Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, who bowed out of the state’s Senate race a month in the past, prompt in a brand new interview that she remained an possibility for Democratic voters as Graham Platner, the occasion’s seemingly nominee, confronted scrutiny over reviews that he had despatched sexual messages to ladies exterior his marriage.
“Folks have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’” Ms. Mills mentioned in an interview published on Monday in The Portland Press Herald. “I merely suspended energetic campaigning. I’m nonetheless on the poll.”
Ms. Mills delivered her evaluation to Steve Collins, a columnist on the newspaper, Maine’s largest.
Her feedback got here amid the most recent political firestorm for Mr. Platner, 41, an oyster farmer and first-time political candidate who has galvanized progressives. His momentum drove Ms. Mills, 78, a two-term governor who had been endorsed by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority chief, from the race in late April.
The newest furor involving Mr. Platner includes an admission that he had sent sexually explicit texts to as many as six ladies since he was married in 2023. His marketing campaign beforehand survived uproars over a tattoo that resembled a Nazi image (he has since had it coated up) and inflammatory outdated Reddit posts.
The revelation of the texts has shaken Democratic politics in latest days. Although Ms. Mills stopped campaigning, she and one other candidate, David Costello, a former official in state governments in Maine and Maryland, stay on the poll for Democratic voters in Maine’s main elections subsequent week.
The Platner controversy has served as a distraction from Democratic hopes to defeat Senator Susan Collins, a five-term Republican who has managed to win re-election even when Democratic presidential candidates have carried Maine.
Maine is the one state that former Vice President Kamala Harris received in 2024 that has a aggressive Senate race for a Republican-held seat. It’s essential to Democratic hopes of flipping management of the chamber in November — they should maintain the entire Democratic-held Senate seats and flip at the least 4 managed by Republicans to assert a majority.
Mr. Platner has responded combatively to the reviews in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Occasions about his texting historical past.
On Sunday, he referred to as the reviews “journalistic malpractice” and mentioned that reporters ought to as an alternative deal with the problems he would favor to speak about.
“Our opponents need politics to be empty of content material and empty of precise change — and beating that’s precisely what our motion is about,” Mr. Platner mentioned.
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an early supporter of Mr. Platner’s, mentioned on Monday that it was “vital for us to deal with the problems going through working households just a little bit greater than Graham Platner’s marriage.”
“My understanding is that his spouse,” Amy Gertner, “is standing by her husband, and I want their marriage the easiest,” Mr. Sanders advised reporters.
Annie Karni and Katie Glueck contributed reporting.
