Gov. Janet Mills and oyster farmer Graham Platner are battling over female voters as Maine’s critical Senate race heats up, underscoring how the group could be decisive both in the June Democratic primary and the November general election.
Mills and Platner have launched TV ads in recent days narrated by women and held dueling events highlighting women who are backing their campaigns. Platner’s campaign also has been heavily targeting women with ads online.
The latest missive came Thursday as Mills released another TV ad targeting Platner over online posts in 2013 in which he downplayed sexual assault. Platner, a combat veteran, has disavowed those posts and attributed them to his struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder following his service in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The back-and-forth on the airwaves demonstrates how both campaigns are vying for female voters in the primary to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins. The Maine race is a must-win contest for Democrats in their quest to net four seats and take control of the Senate.
“It’s hard to imagine winning the Maine primary without doing well amongst women, and particularly older women,” said David Farmer, a Maine Democratic strategist who is not involved in the Senate race. He noted that women over age 65 tend to make up a plurality of primary voters in Maine. Polls indicate that women, a key part of the Democratic coalition broadly, are particularly fired up ahead of the midterm elections.
A recent national NBC News poll found 67% of women rated themselves as 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale of their interest in the election, compared with 61% of men. The survey also found women favoring Democrats in the battle for Congress by 7 points, while men favored Republicans by 9 points.
Collins has been able to survive in the left-leaning state in part because of her appeal among female voters. During her last re-election race in 2020, she narrowly won Maine women by 3 points, even as President Donald Trump lost them by 23 points, according to NBC News exit polling.
That’s in part why Mills and her allies are highlighting Platner’s past comments, casting them as particularly offensive to women in the state who could be swayed to support Collins again.
“Women are the key bloc here in the primary, and also in the general, so it’s no surprise that that’s who’s being targeted now,” said Mills supporter Emily Cain, a former state legislator and former executive director of EMILY’s List, a group that supports female Democratic candidates and is backing Mills.
“Janet’s contention with Graham Platner is that his own words from the past, these and others, make his path to victory in the fall very difficult against Susan Collins,” Cain said.
Mills goes on the attack
Platner’s online Reddit posts, which resurfaced last fall, included a slew of controversial comments, including calling himself a communist; saying white, rural Americans were racist and stupid; and writing that “all” police officers are “bastards” after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd in 2020.
In posts first reported by The Washington Post, Platner responded to a Reddit commenter who wrote, “There’s always that story about the girl who gets raped because she drank too much and somebody took advantage of that.”
Platner responded, “Holy f—, how about people just take some responsibility for themselves and not get so f—ed up they wind up having sex with someone they don’t mean to? Men and women, you make a choice to consume enough of a substance to lose your self control. So if you don’t want to be in a compromising situation, act like an adult for f—s sake.”
The first negative ad from Mills’ campaign that launched last week featured women, including some prominent Democratic leaders, reading those words and saying they were disqualifying.
Mills defended the ad in a virtual news conference last week with female supporters, saying, “It’s important that Mainers hear Platner’s own words and the absolutely abhorrent things that he has said.”
