A third contender – claiming a mantle of bureaucratic reform – has emerged in what until now has been a two-way primary contest aimed at dethroning Maine’s five-term GOP senator.
David Costello, a Democrat living in Brunswick who submitted the qualifying nominated petitions this week, likely can’t beat Janet Mills or Graham Platner.
But the one thing he can do is spoil the race that so far has been all about them.
The polls seem to give Platner a comfortable lead against Mills in the race for the GOP seat held by Susan Collins.
But the unpredictable in the equation is what could make federal-office politics interesting in Maine during this election cycle.
A few points either way and Costello could end up ruining either Mills, 78, or Platner, 41, as each of those two big names tries to upset the other.
Costello, 65, has failed twice previously seeking federal office from Maine.
He lost bad as a Democrat against “independent” U.S. Sen. Angus King in 2024, receiving 11 percent to King’s 52 percent.
The Bangor native also ran unsuccessfully, in 2002, in the Democrat primary for Maine’s northern-congressional district, placing fifth in a six-person race, receiving just 5 percent of the vote.
He talks about having working-class roots but for much of his professional life has been a bureaucrat.
Costello’s pitch has always been that he’s working to reform government, but he’s essentially a product of the bureaucracy.
The eye-glazing words “government reform” are not exactly the way to light a fire under Democrat voters who are typically issue driven.
As Maine’s newest political flavor, Platner is the only one of the three Democrats in the senate race who could actually make an argument for government reform because he’s never been a part of the bureaucracy.
Platner runs as an “oyster farmer,” a cute way of circumventing the problem of being a product of government.
Mills, who hasn’t had a job outside of government, could never make “reforming” the bureaucracy as the basis of a political campaign.
Costello will most likely be nothing more than a spoiler in the Democrat primary between a Nazi-tattooed ex-Marine and a term-limited governor plagued with one scandal after another.
He is pretending to be running a general-election campaign in a primary race, suggesting that Collins is his real opponent, not Mills or Platner.
Costello argues that Collins has “excelled as a politician but has accomplished little of substance beyond electoral success in her 28-plus years in office.”
He calls himself “a candidate who’s committed to fixing a broken Washington.”
The problem for Costello is that the hot issues in this Maine election will come down to abortion and boys in girls sports, not “fixing Washington.”
