A 79-12 months-Previous Freshman Senator? – The Atlantic

“I’ll share my lipid profile with anybody!” Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, pledged to me.

These are the sorts of assurances that candidates make when everybody retains harping on their age.

Mills, who’s 78, is attempting to dislodge Susan Collins, a spring rooster at 73, in Maine’s Senate race this fall. Unlike her Democratic major opponent, the gun-loving ex-Marine turned oyster farmer Graham Platner, Mills doesn’t have a dicey Reddit historical past or a not too long ago covered-over Nazi tattoo. She is well-known within the state and has a examined political group. And but, in a number of latest polls, she has been trailing Platner.

One probably issue: If she is elected, Mills could be the oldest freshman senator in historical past. Platner, at 41, is a relative political toddler.

I spoke with Mills on a latest Friday afternoon within the coastal city of Rockland. We have been sitting in a quiet café, and I stored steering the dialogue to her least-favorite subject.

“I feel bad asking all these questions,” I advised Mills.

“No, you don’t,” the governor shot again.

Mills provides off the disarming sense of a safe soul undeterred by whippersnappers who toss round fancy phrases corresponding to gerontocracy. “I’m too old to care,” she advised a CNN reporter final month, which can or will not be a profitable marketing campaign message however struck me as honest. She presents as youthful than her years—nonetheless sharp of thoughts, a weathered workhorse whose power confirmed no indicators of flagging throughout a 13-hour day that included a speech to a craft-beer conference in Portland, visits to a meals pantry and a chocolate manufacturing unit in Rockland, a cease at a fishing expo in Rockport, and a night home occasion in Waterville. At least judging by our day collectively, she appears to be personally acquainted with a big portion of Maine’s 1.4 million residents.

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Still, Mills has to understand why Democrats are so delicate to issues of age nowadays. The story begins and ends with the recent trauma of how a sure geriatric presidency ended up for them not way back. Joe Biden has made this race “far more difficult for her,” Jessica Taylor, the Senate editor for the Cook Political Report, advised me. When I spoke with Mark Brewer, the chair of the political-science division on the University of Maine, he stated that Democrats merely “do not want to get burned by that again.”

Mills was reluctant to concede the purpose. Age, she advised me, is much less of a problem for voters in Maine, which occurs to have the oldest inhabitants of any state within the nation. Angus King, the state’s different senator—a three-term unbiased—was reelected in 2024 on the age of 80. “And how old is Bernie Sanders? Like, six years older than me?” Mills requested. “Are they asking him not to run again?” (For what it’s price, Sanders, who’s 84, headlined an enormous Labor Day rally in Portland—for Graham Platner.)

“I come from hearty Maine stock,” Mills stated. She talked about her ancestry of potato farmers, fishermen, and stone cutters. Her mom lived to be 93. “You don’t stereotype people because of their hair color or their age or their gender.”

The governor’s level was that age impacts individuals in a different way. “Good Lord, I’m not Joe Biden, for God’s sake,” she advised CNN, her exasperation cracking via her stern Yankee demeanor. After Biden’s face-plant throughout his June 2024 debate towards Donald Trump, Mills acknowledged that the president’s efficiency had been “difficult to watch.” Notably, she didn’t name for Biden to give up, as another Democrats did, and as a substitute reaffirmed her assist for his reelection. But Mills advised me that in a gathering between a bunch of Democratic governors and Biden round that point, she was amongst those that pleaded with him to step apart.

“He walked in the room. He said, ‘I’m running again. You’re stuck with me,’” Mills recalled. “That was sad.”

Maine was all the time destined to be one of many nation’s most fiercely contested Senate races of 2026. Collins, the one Republican incumbent on the poll this 12 months in a state gained by Kamala Harris, has change into a sort of white whale for Democrats. She has withstood a number of well-funded challengers over time, even whereas Republicans have misplaced each presidential election within the state since 1988.

From the beginning of this election cycle, Mills was the popular candidate of nationwide Democrats. A two-term governor (now term-limited), she had gained a number of statewide races and has been a fixture in Maine politics for the reason that Nineteen Seventies. She grew to become an unlikely resistance heroine final February after Trump singled out her state throughout a speech to a bunch of governors on the White House. When he requested whether or not Maine would adjust to an government order that may bar transgender ladies and ladies from collaborating in feminine sports activities, Mills stood up and ceded solely that her administration would observe “state and federal law.”

“Well, we are the federal law,” countered Trump, who then threatened to withhold funding from the state.

“See you in court,” Mills replied.

The clip went viral, representing a uncommon present of spine amid what had in any other case been a flaccid Democratic opposition after Trump’s return to workplace. See you in courtroom appeared on hats and T-shirts round Maine. (The state wound up suing the Trump administration, which agreed to revive federal funding quickly thereafter.)

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a bunch of Democratic officers and donors urged Mills to problem Collins, although the governor could be 79 firstly of her Senate time period. “It was tough,” she stated of her determination. “I mean, I waited a long time.”

Maybe too lengthy. While she deliberated, Platner splashed into the image final summer time: full-bearded, gravelly voiced, and straight out of everyman casting. He exuded populist enchantment and was seemingly designed in a lab as an antidote to Democrats’ ongoing alienation from working-class voters. The media devoured his story like a plate of recent oysters.

Platner attracted large crowds, a great deal of money, and, after a quick honeymoon interval, loads of controversy. First, a bunch of noxious social-media posts surfaced wherein Platner had dedicated all method of racist, sexist, and equal-opportunity offenses. Then got here studies of Platner’s tattoo of a cranium and crossbones—well known to be a Nazi demise’s head—inked throughout his chest. Platner claimed ignorance to the tattoo’s Nazi associations, and stated he’d acquired it throughout a drunken bender together with his Marine buddies in 2007. He has since gotten the insignia coated over.

Within weeks of his rousing debut, Platner grew to become an object lesson within the perils of rolling the cube with an unvetted neophyte in such an important Senate battleground. Yet Platner’s assist proved resilient. He has acquired endorsements from institution Democrats, together with three senators. Although Maine polls have historically been unreliable—Collins handily defeated then–Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon in 2020 after trailing all through the marketing campaign—Platner has led Mills in most surveys. Less than three months earlier than the June 9 major, he seems to have an excellent probability of upsetting the sitting governor.

The quantity of consideration that Platner has acquired has additionally had the impact of creating him, by far, the first subject of debate within the race. “Platner comes on the scene out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, Mills is an afterthought,” Brewer, of the University of Maine, advised me.

Or, on the very least, she has been lowered to a one-dimensional caricature—the “old-lady governor.” Mills is barely requested about what she has completed in her profession: being the primary girl district legal professional in New England (“one of only two or three in the goddamn country”), the primary girl legal professional normal in Maine, the state’s first feminine governor.

I requested Mills whether or not she’s sicker of being requested about Platner or about her age, which have change into the 2 defining options of her marketing campaign.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered, sounding resigned.

I took that to imply each.

One of Mills’s recurring guarantees is that, if elected to the Senate, she’s going to serve just one time period. This is maybe an uncommon pledge—If you vote for me, I’ll depart quickly—however it’s additionally an apparent nod to the truth of attempting to start a second time period at 85. Mills says she needs to have the ability to dedicate her power to combating Trump, with out losing time having to boost cash and run for reelection.

The Senate locations a premium on seniority, nonetheless. Why would Maine voters wish to forfeit Collins’s tenure—and all the advantages it could carry the state—in favor of a freshman short-timer on the cusp of her eighth decade?

Also: “We’re going to have to spend a fuck ton of money six years from now on another open election?” requested Amanda Litman, a co-founder and president of Run for Something, which promotes younger Democrats working for workplace. The group focuses on down-ballot races, and thus doesn’t have a most well-liked candidate within the Maine Senate race. But Litman appears fairly hostile to the concept of a Senator Mills.

“What a damning indictment of the Democratic Party establishment,” Litman advised me, “that it couldn’t cultivate literally any other talent or any other leader to run against Susan Collins.” Litman didn’t say she thinks that Mills is unqualified—simply that she is outdated. “Why does this poor woman want to become a United States senator in her 80s?”

I introduced up the notion of ageism. Did that apply on this context?

“I’m not saying ‘Take these elected leaders’ and, like, ‘Take them out back and shoot them,’” Litman stated. (Reassuring!) “No one is saying ‘Abuse them,’ ‘Punish them.’ No,” she added. “We’re saying ‘Retire or step aside.’”

On the afternoon that I met Mills, we walked via the Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, a three-day extravaganza for anglers, gear suppliers, and fish individuals of all stripes and scales. She chitchatted, hugged, and posed for pictures with followers and non-fans alike, together with with a lady in a See You in Court T-shirt. At one level, Mills paused to introduce me to some buddies, and who ought to saunter over however Senator Angus King himself.

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“Is this lady bothering you guys?” King requested. Mills advised him that she had been speaking with me about some whale-related regulation that they had labored on collectively.

I joked that, really, all we had actually been speaking about was outdated age.

“I’m a year younger than Mick Jagger!” King volunteered.

“We went to the Rolling Stones together,” Mills advised me.

“Two summers ago,” King stated.

“Mick is what, 83 or something?” Mills requested. (Actually 82—which is only a quantity, anyway.)

“If he’s still rocking,” King stated, “so are we, right?”

Mills then belted out a number of traces from “Gimme Shelter.”

King talked about that they purchased matching sweatshirts on the live performance. “I almost wore it today,” he stated. “It’s got the tongue, you know?”

Mills advised me that her determination to run for Senate displays how existential this second is. Trump, she stated, is “taking a wrecking ball to the Constitution.” Never has the verify and stability of the U.S. Senate been so vital. And the incumbent she is difficult, she stated, refuses to face as much as Trump.

“I’m the most qualified person to beat Susan Collins,” Mills stated.

In truth, Platner is simply as—or extra—aggressive than Mills in head-to-head polls towards Collins. But, as Mills’s allies may level out, that competitiveness assumes that nothing new and damaging will come out about Platner. And if he’s the nominee, you might be sure that Collins and the assorted entities working to elect her will spend tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} making certain that Mainers get probably the most chilling impression doable of the tattooed oystermonger.

Mills is at the very least assured that nothing disastrous will floor about her.

“I don’t have a tattoo,” she promised.

I took the governor at her phrase on this. But has she ever been on Reddit?

“No,” she stated.

Later, whereas I used to be scripting this story, I returned to the matter of the governor’s lipid profile. Because Mills had vowed to share hers with “anybody”—and advised me that her life was “an open book”—I figured that she would gladly launch the outcomes. But it was not so easy. Mills’s pledge, because it turned out, got here with a situation: that she would launch medical info solely when “Graham Platner and Susan Collins agree to do the same,” Tommy Garcia, a spokesperson for Mills, advised me. Otherwise, these lipids are sealed.