Maria Cruz, a retired exercise physiologist, lives in China.

I’ve been appalled and disgusted by the salacious nature of the negative ads from the Mills campaign and by judgmental individuals all too quick to throw someone under a bus. 

To me, a rape is what happens when a woman is locked in her home at night, sound asleep in her own bed, and a man breaks in, holds a knife to her throat, and forces himself on her. Or when a woman leaving a late-night shift, walking to her car so she can go home, is assaulted at gunpoint and forced to have sex. These women are victims. This is not what Graham Platner was referring to in his Reddit post.

On the recordings played on Janet Mills’ negative ads, we hear a young man who had just returned from wars we shouldn’t have been engaged in, having seen and experienced atrocities most of us can’t even imagine.

Yes, he was messed up, enough to make the preposterous comment about Kevlar underwear. It’s also unfair for some to suggest he was old enough to know better, that he wasn’t a teenager. My own son, now 41, didn’t know what he wanted to be when he grew up until his mid-30s when he met the girl he wanted to marry. People mature at their own rates. Graham Platner has apologized and accepted personal responsibility for his words and behavior.

Why are some people so judgmental? Can anyone reading this honestly say they have never done or said something they now regret or are deeply ashamed of? Where is the compassion for a man who sacrificed so much for his country?

I voted for Janet Mills twice, but for the above reasons and the following, I will not be voting for Janet Mills in the June primaries.

Janet Mills has made a serious error in judgment by running ads trying to convince women why they shouldn’t vote for her opponent instead of telling all of us why we should vote for her.

She’s running on her record as governor. But she’s not running for governor. The fact is, in regard to the Senate, she has exactly the same amount of experience as Graham Platner: zero. He’s telling us what he wants to do for us when he gets there, and I like what he’s saying. He’s the one that I want representing us in the Senate come November.