WASHINGTON — Senate Democratic leadership is all-in on Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ run to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins.
Rank-and-file Democratic senators don’t seem as certain. Very few were eager to instantly back the 77-year-old Mills, who will have to defeat progressive oyster farmer Graham Platner in a primary to battle Collins in the general, and many seemed loath to discuss a race Democratic operatives expect to poison social media timelines for the next year.
The unease about the race — and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s decision to intervene by backing Mills — extends to both progressives and moderates, and showcases how the Democratic Party is still torn over its ideological direction and the age of its leaders in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election.
“I think Janet Mills is a formidable candidate. I feel very optimistic that we will defeat Susan Collins,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), the chair of the DSCC, told HuffPost. Asked if a bruising primary would harm Democrats’ odds of flipping the seat, Gillibrand said: “My general view is that primaries make candidates stronger.”
But Gillibrand was not joined by many of her colleagues in unequivocally backing Mills. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), who has carved out a lane as a leading moderate since the 2024 election, was the only Democratic senator to explicitly endorse her.
Similarly, many leading progressive senators — including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Chris Murphy of Massachusetts — declined to weigh in on the race when HuffPost asked. Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota, who is retiring, told HuffPost the DSCC should stay out of the race entirely.
“The DSCC shouldn’t be engaging in primary battles,” retiring Smith told HuffPost. “If the [DSCC] thinks that they know better than the voters of Maine, they’re wrong. It’s up to the voters to decide.”
Both Platner and Mills tried to claim momentum on Wednesday, one day after Mills’ entrance into the race earned her quick endorsements from EMILY’s List and caused political handicappers to move the race against Collins from “lean Republican” to “toss-up” status. Mills announced she had raised $1 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign, while Platner said he had raised $500,000 and rolled out an endorsement from United Auto Workers, which represents employees at Bath Iron Works in the state.
Democratic senators, who are old enough, on average, to qualify for Social Security benefits, did mostly brush aside concerns about Mills’ age, even if they did not want to endorse her. Mills would be the oldest freshman senator ever if she is elected next year. She’s pledged to only serve one term if that happens, a move that is likely aimed at cutting off questions about her age.
“I don’t see any challenges with her age right now as governor,” Cortez Masto told HuffPost. “I don’t see any challenges with Susan Collins’ age right now as a U.S. senator, so there’s no doubt that, from my perspective, Janet can do the job.”
“As long as your brain is functioning and you have the fighting spirit, you know, it takes all kinds to make this place run. With age comes quite a lot of experience,” added Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) praised both candidates but said that he, too, was staying out of the primary. He also pushed back on the notion that there is a clean-cut generational divide within the party.
“We’ve got some folks who are older, and Bernie Sanders is a good example – no one is associated with change more than him,” Welch said of his fellow 84-year-old Vermont senator. “So it’s not so simple to say younger versus older. Change can come either way.”
Mills, along with former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, is seen as one of the DSCC’s premier recruits for the cycle. Her campaign said Wednesday that she raised $1 million on her first day in the race, far less than the $3.6 million Brown brought in on his first day or the $3.4 million Cooper raised.
Notably, relatively few Senate Democrats solicited donations from their email lists on the first day of the campaign: Gillibrand, Cortez Masto and Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) all did, but many of the other big names who sent out missives were either Mills’ fellow governors — Massachusetts’ Maura Healey, Arizona’s Katie Hobbs, Minnesota’s Tim Walz and Maryland’s Wes Moore — or other candidates with DSCC backing, including Cooper and Reps. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and Angie Craig (D-Minn.).
Meanwhile, Collins’ campaign announced on Wednesday it had raised nearly $1.9 million since July, with $6.7 million cash on hand. The 72-year-old senator, who is running for her sixth term, recently held a fundraiser in Hollywood, California, that drew some wealthy liberal donors.
“I’m following the Democratic primary with interest,” Collins told HuffPost on Wednesday.
Still, Democrats are feeling good about flipping her seat, which they will almost certainly need to do to have any chance of winning control of the Senate next year.
They believe that a favorable political environment and the senator’s poor approval ratings will help get them there. Collins has made plenty of critical comments about Trump’s administration, but Democrats believe she has failed to use her influential position as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee to push back against Trump in any meaningful way.
Gillibrand told HuffPost that Democrats will win “because of the backlash against Trump and his very harmful policies, especially on cutting people out of health care.”
“Voters are feeling differently in this next election, and I think it will create such a backlash that a lot more seats will be on the table than we ever imagined before,” she added.