Despite the close ties between the nominee and the governor, Ms. Pingree has said she disagrees with some of Ms. Mills’s positions. She has said that she would sign legislation to help Maine tribes achieve sovereignty and gain access to federal benefits, for example; Ms. Mills vetoed such legislation in 2023, citing concerns about lawsuits.
In the crowded Republican primary field, made up mostly of business leaders, Mr. Charles, a lawyer, was consistently the front-runner. His closest competitors were Jonathan Bush, a cousin of former President George W. Bush, and Benjamin Midgley, a former president of Planet Fitness.
Mr. Charles, a blunt-spoken conservative in the mold of President Trump, railed against fraud and corruption in state government during his primary campaign, and spoke frequently of his Christian faith. He pledged to stop illegal drugs from coming into Maine and to aggressively cut taxes and state spending. Last month, he released a plan to “prevent the Islamification of Maine,” where a number of asylum seekers from African countries have settled.
Ms. Pingree was raised on the island of North Haven, a dozen miles off the coast of mainland Maine. The product of a wealthy family with deep roots in New England, she quickly gravitated to politics. She won election to the Maine House of Representatives at 26, served eight years and became the youngest woman in the country to be chosen as House speaker.
As director of policy innovation in the Mills administration, Ms. Pingree helped draft the state’s climate action plan, released in 2024, which aims to defend critical coastal infrastructure from increasingly extreme storms, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate rising heating costs in the oil-dependent state.
The governor’s race has been largely overshadowed by Mr. Platner’s high-profile campaign. Mr. Platner, now the Democratic nominee, is trying to defeat Senator Susan Collins, a Republican seeking her sixth term. In the governor’s race, large fields of candidates and heavy overlap in their positions led many voters to postpone their decisions about how to rank them.
