The U.S. Senate race in Maine: LaFlamme burns with hope

Maine is a sleepy little state, mostly forgotten aside from those who vacation here and the recent influx of influencer types who have discovered the state’s robust food scene and natural wonders. Or those during the early years of the pandemic who, because of the proliferation of work-from-home situations, flocked here for space and a cheaper lifestyle. Because, while Maine isn’t affordable to many who were born and raised here or who have lived here for years (taxes can be high and wages relatively low), those coming from higher-earning locales often discovered they could get more bang for their bucks.

Hell, a lot of people (unless they read Stephen King) forget Maine is even a state and some probably think it’s part of Canada, though I suspect those are also the people who don’t realize New Mexico is a U.S. state.

However, this year’s midterm elections have put the spotlight on Maine as Democrats in Maine and beyond, along with others opposed to the Trump administration, hope to capture a number of U.S. Senate seats—one of them currently held by Maine’s constantly “concerned” (but always disappointing) Republican tool: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins.

Late last summer, political newcomer Graham Platner burst on the scene and immediately captured the national and state spotlight. He introduced himself to the public as being a champion against the oligarchy and spoke to the hearts of many Mainers as a working-class oysterman. But as time has gone by, many outside of Maine and some in the state have soured on him due to an old tattoo that many believed was a Totenkopf—a racist symbol hearkening back to the Nazi era. The tattoo was acquired during his time in the Marines. Platner has maintained that he didn’t know it was a racist tattoo, though the allegations of being a Nazi continue to persist in certain online spaces. In addition to the tattoo, there was the revelation of old Reddit posts that have led some to believe he shouldn’t be considered a serious candidate.

Platner and I have met several times in the months since the revelations of the tattoo and the old Reddit posts. I wrote my thoughts about him in December 2025. We recently just met again and I will be doing a follow-up piece on Platner. Yes, I am aware of the R slur.

My focus on writing about Graham Plater led to being called an operative for his campaign in spaces such as Bluesky and the platform formerly known as Twitter—despite the fact that my interest in writing about Graham was really the result of how small Maine is. I’ve been in the circles of several people far more connected than Platner is right now for years, and I have never been one to swoon over a charismatic guy; I assure you this isn’t remotely my first rodeo. We simply shared overlapping circles and it was suggested we meet. A few days after announcing his candidacy, he got my phone number from a mutual friend and left me a voicemail. It took us a while to arrange a time to chat and by the time we actually could meet, the tattoo and old Reddit posts had become a hot topic.

However, in the aftermath of my initial piece on Platner, I also received questions and comments asking about the other candidates in the race aside from current Maine Gov. Janet Mills (also vying for the Senate seat) and Platner. As a longtime local media person and writer who also has some national reach, I decided that I would try to meet with the other Democratic candidates (probably not Mills, though) and share my observations. That turned out to not be a hard lift at all, as Andrea LaFlamme, a declared write-in candidate, had been connecting with me online and it turned out she had been following my work for years. I also have received an email from candidate David Costello’s campaign asking if I would be willing to meet with him, and I’m working on that.

This week I had the chance to chat with Andrea LaFlamme via Zoom, where we talked about her upbringing, her work, and how they led her to the decision to run for the U.S. Senate.

Prior to our meeting, I really didn’t know much about Andrea other than what I saw she had posted online because the truth is that her campaign hasn’t received much attention, locally or nationally. However, many people have heard of her indirectly from an incident at Sen. Collins’s house a few years ago.

Back in 2022, a message was chalked on the sidewalk outside of Senator Collins’ home; the message read: “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —–> vote yes, clean up your mess.” WHPA refers to the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have codified abortion rights. Collins, who is famous for avoiding her constituents and who hasn’t held a town hall in Maine in 25 years or so, was so bothered by the message that she contacted the local police—who determined that there was no crime. The person behind the chalk message? Andrea LaFlamme.

As an adjunct professor at Eastern Maine Community College—who holds a master’s degree in public health and who for years sat on the board of the Mable Wadsworth Center in Bangor, Maine, a women’s health center—LaFlamme is passionate about women’s rights and she was tired of Collins not caring about women’s health and reproductive healthcare. The chalk incident garnered brief national attention, but that really became the point where LaFlamme started to realize that if she wanted change she needed to be the change.

Which, as Andrea shared with me, was very much her upbringing. She was born and raised in Corinth, Maine, a conservative community, though her parents were liberal, working-class folks who—despite their lack of financial resources—espoused an ethic of giving back. LaFlamme shared with me, as she has on her campaign website, that she was a free lunch kid growing up. Her Dad was a veteran who served in Afghanistan who did plumbing and heating work; her mom worked for the U.S. Postal Service.

College was made possible for LaFlamme because she graduated #2 in her high school class as the salutatorian, which earned her free tuition to the University of Maine. There she majored in nutrition, with an eye toward medical school. Life happened and while medical school didn’t materialize, she attended the University of New England, earned her MPH, and has been teaching for years.

Despite her advanced degree and years of teaching and community experience, LaFlamme’s life is very much the stuff of average Mainers’ lives. As she was telling me her story, I was struck by how “real” and grounded her life is, very unlike what we think of as an aspiring U.S. Senator in her late 30s. But it is what should probably become normalized.

As an adjunct professor, LaFlamme works semester-to-semester, meaning her employment is precarious. Her current contract is teaching 13 hours, which is a full-time course load, but her contract ends when the semester ends. Having recently done her taxes, she told me her earnings for last year and when she told me the amount, I was struck by the fact that she only earned $5,000 more than my 20-year-old daughter who is still very much living at home with me. In lean times, LaFlamme has used unemployment benefits and even fuel assistance through the LIHEAP program. Yet she recognizes her own privilege even in being working class in today’s world, because she received a full scholarship for college, she only had to pay for graduate school (making her student loan debt manageable), and she also was able to buy a home long before Maine’s housing market went bonkers.

LaFlamme is a working-class candidate who is passionate about public health and who is deeply concerned about the fragility of Maine’s public health system. Not only is she living the experience of a working-class person, but she sees it daily with her students, who in many cases are struggling with daily survival while still trying to get their education. She told me that she sees students regularly juggling lack of childcare and transportation while still holding on to the dream of higher education.

As the chapter president for adjunct faculty of Maine’s community colleges with the Maine Service Employees Association, Local 1989, she represents adjunct instructors who are a critical part of higher education and yet often treated as disposable. As Andrea put it during our call, her lived personal and professional experiences have led her to want to be a voice and advocate for far too many people who are voiceless in our current system. At the same time, her aspirations and passion are butting up against the current reality of running for office, which seems to be why we haven’t heard much about her.

LaFlamme registered with the Federal Election Commission in June 2025 and was prepared to launch her campaign when she was waylaid by health issues that forced her to focus on her health for the remainder of 2025. In February of this year, she was finally able to return to her campaign, except that in order to qualify for being put on the ballot, she needed to get 2,000 signatures; she fell short at approximately 1,600 signatures.

For those unaware, getting on the ballot in Maine for the U.S. Senate race requires the signatures of 2,000 registered voters. It is a time-consuming process that requires knocking on doors and talking to people. Lots of doors and lots of people. It’s where you start to develop your community connections for your campaign. Having done a scaled-down version when I ran for local office in 2021 in Portland, I can say that it is one of those processes that involves lots of time. You either have to do it all yourself or build out a team knocking doors on your behalf.

The fact that LaFlamme, in less than a month, garnered 1,600 signatures (remember, the population of the entire state of Maine, despite being a physically large state, is only 1.4 million) speaks to the desire that voters have for a diverse slate of candidates in the primary run to choose who they want to go up against Collins in the midterms. Despite falling short of the necessary signatures, she wasn’t going to let that work go to waste and that is when she decided to run as a declared write-in candidate. In Maine, to become a declared write-in candidate, you file the paperwork with the secretary of state, 70 days before the election.

Just like on her campaign website, Andrea in her talk with me touched upon her desire to see Medicare for all. She also believes trans rights are human rights—period; full stop. During her tenure on the board of the Mabel Wadsworth Health Center, she worked to ensure that the center deepened its commitment to providing services for trans people.

There is no doubt that Andrea has the social justice bonafides that could make a difference in Maine and beyond but, like many working-class people, she is also butting up against the reality of juggling full-time work to survive, all while campaigning with virtually no money. According to the FEC filing that I found, her campaign raised $1,673.80 from June to December 2025.

We talked about how she might make her campaign more visible and she was upfront that resources are an issue. She currently doesn’t have the resources to do more targeted campaigning using the VAN. The VAN is the voter database used by the Democratic Party; it is used for political and social campaigns—you use it for your field and digital organizing. There is a cost to use the VAN and when you are under-resourced, it is simply out of reach. It also is critical to building your ground game and, frankly, raising funds. Even in local races, some campaigns use the VAN, which I did in mine years ago. It makes all the difference in knowing whose doors to knock on, literally or digitally.

Right now, Andrea is primarily relying on word-of-mouth and social media to get the word out about her campaign. While she is generating a buzz with certain segments of Maine voters who don’t want either Mills or Platner, many are simply not aware of her. It strikes me that for everyone who laments the current political climate, now is the time to recognize that as horrible as it is that so much money is involved in politics, running campaigns do cost money. They cost money and they cost time.

I asked Andrea why she was running for the U.S. Senate instead of starting at the local municipal or state level and she was unequivocal in naming the fact that she couldn’t afford to run locally. Yes, the cost for entry (campaigning and such) is lower, but the salaries paid to local and state politicians in Maine are paltry. Maine state legislators earn $25,000 for their first year and $20,000 for their second year. That’s $45,000 for two years of work—on a schedule that is so challenging that it makes it extremely difficult to hold down an outside job while serving in the legislature. In Bangor, the city she lives in, city councilors earn an annual stipend of $2,000 a year and that comes with a workload that—based on my own political experience and what I know of local politicians in various towns and cities—probably would equal that of a part-time job at least. Suffice to say, given her reality as an adjunct professor, she can’t afford to serve locally but she also feels that with her public health background, she can bring a lot to the U.S. Senate.

I have no doubt that she could, especially given this administration’s takes on public health, but the barriers to getting truly diverse candidates is damn near Herculean.

While the system is broken, we have to start thinking about how we can be a part of creating a culture of change that translates into concrete actions and support for those with lived experience and creating a more diverse pool of representation. The current system isn’t going to graciously open itself up for folks like Andrea. Instead, it becomes incumbent upon all of us to do more so we get the candidates who are not beholden to the status quo. Or who represent the world as we wish it to be.

If you are interested in learning more about Andrea, check out her website, and for Maine voters, consider attending her weekly virtual town hall meetings. She is holding two a week, Friday evenings and Sunday mornings. If her candidacy speaks to you, sign up to become a volunteer or, better yet, financially support her campaign. It’s not enough to get online and lament the system. Do something.

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