The Race for Susan Collins' Seat Just Got Some More Heat

Maine's two-term Democratic Gov. Janet Mills will run for the US Senate seat held by veteran Republican Sen. Susan Collins next year, according to two people familiar with Mills' plans on Friday, setting up a potential matchup between the parties' best-known figures in a state where Democrats see a chance to gain a seat in their uphill quest for the majority. Mills was the top choice of national Democrats to try to unseat Collins, who's held the seat since 1997, and was urged to run by party leaders, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, per the AP.

Democrats see Maine as an important target, considering it's in the only place on the 2026 Senate election map where Republicans are defending an incumbent in a state carried last year by Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. Democrats need to pick up a net of four seats to retake the majority, but doing so remains difficult, as most of the Senate seats on the ballot next year are in states President Trump won easily. Mills, 77, was elected governor in 2018 and reelected in 2022; Maine governors are barred from seeking third terms. While Mills, an ex-Maine attorney general who sparred with Trump during a February White House meeting of governors over his call to deny states federal funding over transgender rights, earlier in the year seemed to dismiss running for Senate, she said in late summer she was "seriously considering" running.

Collins has won all of her four reelection campaigns by double-digit percentages, except for in 2020. Like Collins, Mills was born in rural Maine, becoming Maine's first female criminal prosecutor in the mid-1970s, and later the state's first elected female district attorney, as well as its first female AG and governor. She served as attorney general twice, from 2009 to 2011 and 2013 to 2019. A few other challengers have declared candidacies for the Democratic nomination, including oyster farmer Graham Platner, who launched an aggressive social media campaign. Platner has the backing of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who posted on social media on Thursday that Platner is "a great working-class candidate for Senate in Maine who will defeat Susan Collins" and that it's "disappointing that some Democratic leaders are urging Gov. Mills to run."