Dammit, Janet!

 Maine governor Janet Mills dropped out of the 2026 U.S. Senate campaign in her state.

Governor Mills, 78, was encouraged to run for the Senate in the Democratic state primary and, were she to win, run against the similarly ancient Susan Collins, first elected to the Senate in 1996, back when most of us were still licking postage stamps to paste on envelopes to send greeting cards.  It was Chuck Schumer who did the encouraging.  He saw her as a safe and conventional liberal who would be a good Democrat - that is, a Democrat like Schumer.  AIPAC probably figured in there somewhere.

Mainers increasingly perplexed about a woman two years older than Schumer presenting herself as a new face in Washington chose instead to pay attention to Graham Platner, a staunch progressive and an oyster farmer who spends his time touching on the same issues that Bernie Sanders pushes.  As a Mainer who rants against Republicans and corporate Democrats, Platner, 41, sounds like a crusty young salt.

Platner will face tough opposition from the Republican money machine operating out of Washington.  The GOP will go after him on his questionable quasi-Nazi tattoo, his lack of political experience above the municipal level, and maybe the fact that his grandfather, Warren Platner, was an interior designer, which sounds, well, kind of gay.  But Platner has one advantage in his favor.

He'll be running against Susan Collins.