The problem is that for the entire fourth quarter of 2025, she raised just $822,000 in small contributions. That would mean that, after raising more than a half million in one day from regular people, she raised just $287,000 more over the next two and a half months. As a candidate, some drop off after launch day is expected, but to drop that far and that fast raises major concerns about how much momentum there is behind her bid, especially considering that the Democratic Party in Washington has turned on its small-dollar fundraising program for Mills. The party has carpet-bombed inboxes on her behalf, but people seem not to be responding.
The Mills campaign did not respond when asked to clarify these day-one fundraising issues.
Technically you don’t “need” any money (except the registration fee which is much, much lower). They raise this for radio ads no one listens to and tv ads no one pays attention to and flyers in the mailbox everyone hates, and offices for the volunteers to go door-to-door which most everyone also hates.
That is why you condescend the voters at the same time by reminding them they really don’t have a choice because the other side is literally murderous.
At a certain point of reach + cynicism the magical ghost of the swing voter apparates out of thin air in a wave of pro-democracy enthusiasm, or so the old DNC tale goes when told by the barely sentient, elder scions of the party being wheeled around on carts of money.
I live in Maine. Every week I get email alerts telling me where Platner is going to be, and what I can do to help. (I’m currently doing huge amounts of OT, so I don’t have the time to volunteer.) He’s doing town halls weekly (I think that he’s doing Millinocket soon; I should be able to make that one), and constantly doing outreach. I see his campaign posts on Bluesky all the time. He came to a town near me, a town with a whopping 6000 residents, and treated everyone respectfully, including the MAGAt that was there trying to poke holes in his campaign.
I have seen ONE Bluesky post from Mills’ campaign. AFAIK, she’s done exactly zero town hall meetings, certainly not ones where she’s taking questions directly from the audience. I haven’t seen any campaign signs, no radios ads (altho I only listen to Maine Public Radio; but I also haven’t heard anything about her campaign there), and I’ve seen Collins’ ads on the TVs at the gym, but nothing for Mills. Oh, the Collins ad? It’s got a great snippet from Mills saying that Collins has done a lot of great things for Maine. Oops.
So I don’t fucking know where Mills is spending the money that she has.