The willingness of other Democratic candidates to jump right in to the U.S. Senate race without bothering to wait around and see what Gov. Janet Mills will do is striking.

You see, it’s pretty clear that the national Democratic Party sees Janet Mills as their best chance to defeat Susan Collins, and that’s understandable. Mills is generally viewed as moderate — even if that’s not necessarily completely accurate — and she’s won two statewide elections before. 

She’s proven her ability to both win real campaigns and to raise money at a state and national level. When she ran against former Gov. Paul LePage in 2022, she easily defeated him despite initial expectations of a close race and vastly outraised him during the campaign. Normally, that wouldn’t be a surprise for an incumbent, but LePage was dialed in to the national fundraising apparatus as well, and he still came nowhere close to matching her.

Yet, even with the potential of a Mills candidacy looming over the race, eight Democratic candidates are already jockeying for position in the campaign. Typically, when the national party establishment has an anointed candidate, these lesser-known candidates wait until after he or she has made their decision. When the national party wants someone to run, it clears the decks — at least in the primary. 

In Maine, in years past, the state and national parties have cleared the decks completely of primary opposition. LePage faced no primary opponents when he decided to challenge Mills; Mike Michaud faced none when he decided to challenge LePage.

Generally, in Maine, there are only vigorous primaries when the party is undecided and there’s an open seat on both sides. Take a look at 2010, or 2018, for the Democrats, or 2010 for the Republicans. Nobody had overwhelming faith in Libby Mitchell, Janet Mills or, initially, Paul LePage, for understandable reasons, and so they had contested primaries.

Mitchell squeaked out a win against Steve Rowe and Rosa Scarcelli; Mills narrowly defeated Adam Cote. That reflects a lack of enthusiasm for both of them, and in Mitchell’s case, it carried over into the general: many Democrats ultimately ended up voting for Eliot Cutler. In 2018, Cote was more of a moderate, like Mills. The liberal alternative was really lobbyist Betsy Sweet and the other candidates.

So, what do the Democrats running for U.S. Senate right now know that we don’t? Well, there are two distinct arguments to be made, and both have merit. They either think that they can legitimately beat Janet Mills by appealing to the more liberal base, or they think she won’t run, but Collins is still vulnerable.

Let’s take a look at the first scenario — that they think they can really beat Mills — first.

It’s true that Mills has never found favor with the liberal base of the Democratic Party. She had a fraught relationship with Troy Jackson, the former Maine Senate president and current gubernatorial candidate.

Jackson, along with U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, has endorsed Graham Platner, reflecting a clear liberal-moderate divide in the party. That also shows that Sanders and Platner think Sanders’ endorsement is more valuable than the national party’s, which is fair. 

Platner isn’t the only one, though. All of the other Democratic U.S. Senate candidates would be running to Mills’ left. In prior eras, they’d have all gotten together and coalesced around one choice as the more liberal alternative to Mills. With ranked-choice voting, however, that’s not necessary. There’s no danger of splitting the progressive vote in the primary. Instead, they can all simultaneously compete with one another and see which of them emerges as the leading alternative.

Why, then, are all of them running? Well, they clearly have no faith in Mills — either that she’ll run, or that she has the capacity to defeat Collins. That’s understandable. She has yet to commit to either the campaign or to progressive causes.

The real question is whether they really believe she won’t run — and/or is beatable — or are just hopeful. Some of them may also simply be looking to raise their profiles for a future campaign.

The truth of the matter may well determine whether this race is a barnburner or a sleeper — and whether Democrats have any hope of winning back the majority in the United States Senate.

It seems that most of them truly believe they’re better candidates and that they can win, but we shall see. The Democratic candidates may well know more than we do about Mills’ intentions — and popularity — than we do.