Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday she was suspending her campaign for the US Senate — clearing the way for far-left candidate Graham Platner to face five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else –the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement.
“That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
The 78-year-old Mills, a two-term governor and former state lawmaker and Maine attorney general, had been considered a top Democratic recruit when she announced her challenge to Collins last year. She had the backing of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and prominent left-leaning advocacy groups including EMILYs List and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund.
However, polls consistently showed Mills trailing far behind Platner ahead of the June 9 Democratic primary, despite several weeks of controversy over the 41-year-old Marine veteran’s prominent display of a skull-and-crossbones tattoo resembling the “Totenkopf” emblem of the Nazi SS.
Platner, the head of a Maine oyster farming operation and grandson of modernist architect Warren Platner, has claimed he got the tattoo during a drunken 2007 outing while on leave in Croatia and had no knowledge of its fascist links.
In November of last year, Platner had the death’s head concealed with a tattoo of a Celtic knot with a dog jumping out of the image.
Mills argued she was the best candidate to stand up to President Trump, noting she told him she would see him in court last year after the administration pulled federal funding amid a dispute over transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports.
However, Platner’s relative youth and good standing with the populist Democratic left wing — he’s backed by Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) — proved better selling points to campaign donors.
Democrats are eyeing the Maine Senate seat as their easiest potential pickup in the November midterms. Collins, 73, is currently the only Republican to represent any of the six New England states in the House or Senate.
