Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday she was suspending her campaign for the US Senate — clearing the way for far-left candidate Graham Platner to face five-term Republican incumbent Susan Collins in November.
“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else –the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources,” Mills said in a statement.
“That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate.”
Polls consistently showed Mills trailing far behind Platner ahead of the June 9 Democratic primary, despite several weeks of controversy over the 41-year-old Marine veteran’s prominent display of a skull-and-crossbones tattoo resembling the “Totenkopf” emblem of the Nazi SS.
Platner, the head of a Maine oyster farming operation and grandson of modernist architect Warren Platner, has claimed he got the tattoo during a drunken 2007 outing while on leave in Croatia and had no knowledge of its fascist links.
In November of last year, Platner had the death’s head concealed with a tattoo of a Celtic knot with a dog jumping out of the image.
Democrats are eyeing the Maine Senate seat as their easiest potential pickup in the November midterms. Collins is currently the only Republican to represent any of the six New England states in the House or Senate.
