You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack. Read the transcript of Perry’s interview with Alex Seitz-Wald here.
Maine Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, announced on Tuesday that she is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Susan Collins. Mills, having twice been elected statewide, is in some ways the perfect candidate for one of the few seats that Democrats have a realistic chance of flipping in next year’s elections. (They need to gain four seats for a Senate majority.) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer spent months convincing Mills to run. But she’s not a shoo-in to be Collins’s opponent.
Marine veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner, another Democrat, launched his campaign in August and has drawn both huge crowds in the state and attention nationally. (Read TNR’s Ana-Marie Cox’s excellent profile of Platner.) He’s running on a populist, anti-billionaire platform and has become a favorite of the party’s progressive wing, receiving an endorsement from Senator Bernie Sanders. Platner is “Maine’s Mamdani,” according to Alex Seitz-Wald, deputy editor of a publication there called the Midcoast Villager.
In the latest episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon, Seitz-Wald discussed how Platner has come out of nowhere to be a phenomenon in the state. Seitz-Wald said the enthusiasm for Platner is real but questioned if Platner has real working-class supporters or if his base is largely college-educated progressives. He noted that Mills is fairly popular but will be bogged by questions about her age (77). Collins, according to Seitz-Wald, still has a very good chance of winning. While the state leans Democratic, Collins has done a great job distancing herself from Trump and building strong ties with local powerbrokers in Maine, he said.
