Key keywords: Maine governor 2024 Senate race, Janet Mills new campaign ad, 2024 Maine Democratic Senate primary, Senate primary challenger attack ad, Maine 2024 election news, Democratic primary campaign strategy, Maine gubernatorial policy track record, Ethan Winter voting record critiques Two-term Maine Democratic Governor Janet Mills dropped a scathing new 60-second campaign ad on Wednesday targeting her progressive primary challenger, state representative Ethan Winter, as the race for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat heats up ahead of the June 11 primary. The ad, which is set to air across broadcast, cable, and social media platforms in both of Maine’s congressional districts with a $1.2 million initial ad buy, opens with footage of Mills visiting rural hospitals and signing bipartisan legislation into law, before shifting to critiques of Winter’s 6-year record in the state legislature. The ad specifically calls out Winter’s 2021 vote against a $300 million rural infrastructure package that funded road repairs, broadband expansion, and upgraded water systems across 120 Maine towns, claiming the vote “left thousands of Mainers stuck with slow internet and crumbling roads to advance his own national progressive profile.” It also highlights Winter’s support for a ban on new offshore drilling that the ad argues would eliminate 2,000 blue-collar jobs in the state’s commercial fishing and shipbuilding sectors, while touting Mills’ own track record: expanding Medicaid to 72,000 low-income Mainers, cutting property taxes for middle-class homeowners by an average of $800 a year, and reducing opioid overdose deaths by 22% since she took office in 2019. Mills’ campaign manager, Julia Ruth, issued a statement defending the ad’s accuracy, noting that all claims are backed by public legislative voting records and independent economic analyses of policy proposals. “Voters deserve to know the difference between a candidate who shows up and delivers for Maine, and one who puts ideological purity over the needs of working people,” Ruth said. Winter’s campaign immediately pushed back against the ad, calling it “a misleading, out-of-context attack by the party establishment that ignores the fact that Winter voted against the 2021 infrastructure bill only because it included $20 million in tax loopholes for out-of-state fossil fuel corporations that have repeatedly violated Maine’s coastal pollution laws.” Recent polling from the Maine Policy Institute shows Mills leading Winter by 12 percentage points among likely Democratic primary voters, though Winter has seen a surge in grassroots fundraising over the past month, raising $1.7 million in small-dollar donations from progressive donors across the country. The winner of the Democratic primary will face off against former Republican congressman Bruce Poliquin in the November general election, for a seat that nonpartisan election analysts have labeled a “toss-up” that could determine control of the U.S. Senate next year.