Are Democrats About to Blow It in Maine?

By backing Janet Mills over a grassroots outsider, party leaders may be repeating the same mistakes from 2024

Maine is the most important Senate race in the country. Democrats have a narrow path to a majority, but they have no path if they cannot defeat Susan Collins in a state Kamala Harris won by seven points last year. Collins is the last Republican representing a truly blue state. Losing Maine wouldn’t just hurt Democrats in the near term; it would make it much less likely that a new Democratic president would have a Senate majority in 2029. The Senate map is so biased toward Republicans that we simply cannot afford to lose a single winnable seat.

The high stakes really make me wonder what the hell Senate Democrats are doing in Maine.

There are currently a handful of candidates running for the Democratic nomination to take on Collins. The most notable is Graham Platner, a harbor master and oyster farmer who served in both the Army and the Marines. Platner has generated a ton of buzz and grassroots enthusiasm with a populist, reform-minded message and viral videos of him handling tough questions at town halls. His campaign has raised $4 million since its launch, including $1 million this week alone.

Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) have not been satisfied with Platner or any of the other candidates. They’ve spent months recruiting Governor Janet Mills and letting everyone know that she would be their preferred candidate in the race.

Explicit or implicit support from Schumer and the DSCC means more money, more endorsements, and a signal that their chosen candidate is the most “electable.” The candidate backed by the party committee almost always wins the primary.

After months of indecision, Mills appears to be getting in. Punchbowl News’ John Bresnahan reports that Mills has been calling Democratic senators to let them know she plans to announce her candidacy officially next week.

Now, I have nothing against Mills. As far as I can tell, she has been a good governor and handled herself very well in a confrontation with Trump earlier this year. I don’t know Platner — I’ve never met him — but I’ve been impressed by his campaign so far. He could be a great candidate, or not. We don’t know.

However, the Democratic establishment putting its thumb on the scale so aggressively for Mills suggests they may be repeating some of the same mistakes that got us into this mess in the first place.

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Misreading the Political Environment

In a different era, Janet Mills would be a top-tier, A-plus recruit. She’s a two-term, popular governor with a history of winning statewide. She won reelection in 2022 by an impressive 13 points. She’s ideologically and temperamentally moderate — very much in line with Maine voters — and could not be more qualified for the job.

But politics has changed dramatically in the last few years. The qualities that once made someone a winning candidate may now be weaknesses.

A deep-seated anger and frustration with our political and economic system powers today’s politics. People have never been more cynical about politicians, and trust in institutions is at an all-time low.

In the final New York Times/Siena poll before the 2024 election, 92% of likely voters said America’s political and economic system needed changes, and 51% said it needed major change.

That helps explain why every election for the last decade has been a change election — why we went from Obama to Trump to Biden to Trump — and why the House and Senate have both flipped twice since 2016.

In this tumultuous environment, the Democratic brand is faring poorly. A Wall Street Journal poll from July found that the Democratic Party’s approval rating was at its lowest level in 35 years.

Democrats aren’t much happier with their leaders than the rest of the public. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 62% of Democrats want new leaders. There’s also a lot of gerontocracy at the top of the party. Concerns about Biden’s age dominated politics for years, and the debate over his ill-fated decision to seek reelection still rages.

Given all of this, I have to question the political judgment of anyone who looks at the current landscape and concludes that the right answer is a 77-year-old establishment politician. At the end of her first Senate term, Mills would be in her mid-80s — several years older than Joe Biden was when he dropped out of the presidential race. According to Politico, the DSCC has never even reached out to Platner.

In 2020, Democrats ran an establishment politician against Collins and got their asses kicked. Mills would likely run a better campaign than Sara Gideon, but at a time when voters hate politicians, are down on Democrats, and are yearning for younger leaders, is a 77-year-old, two-term incumbent governor really the best choice?

The fact that Senate Democratic leadership is so sure she is concerns the hell out of me.

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Stop Playing Not to Lose

The establishment picking Mills over Platner illustrates one of my biggest concerns about their approach to politics in recent years. Democrats are incredibly risk-averse. We optimize for the candidate least likely to lose by a lot — preferring high-floor, low-ceiling candidates over low-floor, high-ceiling ones.

There are some races where all you need is a competent, generic Democrat — someone disciplined enough not to self-immolate. That works when the Republican is an extremist like Herschel Walker in Georgia or Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, or when running against a generic Republican in a deep-blue state.

The Maine Senate race is not one of those. Susan Collins is very hard to beat. She won reelection in 2020 by nearly nine points in a state Biden won by 11 — a stunning number of crossover votes in this era. She’s done a lot to enable Trump’s worst impulses, but the size of the Republican majority has allowed her to distance herself from him. Because the GOP didn’t need her vote, Collins was able to oppose the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and some of Trump’s most toxic nominees.

To beat someone like Collins, Democrats need to take risks and think outside the box. Mills is the safe choice, but she may not be the right choice. Platner could blow up — or he could win back a bunch of working-class Trump voters. He has a lower floor but a higher ceiling. In a tough race against a tough opponent, that’s the kind of candidate Democrats should at least be open to.

Mills isn’t the only “safe” candidate backed by the DSCC. In Michigan, they’re supporting centrist Rep. Haley Stevens over less proven but more exciting options like state Sen. Mallory McMorrow or Abdul El-Sayed. I have met all three candidates. I like all of them, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why the DSCC is getting involved in this race.

If Mills (and Stevens) want to run for Senate, they absolutely should — but voters in those states should pick their nominees, not Beltway Democrats. The DSCC doesn’t have to endorse anyone — and usually doesn’t. Democratic elites imposing their judgment on voters is how we ended up with Joe Biden running for reelection against the wishes of most Democrats.

The fact that the DSCC is intervening so aggressively against younger, outsider, and talented candidates is deeply concerning. It suggests a failure to learn anything from 2024.