Echoes of Bill Hathaway in Mills’ Quixotic Quest

By Sam Patten

When the late, one-term U.S. Senator Bill Hathaway passed away a little more than a decade ago, Mainers were too polite to ask out loud: “what was the point of him, anyhow?” Yet at least a few might have quietly wondered.

Like Don Quixote’s lance, Hathaway’s main claim to fame lay in puncturing the invulnerability of iconic Senator Margaret Chase Smith, whose “Declaration of Conscience” speech on the Senate floor has been invoked by many a Democrat in recent years in similarly quixotic efforts to shame Republicans.

Yet Hathaway’s anemic legacy comes to mind as Maine Governor Janet Mills, 77, announced her campaign on Tuesday to unseat U.S. Senator Susan Collins and — she has pledged — serve only one term.

You read that right: knock off the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee to serve only one term and, importantly for the crowd that reveled in her famous “see you in court” retort to Donald Trump, make a point.

Yet those who cluck in anticipation of what a glorious moment election day 2026 might be often forget is more important:

Maine is a poor state. Easy to forget on the Gold Coast that stretches from Kennebunkport to Ellsworth, perhaps, yet true and due – in large part – to the sort of thinking that has dominated Mills’ two terms in Augusta.

The state government’s overt hostility to the private sector makes Maine one of the least attractive places in America to do business.

Under Mills, the situation has grown worse.

As proof that government has few good ideas, Democrats created and Mills signed into law a Paid Family and Medical Leave tax, mirroring what already existed at the federal level. Double down on government, and double state spending.

The only place in Maine where these strategies have led to job creation is the curious town of Hallowell, playground of the Augusta swamp, where state-funded non-profits thrive and state bureaucrats party.

In its watering holes, they regale one another with fairy tales about the success of dim-witted programs and expensive initiatives.

Everywhere else these strategies have led to misery and debt.

The curious irony of it all is this: the only way Mills was ever able to afford these ballooning spending sprees was because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ACA, or quantum boost of federal aid championed by the very woman she has now vowed to defeat, Susan Collins.

Similarly, Mills declared victory in her war on Trump because Washington didn’t completely turn off the spigot of federal dollars as he’d threatened.

But this too had nothing to do with her, or her ginger-haired attorney general, and everything to do with Collins keeping funding to the University of Maine and other state institutions flowing.

These inconvenient facts are likely to surface over the course of a year-long campaign.

But before she gets her party’s nomination, Mills has a less docile, fair-haired young man than Aaron Frey with whom he must contend: Sullivan oysterman Graham Platner.

This angry young man with a gravely voice contends that all is not well in the kingdom, and on that score he’s right. The system is broken and entrenched party elites are a big part of the reason for that, he argues.

Again, he’s right.

It’s just the solution he’s got wrong: lynching America’s “oligarchs” will not make the plight of the working man less daunting. But that’s a problem for later.

Today, Mills’ minions are busy disseminating that internecine struggle between Democrats dates back at least until 2016, when the comely Debbie Wasserman-Schultz knee-capped old man Bernie Sanders and the release of communications about those dirty dealings suddenly became the work of Russians trying to destroy America.

Expect more, but perhaps slightly different, skullduggery here.

Meanwhile, the central theme of Mills’ campaign for Senate remains mired in a narrative flaw: inchoate crusades to gut the Orange Man have made no one’s life in America better, and if the outcome of the 2024 presidential election was any indication, most of our fellow citizens have figured that out.

It’s a tired and worn out clarion call, but then again...

The case has been made that Margaret Chase Smith needed retiring after nearly a quarter century in the Senate, and Bill Hathaway’s historic mission – while unattractive – was necessary.

Yet those who think defeating the third-most powerful person in Washington to teach Trump a lesson will makes Mainers’ lives better might consider an old Chinese proverb:

Killing the chicken to teach the monkey a lesson rarely works as intended.