Gov. Janet Mills’ supporters publicly insist she can still win Maine’s Senate seat. But quietly, many of them in both Maine and Washington say she’s running out of time to defeat Graham Platner in the primary.
“In the last week, for a lot of people, the perception of her race has really changed,” said one Maine Democratic official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “I just think her negative ads don’t feel like they’re working.”
The governor’s campaign unveiled a run of ads in mid-March targeting Platner over his controversial history of online comments. Some of Mills’ supporters had eagerly anticipated the ads, believing they would be the key to convincing Democratic voters that Platner was unfit to be the party’s nominee against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
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But the ads appeared to have little immediate effect on the race, and Mills’ campaign stopped running ads of any kind at the end of the last week. That’s left supporters wondering, with less than two months before the June 9 primary, how the governor could regain momentum in time.
“If that was the perceived best path to get to victory and it didn’t work, what’s going to work now? What other levers are there to pull?” said one ally of the governor, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “I think it’s an uphill battle.”
Mills’ race against Platner, an oyster farmer and political newcomer whose blunt brand of progressive politics has attracted a national following, has become arguably the party’s most high-profile primary of 2026, pitting the Democratic establishment against a restless liberal base eager for new kinds of candidates. Mills has been endorsed by Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, whose involvement in primaries has become a major issue to some activists.
Schumer’s decades of influence over Democratic primaries would take a serious hit if Mills fails. And her losing could affect the party’s ability to defeat Collins in November, in a state many strategists consider a must-win if Democrats have any hope of winning a Senate majority in this year’s midterm election.
Officials with Mills’ campaign say the governor remains committed to winning the primary, convinced she’s the candidate best suited to take on Collins.
“Governor Mills is ready to defeat Susan Collins, while Republicans admit they are eager to exploit Graham Platner’s abhorrent comments and never-ending controversies,” said Chelsea Brossard, Mills’ campaign manager. “We believe voters will see this contrast and our campaign will continue to spend every day focused on making this case to voters.”
The campaign announced last week that Mills had raised $2.6 million in the first fundraising quarter of the year while also agreeing to a series of five debates against Platner.
Some of Mills’ supporters say the governor remains on track to win the primary, even if the race has been more competitive than expected.
“Campaigns are a roller coaster of ups and downs, and I think the governor has an opportunity in the next 60 days to get on the upside,” said Emily Cain, a former state lawmaker in Maine and Mills supporter.
Cain, a longtime friend of the governor, said Mills was often doubted in previous campaigns only to eventually come out on top. That same fight and determination, she added, will keep her in the race against Platner, whom voters are still just getting to know.
But the 78-year-old Mills has faced questions about her age during the campaign from Democratic voters who worry the party’s leadership has become too old and stale. And critics say her long tenure in public service and endorsement from Schumer has helped convince some voters that her candidacy represents a familiar and failed formula from the Democratic Party, one that couldn’t prevent President Donald Trump from winning the White House twice.
But on the ground, her campaign faces a more fundamental problem: money. Platner’s campaign has outspent the governor on ads more than 3-to-1 through the end of last week, according to AdImpact, $5.8 million to $1.8 million.
Mills’ allies fear that the reason her attacks against Platner have fallen flat is in part because her message has been drowned out by spending from Platner’s campaign, which has run multiple ads of its own rebutting the criticism. The message might be potent, they say, but voters are simply more likely to see an ad from Platner when they turn on their TVs or watch their shows online.
That Mills’ campaign was using a negative message at all was itself concerning to some of her allies, who expected that such a campaign — and the blowback it could incur from voters — would be better carried by an outside group not legally connected to the governor’s own effort.
Mills supporters are acutely aware that outside groups have taken prominent roles in other Democratic primaries. VoteVets, which is generally aligned with Democratic leadership, has begun spending millions of dollars in the Senate race in Iowa, boosting state Rep. Josh Turek in his competitive primary against state Sen. Zach Wahls. Officials from VoteVets, a group that boosts Democratic veterans of the armed forces, have said they are helping Turek because his father was a military veteran who was exposed to Agent Orange, which caused Turek to be born with spina bifida.
But no such outside spending effort has come to help Mills despite her endorsement from Schumer, frustrating some supporters.
“In an ideal world, I think what they thought would happen was that they would have third party help come in sooner to do some of that work, so that she wouldn’t have to be the one signing off on the commercials,” said the governor’s ally, who’s been in communication with her campaign.
That expectation, the source added, created an awkward situation, where the Mills campaign was waiting for an outside group — either the Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC or another group — to start running ads. But at the same time, any potential outside group was looking for the Mills campaign to start gaining momentum in the race before it made the expensive decision to get involved.
“SMP or Schumer, they were waiting to see what the Mills team was made of, and the Mills campaign were waiting for them to come in and help,” the ally said. “So they were just kind of talking past each other.”
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