A Democrat 5 years older than Susan Collins, 72, just entered Maine senate race. She’ll have to get past an oysterman first

Maine Governor Janet Mills has thrown her hat into the ring in what could be a hard-fought primary race for the right to challenge longtime Senator Susan Collins in next year’s midterm election.

The 77-year-old Democrat announced her candidacy in next year’s primary in a video highlighting the high-profile clash she had with President Donald Trump earlier this year over her state’s treatment of transgender children. Mills will have to defeat oyster farmer Graham Platner, a relative newcomer to Maine politics who launched an insurgent campaign in August with the backing of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

The campaign launch video replays the televised confrontation initiated by the president after Mills’ administration did not enthusiastically implement a Trump administration executive order banning transgender athletes from competing in school sports, when Mills famously told Trump: “See you in court.”

“Well I did see him in court. And we won,” Mills says.

The governors recounts how she’d heard her father’s voice telling her not to let “bullies have their way” when she was launching her political career by running for district attorney, then for attorney general and again for governor.

“We stood up to Trump and stopped him from cutting the school lunch program for Maine kids. But there are too many politicians in Washington – including Susan Collins – who have forgotten their principles and let bullies like Trump have their way. And it’s hurting Maine people,” she says before adding that she’s “never backed down from a bully” and “never will.”

Mills continues by stating that she wouldn’t be running for Senate if Trump and Congress “were doing things that were even remotely acceptable” before rattling off a list of grievances against the administration on issues such as health care costs, inflation, and the massive corporate tax cuts enacted in Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act.

She adds that Collins, a Republican who has represented Maine in the upper chamber since 1997, “helped him” with all of that — including overturning Roe v. Wade by voting for Trump’s Supreme Court nominees.

“I won't sit idly by while Maine people suffer and politicians like Susan Collins bend the knee as if this were normal,” she says. “My life’s work has prepared me for this fight, and I’m ready to win.”

Mills, who is in her final term as Maine’s chief executive, is relatively popular, with a recent University of New Hampshire poll putting her approval rating at roughly 55 percent.

Her entry into the race represents a significant victory for Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has made knocking off Collins — one of a small remaining number of moderate Republicans who occasionally vote against Trump administration initiatives — a major priority in his push to regain the majority in the upper chamber despite a tough electoral map and an increasingly polarized political environment nationwide.

Schumer has had some success in recruiting high-profile candidates in key Senate races this year, including Mills, ex-North Carolina governor Roy Cooper and former Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

But the 74-year-old New Yorker’s imprimatur may not be enough to get Mills through the primary at a time when Democrats are increasingly wary of running elderly candidates in the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous aborted re-election campaign last year.

Platner is a 41-year-old oyster farmer who served in both the Army and Marine Corps, and has taken an explicitly populist line that has garnered approval from multiple youth-focused groups.

Already, the newcomer has received endorsements from ex-Democratic National Committee vice-chair David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, Voters of Tomorrow, College Democrats of America, Gen-Z for Change and Youth Save Democracy.

In a statement announcing the endorsement, Hogg highlighted how the Democratic Party’s internal debates “have rightly centered on age, the loss of young men, the working class and the growing disillusionment of young voters” after last year’s election losses.

“As our party charts a path forward, Graham Platner represents not the entire solution, but a vital step in the right direction,” he added.

Sunjay Muralitharan, national president of the College Democrats of America, said in a statement that his group “deeply appreciates” Mills’ efforts to “stand up to MAGA’s fascism” but said the party is “in deep need of a new generation of leadership.”

Platner’s campaign recently announced that it had brought in $4 million since launching in August, giving him a formidable war chest as Mills enters the race.

Whoever comes out on top in next year’s primary will have their work cut out for them against Collins, who easily defeated challenger Sara Gideon in the 2020 election after both candidates spent roughly $100 million combined.

Collins has long been a top target for Democrats, owing to her habit of criticizing Trump while voting for his initiatives.

After his first impeachment trial in 2020, Collins voted to acquit the president on charges that he’d abused his power by using military aid to extort Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. At the time, she famously said she hoped Trump had “learned his lesson.”

A year later, she voted to convict him in the wake of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.