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Platner Raises 3 Times as Much as Mills, Collins Combined in Small Donations in Final Quarter of 2025
"Remember back when the national media said our campaign was dead?" said the Democratic Senate candidate.
Feb 02, 2026
At a campaign event over the weekend, Democratic US Senate candidate Graham Platner repeated a message that's been central to his campaign since it launched last August: that his goal of serving in the Senate is about "movement politics" more than attaining a position of power for himself.
“If we win this race, with this kind of politics and building this kind of organizational capacity,” Platner told the crowd that had packed into the AmVets hall in Yarmouth, Maine on Saturday, “then we get to point to this and show them it works. We get to inspire others in other states. We get to show them that you can win Senate seats with a working-class movement.”
On Monday, new fundraising numbers released by the progressive candidate's campaign on social media showed that Maine voters are responding to Platner's call to help build people-powered movement.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, the veteran and oyster farmer's campaign brought in $3.2 million from people who donated less than $200—about three times the amount collected by Platner's top competitor in the Democratic primary, Gov. Janet Mills, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) combined.
Mills brought in $822,000 in the fourth quarter while the longtime Republican senator reported $230,000 in donations.
Teachers had the most common occupation among Platner's small-dollar donors, according to the campaign.
Platner released the fundraising data soon after announcing the "207 Tour"—a statewide tour currently scheduled to go until at least May with stops in the southern coastal town of York, Fort Kent on the Canadian border, and tiny inland towns like Liberty and Appleton.
Collins has not faced Mainers at a town hall in over two decades, Platner has noted.
"I don't know how we've reached a time when Mainers cannot count on politicians to show up in their communities and openly and honestly answer questions. Our campaign is doing things differently because I'd actually like to hear from you," said Platner last week. "Wherever you are, I'll see you there."
Beyond small-dollar fundraising, the Platner campaign is aiming to mobilize a grassroots army of volunteers across the state and that’s what the slate of town halls in dozens of communities is designed to help build.
The 207 Tour so far appears to offer more proof that Platner's campaign platform—which demands a Medicare for All system to replace for-profit health insurance, a repeal of Citizens United to "ban billionaires buying elections," and a billionaire minimum tax—is resonating with Maine voters.
He spoke to 500 people in Yarmouth, a town of 9,000 people. That same day, 100 people crowded into a venue in South Paris (population: 2,000), and 85 people joined him Sunday at a town hall in Isleboro, a town of fewer than 600 people which is accessible only by ferry.
In Liberty, Platner was greeted with a standing ovation on Sunday.
"Remember back when the national media said our campaign was dead?" he said on social media, referring to stories that broke just as Mills entered the Democratic primary race in October, pertaining to a tattoo that resembled a Nazi symbol—which had never before raised alarm and which Platner subsequently had covered up—and old Reddit posts he had written that he said no longer reflected his worldview.
The controversies did not slow his momentum, with voters at his campaign events responding positively to Platner's candid comments about how his views have changed throughout his life.
Organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg said Sunday that Democratic consultants and pundits who wrote off Platner last fall "shouldn’t be allowed to keep being so wrong all the time and still have jobs."
In overall fundraising in the last quarter of 2025, Platner outpaced both of his rivals, reporting $4.6 million in total donations. He has $3.7 million in cash on hand.
Mills reported $2.7 million for the period and has $1.3 million in available cash after the fourth quarter, and Collins raised $2.2 million and has $8 million in cash on hand.
A number of recent polls have also shown Platner favored to win in the primary and general election.
In recent weeks, Platner has taken Collins to task for supporting a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security even as President Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign came to Maine and swept up numerous people who had not committed any crimes—and for taking credit when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were ending "enhanced" operations in the state.
In Yarmouth, Platner acknowledged he has built a reputation as a bit of a "bomb-throwing populist" with some of his campaign rhetoric—"and I am," he promised.
But he also said he does not want to go to Washington, DC just to "get in fights with people" with whom he disagrees—but to push for policies that his growing "movement" is demanding by working with anyone he can.
"When we're talking about policy that impacts people's lives and livelihoods," he said, "things don't happen just because you're holding grudge against somebody."
"The point is to go down there and pass things and build power," said Platner. "Sometimes it's not going to work, but that's also why we need to build that secondary power—the movement power—to impose [our power] at those times when relationships won't work."
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'They're Getting Nervous,' Says Platner After GOP Drops $42 Million on Maine's Susan Collins
The latest polls have shown Platner tied with or outright leading the five-term Republican senator.
Jan 21, 2026
Maine's progressive US Senate hopeful Graham Platner smelled blood in the water after the national fundraising arm for Senate Republicans dumped a record investment into the reelection campaign of Sen. Susan Collins.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) boasted that the $42 million investment, most of which will go to an advertising blitz to help the vulnerable five-term senator cling to her seat in November, was the largest the GOP's Senate Leadership Fund had ever spent in Maine.
But while the fund's executive director, Alex Latcham, said it was a testament to Collins' (R-Maine) "history of winning tough races against Washington Democrats," Platner—a military veteran and oyster farmer who has never held higher office—portrayed it as a sign of her vulnerability.
"They’re getting nervous," he wrote in a post on social media, which urged supporters to donate.
Since announcing his campaign less than five months ago, Platner has been amassing his own sizable war chest of nearly $8 million on the back of small-dollar donations, including $4.7 million in just the final quarter of 2025.
If Democrats have any chance of flipping four seats and retaking the Senate in the midterms later this year, the path will almost certainly include unseating Collins.
Polling out of Maine has varied, but has more often tended to show both Platner and his centrist primary opponent, Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, running within the margin of error against Collins or outright leading her.
The majority of polls logged by the New York Times show Platner leading Mills in June's Democratic primary, including one released in mid-December by the progressive-leaning polling firm Workbench Strategies, which showed him ahead by 15 points. But the results vary widely, with some showing Platner up by as many as 34 points over Mills, while others show Mills leading by double digits.
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ICE 'Not Welcome,' Maine Officials Say as Reports Point to State as Trump's Next Target
"Maine will not be intimidated, and we will not betray the values that make us who we are," said Gov. Janet Mills.
Jan 15, 2026
Maine Gov. Janet Mills was among the leaders in the state who addressed reports late Wednesday that the Trump administration plans to send federal agents including those with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to cities such as Portland and Lewiston, and said unequivocally that the violence masked officers have unleashed on Minneapolis in recent days would not be welcome by residents and officials.
Mills said ICE had refused to confirm the reports that its agents would be in the state and what the basis for the operations would be, but MS Now reported Wednesday that the administration is considering sending federal officers to Maine.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump mentioned Maine's Somali community in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club; Somali people in Minnesota have been a top target of ICE's activities there.
Maine's Democratic governor said her administration was "taking proactive steps to prepare."
My statement on speculation that the Federal government may conduct Federal law enforcement operations in Maine in the coming days pic.twitter.com/aNriEQv7aI
— Governor Janet Mills (@GovJanetMills) January 14, 2026
"If any operations take place, our goal as always will be to protect the safety and the rights of the people of Maine," said Mills. "Maine knows what good law enforcement looks like because our law enforcement are held to high professional standards... and they are accountable to the law. And I'll tell you this, they don't wear a mask to shield their identities and they don't arrest people in order to fill a quota."
"To the federal government I say this: If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil rights of Maine residents, do not be confused. Those tactics are not welcome here," she said.
Mills said state police had been directed to work closely with local law enforcement in cities including Lewiston and Portland, where the police departments do not cooperate with ICE.
Reports of the potential deployment—which Portland Mayor Mark Dion denounced as a "paramilitary approach"—come days after a bill, LD 1971, became law and prohibited all state and local law enforcement from engaging in federal immigration enforcement activities.
“This new law will ensure Maine towns and cities are not complicit in or liable for federal abuses of power, and will improve public safety by building trust between local law enforcement and the communities they are supposed to serve," said ACLU of Maine policy director Michael Kebede on Tuesday.
The bill passed into law without the signature of Mills, a Democrat who is running in the US Senate primary in hopes of unseating Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine). The governor has been trailing Graham Platner, a progressive who has called for the "dismantling" of ICE, in recent polls.
“One of the reasons I want to go to the Senate is that when we have power again, I want to haul all of these people and the ones that made them do it in front of a Senate subcommittee, make them take their masks off,” Platner said in October.
Dion and Lewiston Mayor Carl Sheline, also a Democrat, urged residents and businesses to know their rights in case they are approached by federal immigration agents.
Dion emphasized in a statement Wednesday that "there is no evidence of unchecked criminal activity in our community requiring a disproportionate presence of federal agents."
"In that view, Portland rejects the need for the deployment of ICE agents into our neighborhoods," said the mayor, a Democrat.
President Donald Trump's recent escalation of federal immigration enforcement in Minneapolis has led to an ICE agent's killing of 37-year-old Renee Good, who had been observing the agents as people across Chicago, Charlotte, and other cities have over the past several months. A federal agent also shot and wounded a man during a traffic stop there on Wednesday.
Trump has largely been targeting the Somali population in Minnesota amid a social services fraud scandal in the state in which some Somali people have been charged and convicted. He has called for all Somali immigrants to leave the US. On Tuesday, Trump said that “Somali scams” had happened “in Maine, too.”
Maine has a significant Somali community including many people who have become US citizens; the population is largely centered in Lewiston and Portland.
MS Now reported that according to people familiar with the administration's plan, immigration operations in Maine were "being designed to arrest and detain Somali refugees for reviews that could last around 30 days."
The Maine Monitor reported that immigration authorities visited Lewiston last month and visited Gateway Community Services, a healthcare provider for immigrants that the state suspended payments to after it alleged more than $1 million in interpreter fraud.
Mills said Wednesday that she fully supported the right of Maine residents to protest a federal immigration enforcement operation and urged them to do so peacefully and "to meet any hostility with reserve and resolve."
"I know there are more unanswered than answered questions right now," she said. "We will continue seeking out answers and continue to communicate our information and plans with you in the coming days. But know this: Maine will not be intimidated, and we will not betray the values that make us who we are."
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