Maine Gov. Janet Mills spent the eve of her state's primary election not rallying voters or reviving her suspended Senate campaign, but attending the funeral of former Rep. Barney Frank in Boston. The 78-year-old governor's decision to stay on the sidelines left Democrats exactly where they feared: heading into a general election against Sen. Susan Collins with Graham Platner, an oyster farmer whose candidacy has been battered by allegations of physical aggression toward ex-girlfriends, a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, and a trail of crude social media posts.
Mills remains on Tuesday's ballot. She never formally withdrew. But she made no move to restart her campaign, and she has refused to endorse anyone in the race. For a party that desperately wanted a credible alternative, the New York Post reported that national Democrats had been quietly praying Mills would jump back in, prayers that went unanswered.
Mills launched her Senate campaign last October with the backing of Sen. Chuck Schumer, entering a race Platner had already been running in for months. By late April, she abruptly ended active campaigning after trailing Platner by double digits in some polls and facing what the Post described as lackluster fundraising.
But under Maine law, the deadline to formally withdraw from the ballot falls 70 days before a primary, the end of March, in this cycle. Mills had already missed that window by the time she stepped aside. So her name stayed on the ballot, an awkward reminder of the candidate Democrats wished they had.
Mills told the Lewiston Sun Journal earlier this month that the public had the wrong idea about her exit.
"People have the impression that I 'withdrew' or 'dropped out,' but I simply suspended active campaigning. I am still on the ballot."
That distinction matters. An unnamed Democratic operative aligned with Mills told the Post that her vote total on primary night could serve as a barometer of Democratic unease with Platner. The operative's benchmark was blunt: "I think if Platner is anywhere in the 60s he's in trouble in terms of support."
The anxiety is not abstract. Platner's candidacy has been hit by a cascade of damaging reports in recent weeks, each one raising fresh questions about whether he can survive a general election against Collins, a veteran incumbent known for outperforming her polls.
The New York Times reported allegations from Lyndsey Fifield, a GOP operative and one of Platner's former girlfriends, who said Platner pulled her out of a cab by the wrists and, on a separate occasion, twisted her arm behind her back before locking her in a room. Platner has denied being physical. The Times also reported it reviewed past text messages Fifield sent to a confidant describing Platner's tattoo, a skull-and-crossbones chest piece resembling the Totenkopf, or "death's head" symbol used by the Nazi SS, before it was publicly known he had one.
Platner has said he got the tattoo while inebriated in Croatia in 2007 and insisted he had no idea about its connection to the Nazis.
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that Platner was sexting with other women while married. He tied the knot with his wife in 2023. And then there were his Reddit posts: entries in which he suggested a Purple Heart veteran did not deserve to live, defended urinating on a dead Taliban body, and mused about doing "unholy things" to porta potties, among other remarks.
This is the man Maine Democrats appear poised to nominate to take on Susan Collins. Two other candidates, David Costello and write-in hopeful Andrea LaFlamme, are also in the race but have lagged behind Platner dramatically in most polling. The latest RealClearPolitics aggregate showed Platner ahead of Collins by 7.4 percentage points, a lead that reflects anti-incumbent sentiment more than confidence in the nominee himself.
The late Barney Frank, who backed Mills in the Senate race, voiced his concerns about Platner before his death. Speaking to Politico while in hospice, Frank offered a warning that now reads like a political epitaph for the Mills campaign, and perhaps a prophecy about what comes next.
"I worry a little bit about the tendency on the Democratic side to fall for the flavor of the month. There is this flirtation or this attraction of people who are new and who are very good at articulating a response to the anger, but without talking about what you do about it."
Frank's concern was not just about Platner's style. It was about a party that keeps reaching for the shiny new thing without vetting what it's grabbing. The pattern is familiar. Democrats have watched it play out in intraparty fights from San Francisco to the Senate floor, factions elevating candidates on energy alone, then scrambling when the background checks come in late.
Mills, whatever her shortcomings as a campaigner, sat vetted and scandal-free. One Democratic operative put it plainly to the Post: her "only baggage" was "a list of accomplishments and a record of effective scorn for the president." She had made public appearances touting legislation barring cellphones in classrooms and had battled Trump executive actions. None of it was enough to overcome Platner's grassroots momentum in the primary.
The Maine Senate mess fits a broader pattern of Democratic self-sabotage. The party's national leadership, including Schumer, lined up behind Mills early. But the base wanted someone else, and the someone else turned out to carry a duffel bag full of liabilities that any competent opposition research shop would have flagged in a week.
Now Democrats face a general election in which their nominee may have to answer questions about physical aggression allegations, a tattoo linked to Nazi iconography, sexting while married, and social media posts that read like dispatches from a barstool at closing time. Collins, a four-term senator who has weathered every national Democratic offensive thrown at her, will not need to do much more than let Platner's record speak for itself.
The 7.4-point polling lead Platner holds means little at this stage. Collins has a documented history of massively overperforming polls. And Platner's lead was built before the worst of his personal baggage became public. Whether it holds through a full general election campaign, with Collins' operation and national Republican groups hammering every Reddit post and every allegation, is the question Democrats should have asked before they rallied behind an oyster farmer whose vetting apparently consisted of checking whether he could draw a crowd.
Mills, for her part, has kept her distance. She has not endorsed Platner. She has not endorsed Costello or LaFlamme. She went to a funeral. The symbolism is almost too neat: the candidate Democrats needed, paying respects to the man who warned them they were making a mistake, while the candidate they chose barrels toward a nomination shadowed by scandal.
Other Democrats around the country have faced their own reckonings with candidate quality and messaging discipline. Some have exited races under pressure. Others have tried to reinvent themselves mid-stream. In Maine, the party simply ran out of time and options.
The primary results will tell Democrats how deep the problem runs. If Mills, who stopped campaigning weeks ago and spent election eve in another state, still pulls a significant share of the vote, it will confirm what operatives already suspect: a meaningful chunk of the Democratic base is not sold on Platner. It won't change the outcome. But it will frame the general election as a contest between a well-known Republican incumbent and a Democratic nominee whose own party spent the final days before his coronation hoping someone else would show up.
The broader question for Democrats is whether they have learned anything from episodes like this. The pattern, unconventional candidates elevated on populist energy, only to become liabilities under scrutiny, keeps repeating. Frank identified it from his hospice bed. Mills saw it and stepped aside rather than fight a losing primary. The voters will decide whether Platner's problems matter more than their desire to unseat Collins.
But if Democrats lose a winnable Maine Senate seat because they nominated a candidate who couldn't survive a basic background check, they will have no one to blame but themselves. The vetted candidate was right there. She just happened to be at a funeral.
