 11 a.m., Platner was at a podium inside the Governor Hill Mansion in Augusta, where a news conference originally meant to announce state legislative endorsements had taken on the atmosphere of an election-night victory party. Mills was done. He was just getting started.
“The race has never been about me or really about one person,” Platner said. “It’s about a movement of working Mainers who are fed up with being robbed by billionaires and the politicians who own them.”
In spring 2025, those close to Mills were saying the idea of running against Collins had gone from an idle thought around the holidays to a real possibility. When Buxton talked to Mills over the summer, he said he told her she didn’t have to run. She told him that President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Senate were putting democracy at stake.
Platner was a political unknown when he got into the race in August. His launch was covered in The New York Times, surprising many observers in Maine. It came after the candidate was discovered by a duo of political operatives who linked Platner with unions and consultants.
He built heavy attention by keeping a busy schedule drawing large crowds at town hall-style meetings across the state. After Mills got into the race in October, the Reddit posts and the revelation that the Marine veteran had a tattoo of a skull-and-crossbones symbol linked to Nazis rocked his campaign and led to major staff turnover.
The Platner campaign was steadied in part by progressives who had long-simmering differences with Mills. The Maine People’s Alliance, which worked against Mills in the 2018 gubernatorial primary and pushed to no avail for Mills to overturn Republican-led tax cuts, lent him longtime employee Ben Chin as campaign manager and later endorsed Platner.
“The business community really drives her,” Jim Lysen, a longtime MPA activist who attended Platner events in Lewiston on Thursday, said. “She’s disappointed us a lot.”
Mills led a poll released in December, but things shifted dramatically after that. Much of her momentum was sapped with a February survey showing her 38 points down. In recent weeks, she was holding small events. Earlier this month, reporters watched her speak with a few local officials on the second floor of a nearly empty Indian restaurant in Westbrook.
An ally of the governor who spoke under condition of anonymity said they spoke to national donors who could have surged money toward Mills but grew skittish in recent weeks, fearing anything spent to attack Platner was simply going to damage the party’s nominee. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and other Mills allies sent no help.
That left Mills’ campaign to pay for the March attacks on Platner. They generated media coverage but were drowned out by Platner, who was outspending her on the air by four times at one point. She stopped advertising this month. When Mills dropped out on Thursday, she cited a desire to keep competing but said she did not have enough money to go on.
Her campaign noted several challenges on Thursday, saying she got in late and had to play catch-up while managing a divided legislative caucus, a state budget during an affordability crisis and the Trump administration’s funding cuts and immigration actions.
But Platner supporters tell a more basic story. Karen Varney, a retiree who recently returned to Maine, attended Platner’s Augusta event and noted he is considerably younger than either Mills or Collins and predicted many of her friends who backed Mills would come around quickly.
“She was not going to win,” Patricia Harris of Augusta, a former Mills voter now volunteering for Platner, said. “The goal is to beat Susan Collins.”
National Republicans wasted no time projecting confidence about the general election. Senate Republicans’ campaign arm called Platner “a phony who is too extreme for Maine.” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina congratulated Collins, saying on X that she was now running against “the most extreme candidate in the 2026 cycle.”
Platner’s internal polling showed that Mills’ attacks on his past statements backfired, Chin said on a Thursday call with reporters, arguing that it foreshadowed failure for a pro-Collins campaign backed by “billionaires who have just decimated the Maine economy.”
Mills joins a line of Maine politicians who ran one race too many. The most notable parallel is the legendary Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, a friend of Mills’ Republican politico father who lost her bid for a fifth term in 1972. Her advanced age of 74 was an issue in that race.
“I feel badly for Janet, and I feel badly for our democracy,” Buxton said. “This is going to be a very interesting period.”
