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Youth versus experience. Disruption versus status quo. Insurgency versus incumbency. No matter how you look at the suddenly dynamic Democratic primary in Maine’s Senate race, it’s a tale of two visions for the future of a listless party. And rather than clarify the path forward a year after Joe Biden’s aborted re-election bid, the clash may further muddy Democrats’ messaging heading into next year’s midterm elections.
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Susan Collins is the lone incumbent Republican Senator facing voters next year in a state that voted for Kamala Harris for President. She is seen as perhaps the most vulnerable Republican this cycle, and Democrats’ most viable pick-up opportunity. Yet she may have drawn the luckiest other side of the ticket as the opposition seems determined to thwart itself.
For months, Democratic elders have been trying to recruit Maine’s term-limited Governor, 77-year-old Janet Mills, to run against the 72-year-old Collins. Last week, Mills announced she would join the frey, drawing cheers from Democrats who see her as their best shot at unseating Collins, and horror from those who believe Mills’ age will kill her chances. (If elected, Mills would be the oldest freshman senator ever.)
The disagreement is colored by Maine’s parochial politics. Despite voting for a Democrat for President in every election this century, Maine has not elected a Democratic Senator in 30 years. Much of that is due to Collins, a canny politician who has proven to be a master of carefully having it both ways when it comes to Donald Trump. (The state’s other Senator, Angus King, is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats.)
It’s not hard to see why Democratic elders like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer see Mills as the clear favorite. After all, she is not only a tested pro, but she drew national attention earlier this year when she visited the White House and Trump threatened to take away Maine’s federal funding. Mills’ response that she would see him in court went viral.
But Mills has entered a race where local oyster farmer, veteran, and first-time candidate Graham Platner has been running since the summer, and quickly sparked excitement that Democrats could both best Collins and also turn the page on a generation of politics. Platner, a 41-year-old Marine with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, has nakedly cast his bid as a battle against the oligarchy and politics-as-usual complacency. His fiery approach has been drawing big crowds and a fundraising haul that, Democrats say, now tops $4 million. (Also running is Jordan Wood, a 35-year-old campaign finance activist who was a former chief of staff for Rep. Katie Porter of California, and has raised $3.1 million.)
Still, Mills’ messaging that it’s too risky for Democrats to send a neophyte to fight a politician as shrewd as Collins almost immediately found proof after she got in the race last week. That’s when a trove of Platner’s old Reddit posts surfaced, including ones in which he referred to himself as a communist, seemed to make light of sexual assault in the military, offered racially insensitive comments about Black patrons’ tipping habits, and called “all” police officers “bastards.”
Platner, who counts New York mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani’s social media adviser and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman’s former communications director among his braintrust, proved sharp in responding to the scandal. He quickly put out a direct-to-camera apology that blamed post-war PTSD for “some of the worst comments I made, the things that I think are least defensible, that I wouldn’t even try to defend.” (On Monday, Platner also got ahead of another apparent oppo dump, confessing on a podcast that he didn’t know the skull tattoo on his chest was linked to Nazis when he got it one drunken night in 2006.)
Whether Platner is able to contain the fallout remains unclear. Still, it’s the age question—more than anything at the moment—that hangs over this race. More than ideology. More than policy. More than temperament. And it’s one that haunts Democrats. It could go either way for Collins’ next moves; a Mills win in the primary takes the question of generational change off the table but either of Mills’ two rivals could ride it to Washington.
Biden’s age became an issue last year after a calamitous debate showing. Democrats have since struggled to find an acceptable posture when it comes to its aging raft of incumbents. Voters—especially younger ones core to Democrats’ hopes for the future—are increasingly frustrated with both the Establishment that they see as unresponsive and its aged leaders whom they think have frankly stuck around too long.
In some key states, the party is poised to make the pivot. The likely Democratic nominee in neighboring New Hampshire, Rep. Chris Pappas, was born in 1980. The oldest candidate running for the Democratic nomination in Michigan was born in 1983. And Rep. Seth Moulton, 46, is running a primary against the incumbent 79-year-old incumbent in Massachusetts’ Senate race. It’s a different story in Ohio, where Democrats are relieved that former Sen. Sherrod Brown is running to return to Washington; he is 72.
Many voters have also signaled they want to support candidates who get it. That’s part of the reason Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who is beloved by progressive activists and caucuses with Democrats, endorsed Platner despite Schumer’s preference for Mills.
So in a race that could be one of the best pick-up chances for Democrats, they seem destined to spend the next eight months in an intra-party squabble over the future and not about Collins’ often-maddening contradictions between her skepticism of Trumpism and her votes in support of it. Next year’s midterms will be the first time Collins will face voters since the Supreme Court—including Trump nominees whom Collins backed—ended a half-century of federal abortion rights. Even so, her defenders note Maine has a long history of embracing independent-minded lawmakers from both parties and point to her vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial in the final weeks of his first term. She also voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill this summer.
With Democrats needing to hold their current seats and pick up four more to retake the majority, Maine is one of the biggest prizes on the board. But the primary is becoming a microcosm of the chaos and insecurity that has plagued the party since Trump’s election. How the state’s Democrats decide between Mills and a younger, potentially feistier upstart is likely to reverberate far beyond Maine’s borders.
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