Seventy-eight-year-old Gov. Janet Mills is being forced to fend off her own party’s concerns about her age.
That according to CNN, which reports a growing conflict among Democrats in Maine in the party’s U.S. Senate race.
“Democratic leaders in Washington were thrilled when Mills entered the Senate race last fall, seeing the two-term governor as the type of battle-tested candidate who could finally unseat Collins and give their party a shot at the majority,” CNN says.
“But Mills is confronting a persistent problem: Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and political newcomer just over half her age, is appealing to the hunger of many progressive voters eager for a new generation of insurgent Democrats particularly in the aftermath of Joe Biden’s presidency.”
Five-term Republican Sen. Susan Collins is playing rope-a-dope while Dems “battle a generational divide,” CNN’s Capitol Hill reporters Manu Raju and Alison Main claim.
“Mills was laying out her case against Collins to several dozen supporters recently when one attendee raised a question on the minds of many voters in Maine,” Raju and Main wrote in their CNN piece.
“How are you and your campaign going to push back against the argument that you are too old?” the voter asked.
“Damn,” an embarrassed Mills replied with a forced laugh before later saying: “The times are too urgent, too dangerous not to send the best person we have, the most tested candidate.”
The two-term-limited governor is trying to defuse the age question by claiming she’d serve only one term, echoing a similar promise now-five-term-going-on-six Collins once made.
The pressure to explain away her age now has Mills making fun of another elderly Democrat whose doddering ended his dreams of a second White House term.
“Good Lord. I’m not Joe Biden for God’s sake,” she told CNN.
The question is whether Democrats will do the same thing to Janet Mills that they did to Joe Biden – abandon her for a younger, untested version.
