Right Now with Perry Bacon: Why Janet Mills Dropped Out of Maine’s Senate Race

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For all in the vaccine. Yet the customer was tested on Shopify.com today. This is right now with Perry Bacon presented by the DSR network. Good morning, everybody. I'm Perry Bacon.

I'm the host of the new republic show right now. We have some breaking news. This is unusual today, but our guest is Alex Siteswall. He's the deputy editor of the mid-coast villager, which is a paper in Maine. He was already skittled the guest, and we were going to talk about Janet Mills versus

Graham Plattener. But it appears that that is no longer a race going on. Janet Mills, the governor of Maine, decided to spin her campaign. Her primary campaign, you know, conceding the facility, the Graham Plattener, is leading and likely to win.

So Alex wrote the story for mid-coast villager, and he is here to join us now. Alex, welcome. Hey, Perry. Thanks for having me. Yeah, the news gods must have known that we have this schedule then to drop it right

before we got online. So this happened about an hour ago about like the around nine o'clock eastern time. So from what I can see in Mills has made some comments, I'm not sure if it's a statement

of interview, but she's saying that she basically has run out of money.

Do you, or doesn't have enough money, is that? Is this the dumbest building blood?

“Does she not have enough money, or is she going to lose and kind of ducking?”

That the primary is on June 9th, and she's been down to the polls. Yeah, I mean, this is a massive totally unexpected development. I've been following this race closely. I'm shocked, honestly, by this, and I do, I think the money is real. I mean, it's a reminder that in politics, like you don't drop out, because you have

bad press or bad polling, unless you have extremely bad press, like Eric Swallwell, it's when the money runs out. I, I don't know that she was totally dry, but she had been outspend two to one and outraised two to one by Graham Platner. She pulled all of her digital ads last week, which was a big tell that money was tight.

She pulled CV ads a little while ago, but the writing has sort of been on the wall for a while. I mean, I just noticed today when I was driving to drop my daughter off at school.

I always look at the yard signs, and I saw one new Janet Mills yard sign, which brought

the grand total to three that I am aware of, meanwhile, there are dozens of Graham Platner yard signs. I'll pass 25, the 30 before I see a single Mills one. The polling has been pretty consistent showing Platner up by very, you know, different margins.

“And then just a Friday, 15 more like three, I've seen very, what's your sense of it?”

The numbers have been very, very, in a lot of ways, but yeah, I mean, primary polling is super tough. It's super volatile, especially a race like this where everyone kind of thought that you're going to get voters who don't typically vote, and, you know, the way you do primary polling is you screen out people who typically vote in primaries, but a race like this is going to

bring in new voters, how many new voters. So I just kind of look at the direction or the consensus, and I can't really say how big Platner's lead is, but when you have nine or 10 polls in a row that show an outside the margin, lead, that tells you something. But then there was also, you know, in other words, you think he was ahead and likely to

win if we went through this, if he was the favorite for sure, but based on the polling. Yes, absolutely. And he was definitely a favorite based on the polling. He was the favorite based on fundraising. He was the favorite based on, you know, the enthusiasm of who turned out like just consistently

getting these massive crowds at these events that he's doing. She's done very few public events, but at the handful that she has, there's empty seats. You know, it's not the vibes, so to speak, we're not great.

“And when you don't have perfect data, you have to look at all these things, including”

yard signs. But there was also, and I don't know if this was the straw that broke the camera back, but there was a big development on Friday, where Mills vetoed this important bill. There was first in the nation, more Tory on data centers, Maine had really gotten out in front of the country, and Mills vetoed it for an understandable reason.

I think a very defensible reason of there was this one project that was already underway, that this town really wanted. But still, she put herself on the opposite side of an issue that the almost all the Democrats

base pointed.

“And I heard a lot of plugged in Democrats telling me, like, did she just commit political suicide”

with that veto on Friday?

So that might have been sort of an inciting incident to get her to make this decision. I guess one of you that is maybe she was leaving the race already, and just decided to just do what she thinks was policy right, and either of you is like this. I mean, she's Jenna Mills is not a bad politician, like there's an anti-data center movement across the country, and so in a certain sense, she must have, I assume she must have known

this would not be a popular thing, right? Yeah, absolutely, and maybe she didn't anticipate how sharp the reaction, I moderated a forum on Sunday, excuse me, Saturday for the Democratic Gubernatorial candidates, and that's also interesting race that's been totally overshadowed.

The first question I asked was, what, if you were governor, would you have signed this moratorium?

What do you think of Mills's veto? And four out of five of the candidates were very aggressively anti Mills's veto and favor of the moratorium, and the fifth one kind of dodged and didn't take a pass on it. So she was getting a ton of flack and not a lot of support for that veto.

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That's the music for your oron. Videos of recent vendors, with shop-ify, can't sit to an important hit. Start it on test-notch heute for no one in EuroPromona. Off shop-ify.de/recorder. Let me just say what I do in the DSR segment, but this is me as, I would assume a stay

like main, which is not, which you know, Microsoft or Apple is not moving to main, probably no if it's the main.

“I think it's like even in the same situation.”

But in the circumstances, data centers don't, data centers probably do bring in some jobs to create them, but are people in main more concerned about more antide and pro-data centers even though data centers probably do create some jobs? What's your sense of the sentiment about data centers on the ground there? Yeah, it's pretty broadly anti, and the big argument that I hear is electricity rates.

We already have some of the highest electricity rates in the country. It's cold in main, breaking news, and so fuel costs, heating your home is a huge kind of cost-of-living issue, a lot of people have heat pumps, which run on electricity. There's also, it's a very environmentally conscious conservation line to state, and that's both in the kind of progressive hiking, kayaking, and also in the more conservative hunting

fishing way. So, and it's a very kind of nimbee anti-development, you know, keep things as they are states. So, there's a kind of broad consensus against it. The biggest argument in favor, it was more about the tax revenue that it would bring,

and that's also a big issue, and it's some of the big jobs, but, you know, this was going to be put in in an old paper mail that, like, a lot of parts of the country industry has gone, and there's these huge parts of the state that are really struggling economically, though, it would bring some jobs, it would have been like a hundred jobs or so on an ongoing basis, but really what the local town council, the school board, the local officials,

were really excited about, was the tax revenue to take a little bit of the burden off of residents. But that wasn't enough, remember. It's hard to ask this question, but is Mills leading this race and not doing well?

Before she had this race, I looked at the polling for Governor, she was kind of a mid-popular

“office, she wasn't extremely popular, but she wasn't unpopular at all, so is this result?”

To me, it feels more like there was a lot about platinum being a strong candidate than Mills being a badwin, but talking about it, but there's a balance there, he's a zero sum on some level, but what drove this result? Why is platinum done so well? Is it because of him or because of her or because of who the book?

I think it's absolutely both, I mean, yeah, platinum area is a, you know, the timing, the

man, the moment it all worked out, he looks like coastal man, like I know a million

guys who look like him, he talks, you know, the right way, he's kind of straddles that populist, but also he can appeal to conservatives, so that's all true, but I think a huge part of this, and maybe the bigger part is that Mills frankly ran one of the worst campaigns that I've ever seen, just shocking to me as somebody who's covered a lot of campaigns,

“I think she's been much better governor than she has been a Senate candidate, you know,”

she had issues with Democrats where she disagreed with labor or the tribal nations on certain things, but nothing that would have prevented her from getting the Democratic nomination, but it's just been this very lackluster, very dated campaign, you know, she's still running as if it's like 2001 or not at all adapting to the new media environment, I mean, she

last summer, there was all this question, what is she going to run, is she not going to run?

And no one knew, she didn't put out word to her allies, she waited a long time to get in, so a bunch of people who would have supported her were looking around for someone else and then Graham Platner comes along, she, she, a small thing, like, she tweeted her announcement on a Friday when she was supposed to go out on a Monday and it took them four hours to take the tweet down, you know, it's just like a little bit, but when you're the two-term governor

you're supposed to be the adult in the room, these kind of like basic blocking and tackling things just don't work and then she just has not held public campaign events, she's held these private talks where she meets with local leaders, having covered the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 or reminded me of the kind of early Clinton campaign stuff and I kept

“waiting for her to kick into a higher gear but it just never really came and I think it”

did her a disservice because everyone made this connection, you know, her age was the big, that that's the big thing here, really and everyone made this connection to Joe Biden. This is not a Joe Biden situation, she is not doddering, she is not being protected, I've spent time with her, I think she's very sharp, she's physically able, I saw her last month and all her aides wanted to drive from one event to another, it was cold out and

she's like, no, let's just walk and she just walks over but we didn't see that, voters I saw that because I was a reporter, I was one of three people with her but the voters didn't see that because she just was not out and about and then she decided to go negative and her TV ads, again, a splatter, which I think really backfired you know and all her ads were about Donald Trump and not her so it just felt very disconnected and very dated and I think

it's unfortunate because I, you know, in a kind of small D democracy sense, voters should get a good, honest choice of all the candidates and I think she and her campaign didn't do her the service and I didn't think main Democrats got a disservice to and not getting a good real choice between Mills and Pliner because her campaign was so lackluster. Let me ask two little questions that you're saying she didn't campaign will, one is did

she want to run or to do Schumer and Jill the brand kind of encouraged strongly and it was a kind of their campaign that she was reluctantly running and then too related, this she kind of expect to win because she's the two charming and coming, coming governor and this

guy has never run for anything before and therefore she assume voters would rationally

sort of come to her. I, those are excellent questions that many people are asking. I don't know what's in her head, I can't say what's in her heart but I can say for sure that she did not do anything or did not do nearly enough to combat either of those perceptions, which both would be telling me.

She didn't want to do this, she did coast to winning, okay, yeah, those kind of became accepted trueisms there that she, she did, her heart wasn't in it, she didn't really want to do. I heard Democrats who supported her saying maybe she's like secretly, you know, wants to lose and she's, she's just doing this to kind of go through the motions because she, she did seem so up at which she was she on whether she wanted to run and Schumer was pushing her so hard.

She also said two weeks before she jumped in the race, she preyed Susan Collins and said Susan

perception that she felt entitled to it or that it was, you know, she was just going to

“coast to victory again by not holding campaign events, not aggressively campaigning, she didn't really”

do anything to combat those notions. So she was going to come into that race with the age issue, with the perception that she was, you know, felt entitled to it, with the perception that her heart wasn't really in it. So she had to, she should have been working from day one to show that she was then at her, she wanted this, she was going to fight for every vote and she just really did. The legendary checkout of Schoppie-Fly, for just the shop on your website,

this is the social media and over everything. That's the music for your ears. Videos are also released on vendors with Schoppie-Fly, it can be to a real help to the people. Start to dance, test, and all the people. I'm an oil proponent of Schoppie-Fly, point A, so let's record it. So, okay, so she did, so no, okay, listen, she did. So look, let me come out,

“you know what I'm talking with this is like this in the primary, this comparison between,”

between, um, platinum and fetterma. What do you think about this? This is like, come up a little bit, there's a bit, the one thing about him that's been buzzed about has been that maybe we can't, you know, the, maybe he didn't, we don't know, because betterment has become this more conservative person, betterment has also a white guy who doesn't, you know, dress in suits all the time. Talking about classic clothes, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I totally see the comparison coming out of

left field, the aesthetics, you know, aesthetics forward candidates, and the biggest thing maybe is that they share, or use to share consultants, the kind of big masterminds behind the plateners campaign, Rebecca Katz, a long time New York strategist in her firm, the fight agency, they also do ribbon Gallego, they were the kind of fetterman, people early on. So I, I totally see the concern, and just as kind of broader concern that you hear about, you know,

Democrats shouldn't fall for viral candidates for candidates who produce a great video, like Amy McGrath, and in your neck of the woods, and then end up, you know, flaming out, or there was just a story about McMoro, and in Michigan, you know, deleting all these tweets about how Michigan sucks, and it wishes she still lives in California. Another kind of cautionary tale, you know, go for the tried and true, yes, maybe these career politicians are boring, or not as exciting,

but like, you can trust them, is the kind of idea. So I totally get that comparison,

“but I think if you spend a little bit more time looking at it, it doesn't really stand up.”

First of all, because fetterman has totally new to Graham Platner and said he should get nowhere

near the Senate, and I hate him, and Graham Platner has said basically the same thing about John Fetterman, uh, fetterman's big issue where he's broken with the left, I mean, there's a lot of things, but Israel is, is the big one, and a Platner has been, like, incredibly vocal on Israel, to the point that some of his supporters have even been, you know, like a little bit chill out. If you go way back in Platner's resume to his high school yearbook, he was given the

superlative most likely to start a revolution, and he is holding up a sign saying free Palestine, free Tibet, free Chechnya. So, you know, the idea that he's some kind of like a dark horse, secret, uh, the impact of the conservative, I just don't see it. It's different for me here, like, I know I've personally know people who grew up with him. His wife is from one town over from me. I know people who were like best friends with her in high school. She used to teach at the

high school that my daughter will go to when she goes to high school. So, that's not everyone can

have that level of understanding, but, you know, not all women, uh, yeah, not always a good defense,

but in this case, uh, yeah. You know, like I was, the person I was going to get at was like, the nationalization of this primary has been like, you know, there's become this become a proxy with a sort of progressive versus, quote unquote, moderate, Senator Warren and Bernie Sanders, endorsed Platner, some of the more Schumer and Jill Aran endorsed, endorsed Mills. So, that's naturally how it's playing out. So, some of my friends who don't live in Maine are texting me

who were progressive, like, yay, Mills lost, but on the ground in Maine are these dynamics playing out where it's like the progressive versus the modern, because it seems like Platner's doing well enough, where he's not just getting the progressive vote, because I can't eat it big. But, um, so talk about are those national dynamics playing a racist, playing a big role there, or is this more

more progressive people are more aligned with Platner and more kind of, uh, uh, it's a establishment

team model, whatever you want to call it, are more aligned. It's really, people who have been in politics more kind of regard this of their, uh, views, you know, people who, um, that's definitely a factor, but it's, it's not the whole thing and it's, like anything, it's not as simple as, uh, as that dynamic. There have been specific issues where Mills has, uh, alienated specific progressive interest groups, especially organized labor, which is not huge in Maine, but is, uh, there's not

a lot of progressive infrastructures, so they play a big role in what infrastructure does exist, um, the tribal, uh, issues she's vetoed, tribal sovereignty bills. Um, there's just a number of issues

where the kind of median democratic party has moved on from where she was, you know, maybe a few

“years ago on, on those specific issues. So it's more about those, but I think the age factor is,”

is really the, the biggest thing is happening to actually like the Biden thing is glammed on her own some levels, or you're saying, yes, absolutely. I mean, the, the age alone in a different election cycle, maybe would not have been as big of a deal, but, uh, you know, put yourself back a year last summer when this was all coming up fresh, Trump was still new in office, those wounds about the Biden fiasco were very fresh, and people felt like this might be abiding it. I heard

many times people say, I liked Mills's governor. I thought she did a good job, but I think it's time for somebody new or in fresher and younger. And then the other big thing, um, that I think has been somewhat captured nationally, but not, it has been kind of underestimated is just the extent to, to wish, uh, Platner has been everywhere. He has been omnipresent. He's done like 65 town halls. It's a small state where everybody knows everybody knows, you know, you know, it's, it's one or two

degrees of separation. So, uh, when you're doing 65 town halls where you get 300, 400,000 people

at them, eventually like you start to hit a critical mass where you, you are reaching a significant

chunk of democratic primary voters. And he's gone on, you know, every podcast, every, uh, Instagram influencer, every local media, every national media, he's answered all the, the, the questions that people feel like that I've been thrown at him. I know there's a lot of people who feel like he hasn't answered some questions, but it's just this, he's, he's ubiquitous, uh, in a way that Mills

“is not. And I think that makes people feel at ease with him and, um, connect with him. And then the,”

the aesthetic thing is, I think is totally real. Like, I've heard a lot of women say that they, you know, they find him attractive and a lot of men, you know, women, the Austin Powers line, women want him, men want to be him. Like, that, I think that's kind of, uh, in, in, you know, at least in coastal Maine, you know, that, that look is, is, uh, says a lot. And, and people in a place where there's a lot of outside money that comes in and there's all the kind of micro-class dynamics and

people are constantly sizing each other up based on how tall your boots are and, uh, you know, how, how messy your beard is and whether you work with your hands or, or not, I think he kind of can connect with, with, uh, men and women in a way that, working men in a way that, uh, Democrats often don't. Uh, let's finish up by talking about the general election now, because I think we're now, we can talk about that a little bit. So, if you're, so talk about this as an observer, what are the

“advantages columns has coming into this and what are the advantages platform that has coming into this?”

Collins has a lot of advantages and I would not under counter at all, but she's easily the most, uh, vulnerable Republican. It's a, it is a blue state. It's not a, extremely blue state, but it is, you know, it votes at the presidential level. But it's elected Collins a lot. Uh, she has, you know, massive name ID, people tend to like incumbents. She, they let people like to to cross party lines and feel like they're independence and they're not doing the, just the,

the, the straight ticket voting. And she has these deep relationships, uh, it's, she doesn't do them the same way that platter does. It's not in public. It's in private, but she works so hard. And I, I just know because I hear from people who were like, oh, it's talking us to Susan last night, or I got an email from Susan last night at two in the morning, you know, she's just kind of one of these workaholic people who is, it seems to be aware of everything going on at any time in the state

and plugging in and, and contacting people. So again, making that kind of personal connection. And then the last thing is seniority. She's the chair of the Appropriations Committee. Uh, and this is a very

that that really do depend on a lot of federal money for infrastructure projects. It goes along

white. And she has pushed in, called in all her chips and the Republican Senate leadership, the White House clearly interesting and getting her re-elected. So she has just been making it rain all over the state. I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure projects in little things like historical society near me just got a hundred thousand dollars to repair their building. A new bridge, another museum near me just got a new stem center for money that she organized.

Another, my, my, the street that I used to live on got a new culvert from money that she supported. So, and she's put up this map on her website, and it's just saturated with pins of places where she

“has sent money to. And I think that kind of hurt Mills in the primary where she said, I'm the”

only going to serve one term to try to delay the age concerns. But then Collins and Platter turned around

and said, one term in the Senate, you're not going to get any seniority. Yeah. So, you know, Mills, I mean, Collins has, has definitely made the gravy train run. I'm sure she'll take a couple of high profile votes where she'll break with Donald Trump to prove that she's a, you know, I'm moderate. I'm doing ear quotes here. But it's, it's going to be a really tight race and I don't trust the polling. I don't trust it enough in 2020. Collins was outspent two to one by the Democrat

who ran against her and still won by nine percentage points. All the polls had her losing. So, I think this is going to be a really bitter, really tight fought race. The super PACs are already here.

All our ads, like from here on out, I think until November, it's just going to be political ad, political ad,

political ad after another. What are his advantages? Obviously, they age as the big one. They would also, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would it, would, if your Collins, would you nervous about what was because Platter's a little bit, he has a tap to he has some, doesn't it is obviously, but what are his advantages of your, would your Collins? Yeah, right, the, the vulnerabilities are very obvious with Platter. And I went, just count that other things could come out

between now and then. You know, there might be things that Democrats found, the Mills team found, but they, they didn't want to put out just in case. I don't know, and things can come out in a new light, but the energy, the campaign cadence, the willingness to go everywhere to just like, you know, he's held 65 town halls since now, he could do another 100 before November. And again, at some point, you're reaching a meaningful number of voters having a, you know, a personal connection

shaking somebody's hand. And I do think that goes a long way. Money, he's already outspend, outraised both Mills and Collins, and I suspect he will continue to, especially once the institutional Democrats get behind him. And then the kind of fresh face, miss, you know, change, check on Donald Trump. It's going to be a Democratic election year. We don't know if it's going to be

“a wave yet, but the winds should certainly be at his back, I think. And the, just that kind of,”

you know, potential for cross party appeal. The one big caution I will say that I think is not been given enough attention nationally. The real swing voters in Maine are not white working class men the way we often think about them in, you know, the rust belt or the former union voters. That's, I think that's a piece of it. But the ones that have really mattered are women, educated, middle-aged, older women, who have, will vote either way. They might be registered

Democrats or independents, but they have voted for Susan Collins in the past. They find her reasonable. They find her a good leader who fights. I know one of them, right? She's an educated white woman, a certain age, right? Yeah. Yes. And, and she, and, you know, she's a very reasonable choice. She, she, she, she brings, she brings federal money that keep your local tax dollars down. And everyone here, no matter how progressive you are, cares about their local taxes, the property taxes,

because we have an unusually high share of property tax burden just the way our, our system works.

“So I don't know. I think it's a big open question for Platner. Does his kind of aggressive”

maleness, his machoness, the, the, the anger, does that push some of those women in, in the Collins's camp, and are there enough men, progressives, or, you know, women who feel differently to make up for it on the other end? I don't know yet. But the good work is he's, he's got, he's got some of the people who work with Zara on working with him. He's got some of Zara stands. But Zara is a very, we wrote a piece of the new report about this. Zara is a very smiley,

happy progressivism, and Platner is a more, the, the, you know, things are burning. We need to

much less positive, I would say, right? Is that fair to say? Oh, a thousand percent. I mean,

he, he talks openly about his anger and, you know, that his, he was a marine. He's, he's killed men. He, like, he has killed multiple, multiple men in combat. He did four combat tours. He was a machine gunner in Fludja. Like, this is, the, the, the tattoos, you know, I, whether you believe him at his words or not, it, it's, regardless of the Nazi tattoos, the whole thing speaks to that kind of, like, agro-male thing. You know, he says he's calm down. He's found peace. He's, he's, he's different.

Now, but the anger is still very much there. And that excites a lot of progressives in the kind of

“Bernie wing, who are more eager to burn it all down. But I think it can also turn off a lot of”

other people. And I don't want to just brought brush-hook and say women, but, but in Maine, you know,

based on the historic trends, coastal educated women have, that's the key grip to, to watch. So Alex, meet and post village. You're talking about how you all, because you're, uh, talking about how you all will cover the race. You're a local outlet. You're sort of a new outlet. So what does it mean to cover a general election? It's going to be covered. Because I've learned a lot from this interview because you are there on the ground, but they're going to have a lot of us coming

in from outside. So what's you all's going to approach, probably this race going to be? Yeah, it's a great question. It's one that we think about all the time. We are pretty new. We start into September 2024, uh, rolled together with four historic newspapers that go back to the 1800s. So, as our publisher says, we're a new newspaper with an old soul, uh, which I, I love, we cover Knox and Waldo counties, which is the middle of the coast, kind of between Portland and

Acadia or, uh, Bar Harbor. So, uh, the worst statewide races like this, that's not really our, our Bailey wick. I mean, yes, we are part of the state, but, uh, we have limited resources. And in case you have been heard, things are rough out there for local news. So, you know, we need to be prioritizing school board races, select board races, city council races. There's

“important ballot measures that are going on, because no one else will be covering those. If we”

don't, plenty of people will be covering the Platner Susan Collinsers. That said, uh, we have some local connections as a, a, a me, Gertner Platner's wife is from here. Uh, so, so we did a story on, we had the broken news on her IVF treatment going to Norway for that because she wanted it to go to her local newspaper. Uh, our sister, uh, publication, The Ellsworth American, we have the same owner, is Grant Platner's local newspaper. So, we will find our ways to come in, but, uh,

given my background, you know, covering national politics, it's going to be targets of opportunity on the, on the, on the big statewide races. Uh, but we're not going to feel like we have to cover, you know, the latest developments in the center race or the governor's race, because that can be handled by the Portland Press Hill, Bangor Nailing News, and by all the national folks that are coming in. But then personally, because I do talk to people like you and, and other national folks,

I do feel like I have a bit of a rule to mainsplain, uh, for, for the rest of the world, because it is a weird, unique place. And I know everybody feels that way about their, their state, uh, but I think Maine has some strong claims to be especially weird and unique. And so, I am, and the villager, because all the, the region that we reach, we have, you know, locals, families that go back million generations, but we also get these, these big, you know, summer people, as they're

called, who come in, national people. Uh, so we do also feel like we want to educate those people

from a local perspective, but it's all, it's always about local, first, uh, and, and foremost,

“and that's, that's what local news is all about. Doing the stories that no one else can do.”

Great way to finish. I don't want to add more to that. Alex Citeswall. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for already been tuning in. We'll have Kimberly Crinshaw later this week to talk about the voting rights that we're ruling for the Supreme Court yesterday, and other than her new memoirs. So, Alex, thanks for joining me. Thanks for re-retuning in. This is Perry Bacon. And see you soon. Bye bye. Thanks, Perry.

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