Debra Spark is a writer who lives in North Yarmouth.

When Janet Mills entered the Senate race on Oct. 14, my first thought was, “Oh, no.” I’ve been thanking Mills (publicly and in my head) ever since her “I’ll see you in court” to our mob boss of a president. Still, Graham Platner’s campaign clearly had a lot of positive energy. 

In this uniquely perilous moment, when our very democracy is being threatened by a patently cruel, unhinged leader, priority #1 is getting a Democrat or true Republican of conscience to replace Susan Collins. Shouldn’t we all just get behind the person who has generated a lot of enthusiasm?

First thought, best thought?

Not in my case. And not in the case of the conversation that instantly sprang up around Mills’ entry into the race, as if what is at issue is the old guard versus the new guard.  

Not that I don’t understand the argument.

In recent years, the failure of an older leader to step down when it was time has proved disastrous. Joe Biden had a successful pro-labor presidency. He rescued us from the Trump 1.0 economy and Trump’s geopolitical blunders while moving forward with green energy, health care for veterans, improving the nation’s aging infrastructure and promoting semi-conductor research.

Meanwhile, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got her own action figure because she was such a popular champion of gender equality and civil rights. And yet both ignored their own ill health and made bad decisions toward the end of their careers, unwittingly contributing to the president and Supreme Court we have now.

And it is true that we need a new generation of leaders. But does that mean we want to row all the older people out to the iceberg? 

Right now, what we most need is someone with a strong moral compass who knows what they are doing. And we really, really need someone who thoroughly understands American law. We need that more than we need a new face, however worthy. Or someone with whom we agree on every political point.

As I despair over the daily news, the only thing that has buoyed me — especially as Republicans simply ignore the unprecedented millions of American protesters, as if that historic number of people disagreeing with you simply doesn’t matter — is a September 2025 Atlantic article. In it, Michael Scherer wrote, “The first seven months of Trump’s Oval Office do-over have been with occasional exception, a tale of ruthless domination.”

But he finds home in one place: “A legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public-interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general and unions have frustrated Trump’s ambitions. Hundreds of attorneys and plaintiffs have stood up to him, feeding a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands for a president who has systematically sought to break down limits on his own power.”

I want members of Congress (all of them) to fight corruption and crime, to advance the interests of the American people, even if it means resisting their own party. I want someone who knows how to do this — thanks to law school, thanks to serving as attorney general — and who can do this. I want someone who is super-smart and who is completely her own person.

Janet Mills isn’t anyone’s marionette, but she does listen to her constituents. Do you know how I know? Because at 3 a.m. on a recent night, I was so worried about the fate of our democracy that I emailed her. And you know what? She wrote back.

Of all things!

Granted, she may have written back because I’ve met her, but I’ve met her simply because she’s out at educational and cultural events, where voters are able to meet her.

I call Susan Collins’ office almost every week with my fears and concerns and have certainly never heard back from her.

Janet Mills conveyed the gravity of the moment — perhaps the most important in our nation’s history, at least since the Civil War — and said she’d hit the ground running.

That gets my vote.