AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. Janet Mills rolled out a proposal for $300 relief checks in a Tuesday speech that was colored by her campaign against U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and featured strong reactions from Republicans who walked out and shouted over her at times.
The Democratic governor delivered the final State of the State address of her tenure in the Blaine House. Under normal circumstances, it is a time for a governor to use the bully pulpit for the final time and cement their legacy by convincing the Legislature to embrace their goals.
But Mills is trying at age 78 to knock off a five-term incumbent in Collins, an electoral survivor whose seat is at the center of the national map in 2026. The governor is trying to win a heavily nationalized battle with Republicans while contending with a stiff primary with political newcomer Graham Platner, who has captured heavy attention while campaigning to Mills’ left.
The governor’s speech showed her reckoning with these obstacles and targeted President Donald Trump’s policies without naming him. Relief checks were at the center of what she called an “Affordability Agenda,” something that nods to the dominant issue in national politics. Half of Americans said it was hard to meet everyday costs in a Politico poll last month.
“From health care, housing and utilities to the price of a pickup truck, groceries and life-saving medications, costs are too high,” she said.
But Republicans saw a conflict in Mills, who has been governor for more than seven years, bemoaning the costs of housing and energy. Both have soared in Maine and nationally during her term as governor. The state was third in the nation in electric costs last November. Lawmakers have culled solar subsidies that Mills enshrined in 2019 that grew sharply in cost.
“Here we are with a lame duck governor who is just grappling with both hands for as many Democrat primary voters as she possibly can,” Senate Minority Leader Trey Stewart, R-Presque Isle, told reporters after Mills’ speech.
The relief checks were immediately met with resistance from Republicans as an election-year ploy by Mills to put her name on a mailer going to approximately 725,000 Mainers. They would cost more than $218 million. That and another $70 million in spending aimed at housing would come from the state’s rainy day fund that now sits at a legal maximum of $1 billion.
Mills has campaigned against Trump as much as Collins. Her sharp February exchange with the president at the White House over Maine’s laws allowing transgender girls to play in scholastic sports according to their gender identity set her on the path to the run she announced in October. It will be a prominent issue in 2026 given a referendum effort from conservatives.
The governor typically sticks close to her script. In an ad lib that seemed to reference that issue and her proposal to give $2.25 million to fill federal cuts to abortion providers, she looked at Republicans and said, “If you want to protect women and girls, then fully fund health care for women and girls and fully fund domestic violence shelters and fully fund sexual assault services.”
That led an incensed Stewart to walk out of the room, followed by a handful of senators and representatives who followed behind. A lawmaker shouted over Mills after she drew applause from fellow Democrats for saying the federal government must pursue universal health care.
“Is this the State of the State or a different speech?” Rep. Jim Thorne, R-Carmel, said.
“Oh, you bet it is, Jim,” Mills fired back. “It’s the State of the State, because everybody in this room has to deal with health care, and you can’t be blind to that.”
The speech also came a week into a federal immigration enforcement surge into Maine. She only referred to Trump as “the president” in the speech, but she doubled down on past criticism of his immigration, tariff and health care policies. She was set to open it by saying agents are trying to “intimidate and silence us.”
“Tonight, I say to the people of Maine: We will not be intimidated. We will not be silenced,” Mills said.
The governor neither got nor sought much applause from Republicans assembled in the chamber. One exception was when she told lawmakers that she was addressing them for the final time, prompting a rowdy cheer from her right-hand side.