Meet Janet
Janet Mills is Maine through and through – and no one loves this state or believes in its people more than she does. That’s why she has always fought for Maine people and always will. She wants to keep moving Maine forward.
Born and raised in rural Maine, Janet is the granddaughter of potato farmers from Aroostook County and the daughter of a World War II veteran and public school teacher. She learned the value of hard work early in life, delivering newspapers early in the morning and serving meals at the local diner in the evening while growing up. She graduated from Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and the University of Maine School of Law.
In 1985, she met and married the love of her life, her husband, Stan Kuklinski, a widower with five young daughters ages four to sixteen. Janet and Stan moved back to Farmington, and she became a full-time mom to five daughters who she helped raise while working full-time herself.
Janet is a trailblazer, winning election as the first woman District Attorney in Maine, the first woman Attorney General in Maine, and, now, Maine’s first woman Governor – which she won with more votes than any governor in history.
And all along the way, she has fought for the people of Maine. As a District Attorney, she prosecuted major crimes, like homicide and domestic abuse, and co-founded the Maine Women’s Lobby to advocate for battered and abused women. As Attorney General, she fought anyone who tried to hurt Maine people, including dishonest mortgage companies trying to kick Maine people out of their homes, big Pharma who contributed to the opioid crisis, and politicians who tried to restrict young people’s access to health care.
Since her historic victory, Governor Mills has kept up the fight, working across the aisle to tackle the biggest challenges facing Maine, and she has delivered historic, unprecedented progress. She expanded health care to more than 93,000 people, fully funded Maine’s public schools for the first time in state history, preserved cherished lands and waters through the Land for Maine’s Future Program, and is fighting climate change to protect our beloved state for generations to come.
She led Maine through a once-in-a-generation public health crisis, succeeding better than virtually every other state in the nation, and now she is focused on strengthening our economy by investing in our greatest asset: Maine people. From expanding child care, housing and broadband, to providing free community college, to helping Maine people fight inflation, she is delivering for Maine people and moving Maine forward.
And she’s just getting started.
As a proud grandmother to three grandsons and two granddaughters, Janet will never stop fighting for Maine’s future. In her second term, she will continue to move Maine forward by strengthening our economy, fighting for better, more affordable health care, ensuring that all our young people can get a world-class education right here in Maine, preserving our lands and waters, fighting the opioid and climate crises, and making sure that Maine is the best place to live and work in the country.