Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.
Strong Democratic turnout in Tuesday’s primaries has sparked concerns among Maine Republicans heading into what is looking like a difficult November midterm election for President Donald Trump and his party.
The top concern for Republicans this year is five-term U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, who held her seat in a heavily nationalized 2020 election but is facing headwinds against Graham Platner, newly minted as her challenger despite a string of controversies. The party is also looking to win back Maine’s 2nd District and make inroads in Democratic-controlled Augusta.
More than 200,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic Senate primary, which was up from 162,000 in the party’s 2020 primary and nearly doubled the turnout of the Republican gubernatorial primary. While some of that is due to Maine’s recent shift to semi-open primaries and the national attention paid to Platner’s campaign, some conservatives were worried.
One party operative cited the 75% of unenrolled voters requesting Democratic primary ballots rather than Republican ones. Another one, state Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, who announced in November she would not seek re-election to head a pro-Collins political group, acknowledged 2026 “certainly will be a tough race” for her party.
With the primary over, she said the party must mobilize all Republicans along with independents “and the folks who might be less inclined to vote in an off-year.” She said focusing on issues such as steep electricity and energy costs, could help motivate conservative voters.
“This is a critical election,” she said. “This is the ground floor.”
Senate Republicans’ campaign arm called Maine the “linchpin” to control of the Senate in a memo first reported by Politico on Tuesday that said it was a “fatal mistake to assume Platner is too damaged to win” after powering through October disclosures about old, offensive Reddit posts and ones in the past week about his relationships.
“Primary Election Day numbers confirm what we were already feeling on the ground,” Lauryn Fanguen, a spokesperson for the Maine Democrats, said in a Wednesday statement. “Democratic and independent voters are fired up to elect Democrats at every level of the ballot.”
When BDN shines a light, policymakers act. Make a gift to help our reporters keep Maine’s leaders informed. Make a donation now.
While some Maine and national Democrats have been cautious when discussing Platner and some have called for him to withdraw, a handful of prominent progressives in Washington have stood by him.
Supporters in recent interviews say he’s building an outsider movement that can topple Collins. But some Republicans also think he will be a motivating factor for their votes, with Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania-based consultant, saying he thought Platner being on the ticket “solves any GOP turnout issues.”
“For years, Republicans have had to answer to the media about every ebb and flow of Donald Trump’s comments du jour,” he said. “That is going to visit the Democratic side.”
He and other Collins supporters in Maine on Wednesday suggested Platner should have taken up to 90% of the primary vote after Mills suspended her bid in April and former Maine official and 2024 U.S. Senate nominee David Costello raised little money. They also pointed to Platner’s roughly 72% of the primary vote being close to former state House Speaker Sara Gideon’s, the 2020 Democratic nominee who lost to Collins despite leading polls.
Jason Savage, executive director of the Maine GOP, said there were two major reasons for the comparatively strong Democratic turnout: The Democrats had three competitive primaries, two of them statewide, and Democrats mounted a concerted effort to boost Platner “in the face of massive high-profile scandals and concern,” he said.
But Platner’s team has taken the victory as a sign that Mainers are hungry for new policy and new voices out of Washington, not attacks on private lives. They pointed to increased fundraising, including its biggest haul since Mills left the race the day after the New York Times published accounts of his past relationships.
His campaign also noted more establishment figures have come on board or continued to back him, including U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Tina Smith of Minnesota.
State Rep. Valli Geiger, D-Rockland, described Platner as a “generational talent” who is highlighting how politics and entwined corporate interests are designed to remain in power, not to help working Americans.
“He’s speaking to something people have been waiting to hear, and he’s got younger people and older people electrified by his message,” she said.