Maine Gov. Janet Mills ended her Senate campaign on Thursday, saying she lacked the funds necessary to continue on to the June Democratic primary. “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,” she said in a statement. Her decision clears the way for oyster farmer and Army and Marine Corps veteran Graham Platner to be the party’s nominee against longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins, Senate Democrats’ top target in the November elections. “Republicans are preparing to run a scorched earth campaign, and we’re ready for that,” Platner told reporters on a press call Thursday evening. “I am very, very confident that the movement we are building is going to fight back against that kind of politics and flip the Senate in the state.” Mills, a two-term governor, was recruited into the race by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer and had the backing of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “After years of allowing [Donald] Trump’s abuses of power, Senator Collins has never been more vulnerable and we will work with the presumptive Democratic nominee Graham Platner to defeat her,” Schumer and DSCC Chair Kirsten Gillibrand said in a joint statement Thursday. Platner, who is making his first bid for elected office, has been the leading fundraiser in the Democratic race and consistently led Mills in recent polling ahead of the June 9 primary. He’s drawn large crowds at events across the state since launching his campaign late last summer and has the support of progressive heavyweights Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But Platner has also come under scrutiny for his since-deleted posts on Reddit, as well as for having a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol on his chest that he has since covered up. The Mills campaign ran several attack ads highlighting those controversies, while a super PAC backing Collins recently launched a similar ad campaign against him. "Chuck Schumer and Senate Democrats just coronated a phony who is too extreme for Maine,” South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement. “Susan Collins has always put in the work for her constituents and delivered.” Ben Chin, Platner’s campaign manager, told reporters Thursday that “the vast majority of voters in Maine have seen these attacks, and they no longer find them convincing.” “The No. 1 way we are going to move forward is the same way that we have been moving in terms of talking to voters directly, one-one-one, in person, and through all the other channels that are available for us,” he said. Collins on Thursday declined to weigh in on what Mills’ departure from the race said about the state of the Democratic Party. “I’m sure it was a very difficult decision for her,” she said. “She has served the state for decades, and I’m grateful for her public service.” Savannah Behrmann contributed to this report.
