Maine Democrat Gov. Janet Mills Scrambles to Contain Fallout from Education Woes

Maine Democrat Gov. Janet Mills is scrambling five weeks before the election to stem political damage from revelations that her administration was teaching students in an online curriculum that “MAGA” is racist.

Both in Tuesday’s debate and in her campaign advertising, the vulnerable Democrat has attempted to fend off allegations about education improprieties from her Republican opponent, former Gov. Paul LePage.

In the debate, Mills dodged a question about “woke teachings” that were being pushed on students by her Department of Education.

“During this campaign, voters are seeing a lot of messaging from the Maine Republican Party, outside groups, and Gov. LePage himself that public schools are indoctrinating kids in so-called woke teachings about race and LGBTQ issues,” the debate moderator said to Mills. “We haven’t heard from you directly about this, about these allegations. I guess now is as good a time as any to hear what you have to say about them.”

The “woke teachings” include a discovery in May that Maine’s Department of Education was teaching kindergarteners in a taxpayer-funded online program about transgenderism and gay relationships.

The department quickly removed the controversial material when media reported on it, conceding that the lesson was not age-appropriate.

The “woke teachings” also include a lesson — first uncovered by Breitbart News in September within that same taxpayer-funded online program — that was teaching high schoolers that “MAGA” (Make American Great Again), “All Lives Matter,” “colorblindness,” and dozens more widely adopted terms and concepts were examples of “covert racism” and “white supremacy.”

Mills’ Education Department refused to remove that lesson and instead told local media the department does not dictate what is taught in the classroom. At some point since that comment from the administration, however, the content (originally found here on slide 19) has become unavailable for viewing.

Mills answered the debate question Tuesday about the “woke teachings” by first claiming that “that whole effort is sort of an attempt to deflect from [LePage’s] record on education.”

Then Mills touted the funding her administration has poured into public education before concluding her response by scratching the surface of the controversial educational material. “Parents have rights in Maine. … If there’s a piece of the curriculum you disagree with, speak up and have a say,” Mills said.

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The Maine Republican Party also recently released a campaign ad highlighting the Mills administration’s “radical education agenda” and the since-deleted material uncovered within her Education Department’s online lessons.

Facing pressure about her approach to education, Mills has now come out with an ad accusing LePage of “telling outrageous lies about Governor Mills and what’s taught in our schools.”

“The people of Maine know me, and they know BS when they hear it and see it,” Mills says in the ad. The narrator then adds that Mills has “kept politics out of classrooms, letting parents and local school boards decide what to teach children, protecting Maine’s long tradition of local control.”

LePage, for his part, has made parental rights in education and addressing the state’s academic shortfalls a key tenet of his proposed gubernatorial agenda.

The former governor blasts “educational bureaucrats” on his campaign website and rips into Mills for recommending schools shut down in-person learning for months amid coronavirus case surges in 2020.

LePage served as governor for two terms until 2019 and was unable to run again because of the state’s term limits. He is now vying to unseat Mills, who served as his attorney general until succeeding him as governor.

Polls have found Mills roughly ten points ahead of LePage in the race, but the election is considered a possible pickup opportunity for Republicans in a midterm year that historically favors the party out of power in Washington.