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A: It depends on what’s more important to you. Do you want a Senator that’s good on social issues or one that good on labor and kitchen table issues?
Judging from her record as Governor of Maine, you can’t have both with her. In other words, a Democratic version of Susan Collins.
At a time when Democratic voters are demanding new, antiestablishment leaders, the Democratic Party’s power brokers are pushing a 77-year-old candidate for a key 2026 Senate race who’s spent the past six years as governor vetoing collective bargaining rights for workers, tax increases on the wealthy, renter protections, and tribal sovereignty protections, according to a Lever review.
Since entering the race, Mills’ campaign has highlighted her stances on a host of progressive causes, including her labor advocacy and her efforts to protect health care and abortion rights.
But the governor’s veto pen tells a different story, say her critics.
On labor issues, she ended the 2025 Maine legislative session by vetoing a bill that would have allowed farmworkers to discuss pay and working conditions with each other, without fear of retaliation from their employers, in addition to allowing workers to file complaints to a state labor relations board.
Her veto letter explaining the decision cited concerns about “disruptions” to agricultural businesses caused by a “new regulatory burden.”
“I cannot subject our farmers to a complicated new set of labor laws that will require a lawyer just to understand,” Mills wrote in a veto letter explaining her decision, a line she has used nearly verbatim in at least one past veto letter.
By federal labor laws, most employees are allowed to share with co-workers information regarding pay and benefits to help determine if disparities exist which may lead to drives for a collective bargaining agreement.
But, farm workers are exempted from most federal labor laws, including those that guarantee their right to share wage information. (A relic of the 1930’s labor reforms that sought to exclude minorities from the benefits of the reforms by excluding occupations, such as domestic servants and farmworkers, jobs that were mostly filled by minorities.)
In 2022, Mills opposed a bill that passed the legislature that would have granted farm laborers the ability to organize together and collectively bargain, citing the same concerns she would list in the farmworker bill she struck down this year.
In 2024, she blocked a measure to set a minimum wage for farm laborers because it included enforcement provisions that allowed workers to sue their employers for violations, among others. Both bills were top legislative priorities of the state’s AFL-CIO, which had endorsed her 2022 run for governor.
Also in 2024, she killed a bill banning restrictive noncompete agreements that hamstring worker mobility. That same year, she vetoed another piece of legislation that would have strengthened workers’ collective bargaining rights by banning anti-union intimidation tactics used by employers. In addition, she spurned the AFL-CIO by vetoing a buy-American and buy-local legislation that would have prioritized local businesses for certain government contracts instead of multinational corporations.
In 2025, Mills signed into law a pared-down version of the legislation guaranteeing farmworkers a statewide $14.65 minimum wage, but it did not include the additional enforcement provisions.
Prior to all that, she has also she blocked efforts to stop employers from retaliating against workers who took state guaranteed paid leave; killed a permitting bill that would have streamlined offshore wind over a provision mandating union jobs; vetoed a a labor bill that would have required the state to study the issue of paper mill workers being forced to work overtime without adequate compensation.
Renters have also been abandoned by Mills. In 2019, she vetoed a bill to allow municipalities to require landlords to give additional notice of rent hikes and evictions. She said it would have been a needless burden for landlords. Mills also opposed an attempt in 2024 to balance the state budget by raising taxes on the wealthy and delivering tax breaks on lower income residents.
In 2023, she vetoed a campaign reform bill that would have restricted foreign money in Maine elections and affirmed the state’s support for a constitutional amendment to regulate money in politics.
She has furthermore vetoed several bills designed to protect tribal sovereignty rights. She stopped legislation that would have prohibited the state’s use of eminent-domain law to take away Native tribes’ land, as well as a bill that would have ensured that the Wabanaki Nations, one of the state’s Native tribes, receive the same full federal protections guaranteed to other Native Americans.
Despite being endorsed by Emil’s List, she struck down a bill to set up a tracking system for rape kits, so that authorities could compile an inventory of DNA samples collected after sexual assaults.
When asked about the rape-kit veto, Mills told local news she supported the aims of the bill, but that it arrived too close to the end of the legislative session for her to sign it. While reintroduced in the 2025 session, the bill did not receive her full backing and has since failed to pass.
It’s not for me to say what Mainers should prioritize in their choice of senators. I have often said that the worst Democrat is still better than the best Republican, but, in this case, it seems to me that Mills would be a version 2.0 of Collins tenure in the Senate.
