Gov. Janet Mills of Maine, who bowed out of the state’s Senate race a month ago, suggested in a new interview that she remained an option for Democratic voters as Graham Platner, the party’s likely nominee, faced scrutiny over reports that he had sent sexual messages to women outside his marriage.
“People have the impression that I ‘withdrew’ or ‘dropped out,’” Ms. Mills said in an interview published on Monday in The Portland Press Herald. “I simply suspended active campaigning. I am still on the ballot.”
Ms. Mills delivered her assessment to Steve Collins, a columnist at the newspaper, Maine’s largest.
Her comments came amid the latest 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 leader, from the race in late April.
The latest furor involving Mr. Platner involves an admission that he had sent sexually explicit texts to as many as six women since he was married in 2023. His campaign previously survived uproars over a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol (he has since had it covered up) and inflammatory old Reddit posts.
The revelation of the texts has shaken Democratic politics in recent days. Though Ms. Mills stopped campaigning, she and another candidate, David Costello, a former official in state governments in Maine and Maryland, remain on the ballot for Democratic voters in Maine’s primary elections next 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 only state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024 that has a competitive Senate race for a Republican-held seat. It is crucial to Democratic hopes of flipping control of the chamber in November — they need to hold all of the Democratic-held Senate seats and flip at least four controlled by Republicans to claim a majority.
Mr. Platner has responded combatively to the reports in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times about his texting history.
On Sunday, he called the reports “journalistic malpractice” and said that reporters should instead focus on the issues he would prefer to talk about.
“Our opponents want politics to be empty of content and empty of actual change — and beating that is exactly what our movement is about,” Mr. Platner said.
