Gov. Janet Mills sailed into Augusta after eight disastrous years of former Gov. Paul “Trump before Trump” LePage. That Maine had been deflated and disillusioned by her Republican predecessor—now running for Congress as a reformed man in Maine’s Second Congressional District—would be a colossal understatement. LePage force-fed Mainers a daily diet of heinous smears, vetoed more bills than every previous governor in state history put together, and capsized the state’s public health care system, right along with multiple other state institutions. For most people, but particularly the poorest, every day was a quest to survive LePage until term limits took over in 2018.

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Mills easily won that year’s governor’s race and made quick work of LePage’s legacy. She implemented Medicaid expansion by executive order, which voters had passed and LePage had ignored, on the first day of her first term. It was an almost prophetic decision in the last year of the Before Times—then COVID-19 hit. And that in turn was a good time to have a competent chief executive in the chair. The adults were back.

Sure enough, Mills beat LePage in a 2022 rematch and personally tangled with President Trump in the White House. When he attempted to ban trans people from Maine sports, she retorted that she’d “see you in court” and won, one of the high-water marks of her second term.

Which makes Mills’s recent withdrawal from the primary election for the Maine Senate seat currently occupied by Susan Collins a bit mysterious. Saving Maine and America by finally ousting Collins, the Republican senator who is preternaturally concerned about various Trump misdeeds and nominees, only to vote for them anyway, was nothing short of a mission from God—if not Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader searching obsessively for candidates who could win statewide in key races. It proved irresistible. Surely Mainers would rally around her to deliver them from Collins.

But Maine Democratic voters had already been looking over Janet Mills’s shoulder to see who else was out there. The prospect of two women in their late seventies—Mills would have been 79 when she took office, making her the oldest freshman senator in American history—battling it out thrilled exactly no one, including older voters.

There voters saw Graham Platner. The oysterman and Marine Corps veteran stamped out his Reddit-posting negatives and his suspect tattoos with pure Maine appeal. By the time Schumer shunted an unenthusiastic Mills into the spotlight, other possible candidates anticipating her entry had already hustled over to the governor’s contest or had moved on. So much for a seasoned politician with statewide victories in her pocket.

The warning signs had been there for any Senate leader looking for them. Two terms of distinctly moderate governing had dulled Mills’s shine. Last year, the Maine People’s Alliance gave Mills a 70 percent grade on its 2025 legislative scorecard. At the top of that list was a veto for what she termed a “complicated” suite of labor-management provisions; the governor believed that they would burden the family farmers that dominate the Maine farming sector. She nixed a law curbing local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, which dismayed Mainers repelled by the federal excesses, though she later allowed the bill to become law without her signature.

This year, some of those tussles continued. Confusion over agricultural wage laws led to a Mills veto, as did a criminal justice measure that aimed to allow sealing records for selected low-level offenses. Mills dispensed with a measure that would have given the Wabanaki Nations—the Mi’kmaq Nation, the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, and the Penobscot Nation—the ability to operate like any other federally recognized tribe and work with the state as government-to-government entities, a long-standing issue.

Needing a two-thirds majority in a closely divided legislature to overturn vetoes meant that state lawmakers never did. The mixed messages coming out of the state capital led voters to wonder about the value of a Mills candidacy long before Platner showed up to dazzle Mainers unaccustomed to high-voltage candidates. By October last year, when she finally succumbed to Schumer’s pressure campaign, Mills’s job approval ratings had already eroded as Platner’s popularity continued to soar after two months on the campaign trail.

Mills’s veto of a data center moratorium was a strange hill to die on. Several communities— Sanford, Lewiston, and Wiscasset—had all rejected data center proposals. When you stop to consider that Maine has some of the highest electricity rates in the country, it was all but guaranteed that the data center debate roiling the country would be a potent campaign issue for Democrats. But signing the legislation would have been a weather-vane moment, leaving the business-friendly Mills open to anti-competitiveness attacks from the right. (It was clear that she had decided to cash out, almost literally, at that point. Mills only had about $1 million in cash to spend; Platner has $2.5 million. Collins could lay low with $10 million.)

TOWN OF POTSDAM, New York (WWNY) – A company headquartered in Maine has purchased Potsdam Specialty Paper Inc.

Twin Rivers Paper Company announced on Tuesday that it has acquired the mill, which it described as “a recognized leader in the development and manufacturing of specialty latex, acrylic, and other saturated base papers.”

“This strategic acquisition adds exciting new papermaking capabilities to Twin Rivers’ portfolio,” said Tyler Rajeski, CEO of Twin Rivers. “PSPI’s strong focus on product development and customer collaboration aligns closely with Twin Rivers’ core competencies and builds upon our commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and customer-focused growth.”

“The Potsdam team is energized by the opportunity to join the Twin Rivers Paper team. Twin Rivers boasts a solid portfolio of papermaking assets, which will be complemented by our strengths in Potsdam,” said PSPI CEO Mike Huth. “We’re excited about the ability to build upon our mutual legacy of papermaking excellence, enhance the value we bring to existing Potsdam customers with the expertise and resources of Twin Rivers Paper, and serve new customers.”

Twin Rivers says the acquisition adds 26,000 tons of annual production capacity to its asset base.

“With specialized on-machine capabilities including latex saturating, nonwoven/synthetic fiber handling and wet creping, extensive color capabilities, and an advanced off-machine coater, the Potsdam, New York, mill produces highly engineered papers for a wide range of market sectors. Applications include tape base, abrasive backer, durable label, medical (sterilization), wallpaper base, wide format digital substrates, durable book cover and high-end retail packaging,” the company said.

Twin Rivers also owns two other paper mills in New York, including one in Lyons Falls and another in Little Falls.

Erin Evans is a Portland-based master beekeeper and small business owner, She previously served as director of finance and administration at Maine Audubon and as CFO/COO of Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Honey bees are Maine’s official state insect and a keystone species in our ecosystem. Like tiny flying dustmops, they sample their surroundings, collecting pollen, nectar and contaminants that reveal what’s in our soil, our water and our air.

As a local beekeeper measuring PFAS in my own hives, I stand with the Maine farmers,
families and advocates on the front lines of this issue, and it’s why I support Dr. Nirav Shah as our next governor.

The Rutgers-New Brunswick Eagleton Institute of Politics recently shared a 2025 database on scientists, engineers and healthcare professionals leading our nation in state legislatures. Out of more than 7,000 lawmakers, there are just over 200 legislators who are also scientists, engineers or healthcare professionals.

While Maine was among the highest representation, with 11 members, I can’t help but wonder how different our response will be to present and emerging environmental crises if we have someone trained in both law and scientific thinking as our next governor.

As a public health leader, who’s already guided us through a once-in-a-lifetime crisis, Dr. Shah understands that PFAS isn’t just “out there.” It’s in our soil, food, water and in our bodies and will have a public health impact for generations. Best of all, he’s already been doing the work.

During his time as director of Maine’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Shah recognized how widespread PFAS contamination is in Maine’s soil and water. Now, at a time when science-informed leadership is more essential than ever, he’s made PFAS protection a top priority.

Maine has made real strides in addressing forever chemicals by becoming the first state to launch an emergency relief fund, ban sludge-based fertilizers loaded with PFAS and create a permanent PFAS response program. We’ve also tested hundreds of sites, identified 34 high-priority towns and awarded $3.5 million in grants for research.

But even with this progress, the real challenge is how Maine deals with problems that last longer than any one administration.

It’s time we see PFAS and other environmental contamination crises not as political hot potatoes but as persistent issues affecting ecosystems across all of Maine. Do we continue to follow the status quo where politically entrenched candidates, beholden to the legacies of prior leaders and corporate interests, dictate the response? Or do we choose science and a leader familiar with critical outside-the-box thinking? Who should sit at that table as we create policies and laws to study, analyze, manage and reduce the threat of harmful chemicals to Mainers and the environment we all love?

In her recently released book “Inescapable: Facing Up to Forever Chemicals,” journalist F. Marina Schauffler reminds us that Maine’s taxpayers have already paid hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to PFAS contamination, and we’re nowhere near done.

PFAS chemicals will stay around for a long time, and so will the government systems that we set up to respond to these crises. Dr. Shah’s background in law and public health, especially in responding to exposure risks, makes him the leader we need in the Blaine House.

Most of all, he knows that in Maine and across the nation, climate change, water safety, soil health and human health are all interconnected, and part of the same sets of challenges. Our solutions will need to be well planned and well coordinated. Just ask the bees.