As Susan Collins awaits, a generational divide splits Maine Democrats in pivotal Senate race

By Manu Raju, Alison Main, CNN

Portland, Maine (CNN) — Gov. Janet Mills was laying out her case against Sen. Susan Collins to several dozen supporters recently when one attendee raised a question on the minds of many voters in Maine.

“How are you and your campaign going to push back against the argument that you are too old?” the voter asked.

“Damn!” Mills remarked with a chuckle before later saying: “The times are too urgent, too dangerous not to send the best person we have, the most tested candidate.”

Democratic leaders in Washington were thrilled when Mills, 78, entered the Senate race last fall, seeing the two-term governor as the type of battle-tested candidate who could finally unseat Collins and give their party a shot at the majority.

But Mills is confronting a persistent problem: Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and political newcomer just over half her age, is appealing to the hunger of many progressive voters eager for a new generation of insurgent Democrats particularly in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s presidency.

Mills takes questions about her age head-on and reiterates that she would serve just one term if elected, given she’d be the oldest Senate freshman ever sworn into office if she wins in November.

“Good Lord. I’m not Joe Biden for God’s sake,” she told CNN in a recent interview.

“I’m healthy, I’m me, I get stuff done. People see me at work every day, and they know what I can do. They know that I can deliver, and I have delivered,” she said after wrapping up a roundtable meeting with a handful of local health care professionals and business owners at a coffee shop in Portland.

No other Senate Democratic primary encapsulates the ideological, tactical and generational divides still gripping the Democratic Party than here in Maine, which is a must-win for the party as it tries to win a net of four seats to take back the Senate. Whoever wins the Democratic primary will face a tough battle in November: The GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund already plans to spend at least $42 million to bolster Collins in the campaign’s final stretch.

Polling in the race so far has been scarce ahead of the June 9 primary. Platner, who is backed by independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, has held 34 town halls across the state, according to his campaign. Mills has opted for smaller roundtables that her campaign dubs “candid conversations” with voters.

Asked about Platner’s large crowds, Mills said, “He has energy, but you also have to have positions that are backed up by knowledge and experience and what you’re going to do and how you’re gonna do it. … It’s easy to talk the talk. It’s a lot harder to walk the walk, and I’ve walked the walk.”

In his own interview with CNN, Platner, 41, called Mills’ comment “ironic,” citing policies he’s rolled out and his push to use “political power that I think is necessary to bring about that kind of policy change. I do not hear that from the governor.”

‘Have you ever gotten into an argument on the internet?’

There are sharp differences between the two. On several hot-button issues, Platner went further to the left, even saying that President Donald Trump should “absolutely” be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate if Democrats take Congress in the fall.

Platner says Chuck Schumer should be out as Democratic leader, while Mills says she’s undecided on that question. As Platner says tax hikes for the wealthy should pay for universal health care, Mills says such an idea is “too simplistic,” though she backs a similar health care system.

Platner said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement should “absolutely” be abolished and that it “cannot be reformed,” while Mills would not go that far when asked three times whether ICE should be eliminated, saying there’s a “role for immigration enforcement under a new reformed immigration process” and “humane” laws.

And asked whether Democrats should force a government shutdown over ICE, Platner said: “Absolutely … and not just over ICE. The Democratic Party should be using all the leverage it has to fight back against the array of absurdities that are occurring.”

Mills was more cautious on that question.

“Congress has a number of tools at its disposal, and the first thing they could do is hold hearings,” Mills said. “If people like Susan Collins had the backbone to do it, she could do it.”

After the killing of Alex Pretti, Mills reiterated her calls that Congress should “cut off any further funding for ICE” as she demanded a meeting with Trump, called for ICE agents to leave her state and said the Senate should reject Homeland Security Department funding unless there are major changes. CNN’s interview with Mills took place before ICE agents launched an operation in her state.

Mills mostly focuses on Collins, as she did in appearing before supporters last month, making scant references to Platner and not calling him out by name. But she did seem to reference one controversy surrounding Platner.

“My life is an open book,” Mills told the gathering. “I don’t have any tattoos. Trust me on that.”

Reports surfaced in the fall of a tattoo Platner had on his chest with Nazi imagery and past social media posts in which he denigrated police, minimized sexual assault, questioned Black customers’ tips at restaurants and implied White rural voters can be racist and “stupid.”

After CNN and other news organizations revealed the posts, Platner apologized, contending they came at a different time in his life after serving in combat. And he pleaded ignorance about the origins of the skull-and-crossbones tattoo he got in 2007 in Croatia while he was out drinking with his fellow Marines. He announced in October that he had the tattoo covered.

Platner argues the controversies are baked in with Maine voters and haven’t “turned anyone off.” He’s noted that he’s been speaking about the controversy publicly in media interviews and argued he’d be able to withstand GOP attack ads.

“I have not run away from it,” he said. “I’ve been happy to discuss the fact that I used to believe things I don’t believe today, and to talk about my transformation, because I think the ability for people to change is necessary if we’re going to build a better politics. It shows that I’m just a normal guy that has not been spending his entire life preparing to run for the US Senate.”

Yet Platner also offers a defense of sorts for some of his past remarks, including over his 2020 post suggesting that rural White Americans are “actually” as “racist or stupid as Trump thinks.”

“I hate to tell you this, but have you ever gotten into an argument on the internet?” he said when asked about the post. “Because when you get in arguments on the internet and you’re not planning on running for the United States Senate, you say things to bother the person you’re arguing with.”

“I’m a White guy from rural Maine. I grew up in rural Maine. I live in a small town, the one that I grew up in. All of my neighbors are rural White people in Maine. They aren’t stupid. They aren’t racist. Neither am I. I don’t believe that. If I did, I wouldn’t live there,” he continued.

Asked whether he believed some were racist and stupid, Platner deadpanned, “I think saying that some people in the United States are racist and stupid is not remotely a controversial statement.”

Mills says the posts are bound to become a “bigger liability” in a general election, underscoring her argument that Platner is a risk to nominate.

A tough Republican opponent awaits

Collins, 73, has survived one tough election after another since her first Senate victory in 1996. She is a perennial swing vote who pitches herself as a consensus builder on issues such as new infrastructure projects, preserving Social Security benefits and bringing federal largesse back to Maine.

She announced Thursday that, at her urging, ICE had ended its “enhanced activities” in Maine after authorities launched an enforcement operation similar to the one in Minnesota.

“I have a long and clear record of bipartisanship,” Collins told CNN when asked whether Trump would be a problem for her in a general election.

But the 2026 election will be her first race since the US Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the federal right to an abortion. Collins won reelection in 2020 even after voting to confirm two of Trump’s three Supreme Court justices — and providing critical support for now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who later voted to overturn Roe v. Wade despite assuring her he would respect precedent preserving abortion rights. Collins later said Kavanaugh “misled” her in his private assurances.

Last year, Collins voted against confirming Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense and Kash Patel for FBI director. But she backed Linda McMahon as education secretary, Russ Vought to lead the White House budget office and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run US Health and Human Services.

“I think that presidents have the right to assemble their own Cabinets,” Collins said. “Except in extraordinary cases, I defer to the president’s choice, assuming the individual has the integrity and the ability to do the job.”

Asked whether she regretted her vote to confirm Kennedy, Collins said: “I do not regret the vote. That doesn’t mean that I agree with RFK Jr. on vaccine policy. I do agree with him on his focus on chronic diseases and his belief that ultra-processed food is not good for us.”

Mills pointed to Collins’ votes for Kennedy, McMahon and Kavanaugh.

“What she hasn’t done is she hasn’t protected the public health infrastructure in Maine by voting to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for instance,” she said.

Seniority in the Senate

In something of a paradox, part of the debate between Mills and Platner is about seniority.

Mills’ one-term pledge means she would only ever be a junior member in her caucus and on Senate committees, something both Platner and Collins pointed out in separate interviews.

“I know personally that I have far more clout and far more ability to get things done now as a senior senator than I did at the conclusion of my first term,” said Collins, a senior member of several key committees and chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which controls the purse strings of the federal government.

Platner added: “If we’re going to lose (Collins), and we very much need to lose her, her replacement needs to be someone who has the capability to rebuild that seniority and power.”

Mills dismissed the criticism, insisting that her voice “will be heard strongly in the United States Senate.”

“Seniority is nothing if you’re without effectiveness,” Mills said. “Seniority without effectiveness is merely tenure, and that’s what we’ve got right now.”

Mills, who met with Schumer last winter as she was weighing a potential run, said the decision to run was strictly hers, something she said she thought about last summer while attending an event at the historic Kennedy Caucus Room in the Senate’s Russell building.

“It’s all too comfortable to sit in the easy approval of friends and of neighbors than to risk the friction and the controversy that comes with public affairs,” said Mills, paraphrasing a quote used by then-Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in a speech at the University of Mississippi, as she weighed whether to add six more years to her more than 40 years in public life.

Asked how hard the race would be, Mills deadpanned.

“None of it’s going to be easy, but hey, what are they going to do to me?” she said. “I’m too old to care.”

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CNN’s Jenna Monnin and Casey Riddle contributed to this report.