Janet Mills

Early life and education

Mills was born in Farmington, Maine, on December 30, 1947, the daughter of Katherine Louise (Coffin) and Sumner Peter Mills Jr. Her mother was a schoolteacher and Congregationalist, while her father was a lawyer who served as U.S. Attorney for Maine in the 1950s.

Mills briefly attended Colby College before moving to San Francisco, where she worked as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital. She later enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Boston, from which she graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in 1970. During her time at UMass Boston, Mills traveled through Western Europe and became fluent in French. In 1973, she began attending the University of Maine School of Law, and in 1974 was a summer intern in Washington, D.C., for civil rights attorney Charles Morgan Jr. of the American Civil Liberties Union. Mills graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1976 and was admitted to the bar.

Early political career

Mills was appointed as Maine's first female criminal prosecutor by Governor Joe Brennan, and was an assistant attorney general from 1976 to 1980, prosecuting homicides and other major crimes. In 1980, she was elected district attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties, a position to which she was reelected three times. She was the first woman district attorney in New England. In 1994, Mills was an unsuccessful candidate for the United States Congress in Maine's 2nd congressional district, losing the Democratic primary to John Baldacci.

Mills co-founded the Maine Women's Lobby and was elected to its board of directors in 1998.

In 2000, Mills served as a field coordinator for Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign in Maine. In 2002, she was elected to the Maine House of Representatives. There, she served on the judiciary, criminal justice, and appropriations committees. She was reelected in 2004, 2006, and 2008.

Attorney general of Maine

Mills was elected to her fourth term when the Joint Convention convened in December 2008 to elect the new attorney general. She became Maine's 55th attorney general on January 6, 2009. When Republicans gained control of the Maine legislature in 2010, Mills was not reelected. In January 2011, she was elected vice chair of the Maine Democratic Party. She joined the law firm Preti Flaherty in February 2011 as a lawyer with the firm's Litigation Group in its Augusta office. After Democrats regained control of the legislature in the 2012 elections, Mills was again chosen as attorney general, resigned as vice chair of the Maine Democratic Party, and took the oath of office as attorney general on January 7, 2013. She was reelected on December 3, 2014, despite the Maine Senate coming under Republican control.

Republican governor Paul LePage opposed Mills for attorney general due to many disputes between them over the legality of some of LePage's policies. On January 28, 2015, he requested the Maine Supreme Judicial Court's opinion as to whether the governor's office needed the attorney general's office's permission to retain outside counsel when the attorney general declines to represent the State in a legal matter. LePage did so after Mills twice declined to represent him in matters she determined had little legal merit, though she approved his requests for outside lawyers. On May 1, 2017, LePage sued Mills, asserting that she had abused her authority by refusing to represent the state in legal matters, or taking a legal view contrary to the LePage administration's.

Governor of Maine

Elections

2018

Main article: 2018 Maine gubernatorial election

On July 10, 2017, Mills announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Maine in 2018. One of several candidates in the primary, she won the nomination in June, finishing first after four rounds of ranked-choice voting gave her 54% to her closest competitor's 46%.

In the general election, Mills faced Republican nominee Shawn Moody, independent Maine State Treasurer Terry Hayes, and independent businessman Alan Caron. Endorsed by every major newspaper in Maine and the Boston Globe, buoyed by major ad buys from Democratic political action committees and receiving Caron's endorsement a week before the polls closed, Mills was elected with 50.9% of the vote to Moody's 43.2%. She became Maine's first female governor, the first Maine gubernatorial candidate to be elected with at least 50% of the vote since Angus King in 1998, and the first to win at least 50% of the vote for a first term since Kenneth M. Curtis in 1966. She received over 320,000 votes, more than any governor in the state's history.

Mills's campaign was aided in part by a Democratic super PAC that financed Maine-themed ads meant to attract young voters on social media. Both Mills and outside groups outspent Moody by an average of $15 per vote cast, for a total of $10.7 million.

2022

Main article: 2022 Maine gubernatorial election

Mills ran for reelection in 2022. She faced no opposition in the primaries, making her the Democratic nominee. In the general election, Mills defeated the Republican nominee, former governor Paul LePage, securing a second term. She received over 376,934 votes, breaking the record for the most votes ever cast for a gubernatorial candidate, set four years earlier.

Tenure

One of Mills's first acts as governor was to sign an executive order to carry out the expansion of Maine's Medicaid program as called for by a 2017 referendum, something LePage had refused to do. Medicaid expansion was an issue she had campaigned on. Mills also dropped work requirements for Medicaid that LePage requested toward the end of his tenure and that had the Trump administration's approval. She said the work requirements "leave more Maine people uninsured without improving their participation in the workforce".

Mills revived the tradition of Maine governors attending Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemoration events in Portland, doing so in 2019.

In September 2019, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres asked Mills to speak at the General Assembly on climate change. Mills told world leaders at the UN that she intends to make Maine carbon neutral by 2045. She was the first sitting Maine governor to address the General Assembly.

On June 11, 2021, Mills announced the end of the state of emergency started on March 15, 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state of emergency ended on June 30, 2021.

On June 24, 2021, Mills vetoed seven bills, including one that would have closed the Long Creek Youth Development Center, a juvenile prison. The vetoes received harsh rebuke from progressive Democrats in the legislature.

On April 20, 2022, Mills signed into law the Maine state supplemental budget, which included free community college for students of the class of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

2026 U.S. Senate candidacy

Main article: 2026 United States Senate election in Maine

In December 2022, a month after her reelection as governor, Mills told the Portland Press Herald she did not "plan to run for anything else". In November 2024, the same paper reported that she would not rule out a 2026 campaign for Maine's United States Senate seat held by five-term incumbent Republican Susan Collins. Collins is the only Republican representing a state Donald Trump failed to win in any of his three presidential campaigns. She was reelected by eight points over Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon in 2020. Mills endorsed Gideon in that race.

In July 2025, NOTUS reported that Mills was still considering entering the race. In August, Axios reported that Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer was actively recruiting Mills to challenge Collins. Later that month, Mills told reporters she might decide whether to enter the race in November.

August also saw the campaign launch of Sullivan Harbor Master Graham Platner, running in the Democratic primary on a progressive-populist platform. Platner was endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders and organized labor. In October, Sanders publicly discouraged Mills from challenging Platner, who had raised over $3.2 million from small donors in the seven weeks since his campaign launch. Axios reported on October 7 that Mills was planning to enter the race by the end of the month and on October 10 that Mills would formally enter the race on October 14, citing a leaked campaign document. The same day, an ActBlue page was launched and a fundraising video was posted to Twitter, but both were deleted.

Mills formally announced her candidacy on October 14. She has said she plans to serve only one term if elected. If elected, she would be the oldest freshman senator in U.S. history at 79 when she is sworn in. In a campaign launch video, she highlighted her opposition to Donald Trump with clips of their confrontation in February 2025. Mills has been endorsed by Senators Chuck Schumer and Catherine Cortez Masto. After she announced her candidacy, Democratic candidates Dan Kleban and Daira Smith-Rodriguez left the race and endorsed Mills.

Political positions

Abortion

Mills has taken steps to expand access to abortion procedures, signing legislation to mandate that both public and private insurance agencies include abortion procedures within the scope of their coverage. After the leak of the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mills reaffirmed her position that "unlike an apparent majority of the Supreme Court, I do not consider the rights of women to be dispensable."

Drugs

Mills has expressed her opposition to the decriminalization of drug possession.

Environmental issues

In 2019, Mills signed legislation to ban single-use plastic bags. She also signed into law a ban on the use of styrofoam containers by various industries within the state. This regulation became effective on January 1, 2021.

In 2019, the Central Maine Power Company was granted all necessary permissions to begin work on a corridor running from Beattie Township to a power grid in Lewiston, Maine. Despite Mills's initial skepticism of the proposal and pushback from critics, changes to the budget caused Mills to sign the agreement.

Mills has also enacted regulatory standards for the quality of water on Indigenous reservations used for sustenance fishing.

In 2023, Mills was elected co-chair of the bipartisan Climate Alliance.

Filibuster

Mills supports retaining the U.S Senate filibuster, the 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

Gun control

As a state legislator, Mills received A or A+ grades from the National Rifle Association. When she ran for governor in 2018, her grade from the same organization was "F".

The Firearms Policy Coalition criticized Mills for a series of posts in which she and the organization interacted. Mills reported the FPC for a tweet in which the FPC posted, "Hey @GovJanetMills, Three words: Fuck you. No." in response to news that "Mills is leaving the door open for a possible assault weapons ban following the Lewiston shooting."

Mills opposes red flag laws, instead supporting "yellow flag laws" for gun safety. In 2025, after activists gathered enough signatures to trigger a referendum on implementing a red flag law, Mills endorsed a No vote.

LGBT rights

Mills supports LGBT rights. In May 2019, she signed a bill banning conversion therapy, the pseudoscientific practice aimed at changing one's sexual orientation, from being used on minors. One year earlier, the same bill had passed both chambers of the Maine Legislature, but was vetoed by then-Governor Paul LePage.

Mills supports transgender athletes' participation in sports that align with their identity. On February 21, 2025, she publicly clashed with President Donald Trump on the issue. Trump threatened to cut federal funding if Mills did not comply with his executive order to prevent transgender women from participating in women's sports. Mills told Trump "see you in court", and later released a statement saying "The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President's threats."

After Mills's exchange with Trump, Maine's Department of Education was unable to access federal funds for a child nutrition program. The state sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over the frozen funds, and a judge ordered the administration to unfreeze them. On May 2, 2025, the Trump administration agreed to unfreeze the funds, and Maine agreed to drop the lawsuit.

Sports betting

Mills has expressed her opposition to the regulation of sports betting.

Tribal relations

Mills signed a bill to replace the Columbus Day state holiday with Indigenous People's Day and pledged to work to fill seats on a state-tribal commission that had been left empty under her predecessor. She also signed a bill to establish stricter water quality standards for rivers used by Maine's tribes for sustenance fishing, something long sought by the tribes. It also ended a legal dispute between the tribes and the state, for which Mills as attorney general had defended the state's position.

As governor-elect, Mills said that the use of Native American imagery and nomenclature associated with Maine School District 54 and its Skowhegan high school was "a source of pain and anguish" for the state's Indigenous population. After taking office, she signed into law a measure to ban the use of such references in public schools.

Personal life

In 1985, Mills married real estate developer Stanley Kuklinski and became stepmother to his five daughters. Kuklinski died due to the effects of a stroke on September 24, 2014. She is the sister of Peter Mills (a former Republican state senator and gubernatorial candidate in 2006 and 2010), Dora Anne Mills (former public health director and director of the Maine Center for Disease Control), and Paul Mills.

Mills's primary residence is in Farmington, Maine, where she was born and raised. As governor, she resides at the Blaine House, the governor's mansion in Augusta.

Mills has five grandchildren.

Electoral history

References

References

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