2026 U.S. Senate Elections

In the increasingly bitter Democratic primary to challenge Sen. Susan Collins, Mills’s campaign released an ad in which women read Graham Platner’s old social-media posts — including a Reddit comment saying people shouldn’t get so drunk “they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to” — and framed the remarks as minimizing sexual assault, circulating a statement from several Maine women, including former state party vice chair Peggy Schaffer, calling the comments disqualifying. Platner’s team called the spot a “desperate” attack by D.C. insiders and ran a counterad featuring a Maine woman named Susan Collins praising Platner, while Mills also mocked Platner over a skull-and-crossbones tattoo he later covered after learning of its Nazi association.