SOUTH PARIS, Maine — State Sen. Rick Bennett, a former Maine Republican Party chair who has stood out for voting against his party, said Tuesday he will join the 2026 gubernatorial race as an independent.
Bennett made the announcement Tuesday morning at KBS Builders, a modular homes manufacturer in South Paris. The 62-year-old former Maine Senate president from Oxford had been increasingly viewed in recent weeks as a likely entrant into the wide-open race to succeed Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who is termed out of office next year.
His decision to run as an independent may raise eyebrows but will not surprise those who have observed Bennett buck his caucus and vote with Democrats on a range of issues, with a more recent and high-profile example coming earlier in June when Bennett joined the majority party in helping to defeat bills seeking to ban transgender girls from female sports.
“We deserve leadership grounded in common sense and a shared commitment to getting things done,” he said. “That’s why I’m running as an independent, and why I will govern as one.”
Bennett, who ran for Congress in 1994 and in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in 2012, was also not afraid to criticize other Senate Republicans for holding up a short-term deal in March to bail out MaineCare in the face of a $118 million deficit, and his criticism of Central Maine Power Co. over the years has led to tension with colleagues.
At the same time, Bennett has not held back in bashing Mills at times. An example came during last year’s budget talks, when Bennett said the governor’s demand for lawmakers to not amend a spending plan read “like a letter from Vladimir Putin.”
Bennett cast Maine’s one Electoral College vote for President Donald Trump in 2016. Talking to reporters Tuesday, he nodded to his vote on the transgender athlete issue by saying the overall education system and student performance are bigger issues.
Yet the longtime lawmaker has a long history as an elected Republican. He was chosen as the party chair in large part to unify Republicans who were reeling after the 2012 election, playing a key role in reelecting centrist U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and conservative former Gov. Paul LePage.
Bennett has a difficult road as an independent candidate, but Maine has elected two non-party governors: Jim Longley in 1976 and Angus King in 1994. In the 2010 race won by LePage, independent Eliot Cutler overtook a weak Democratic nominee and nearly won. Kaitlin LaCasse, who is working for Bennett, was Cutler’s deputy campaign manager in 2014.
Bennett is the latest entrant to a gubernatorial race that already has politically-connected names on the Republican side, such as Sen. Jim Libby of Standish and lawyer Bobby Charles, along with businessmen such as Owen McCarthy and David Jones.
The Democratic field features Troy Jackson of Allagash, another former Maine Senate president who worked alongside Bennett for years, as well as two figures with well-known last names: former Maine House Speaker Hannah Pingree and clean energy leader Angus King III, the son of the elder King, who is now a U.S. senator.
In the crowd in South Paris was Bennett’s mother, 87-year-old Luna Martin, who said Bennett decided against running for governor in 2006 because it would have taken a toll on his children. They are both in their 20s now, and he nodded to them when discussing the housing crisis.
“I’m running for governor because I am bullish on Maine’s future, a future we can build together,” he said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the last name of Troy Jackson.
