Janet Trafton Mills (1947- ) was sworn in as the 75th Governor of Maine on Wednesday, January 2, 2019.
She was born and raised in Farmington, where she still proudly lives today. The granddaughter of Aroostook County potato farmers and the daughter of a long-time high school English teacher and the U.S. Attorney for Maine.
Janet learned the value of hard-work at an early age, venturing out early every morning to deliver newspapers along her route and serving meals in the evening at the local diner. She graduated from Mt. Blue High School in Farmington, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, and the University of Maine School of Law.
Mills was an Assistant Attorney General from 1976 to 1980, prosecuting homicides and other major crimes. In 1980, she was elected District Attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford Counties, and was re-elected three times. She was the first woman District Attorney in New England.
From 1995 through 2008, Ms. Mills practiced law in Skowhegan with her brother, former State Senator S. Peter Mills. Elected to the House of Representatives in 2002, she represented the towns of Farmington and Industry. She served on the Appropriations Committee, the Judiciary Committee, and the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee.
In December 2008 she was elected by the Joint Convention of the Legislature to be Maine’s 55th Attorney General, the first woman Attorney General in Maine. From 2011 through 2012, Mills taught Criminal Law at the University of Maine Augusta and served of counsel in the Litigation Group of Preti Flaherty, LLP.
In December 2012, she was again elected Attorney General, and in December 2014 she was re-elected to her second consecutive term. Her priorities were addressing issues of domestic violence, heroin and opiate abuse and the protection of elders in Maine. She served on the Criminal Law, Substance Abuse and the Energy & Environment Committees of the National Association of Attorneys General and was appointed Co-Chair of the NAAG Tobacco Committee. As Attorney General, Mills worked with homeowners, lenders and attorneys to implement the National Mortgage Settlement in Maine.
Janet Mills co-founded the Maine Women’s Lobby and was an active member of a number of organizations, including the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation Board. She was married for 29 years to Stanley Kuklinski who died in September 2014. She lives in Farmington and has five stepdaughters and three grandsons.
Governor Mills is the first woman governor of Maine. In her historic victory, she earned more votes than any governor in state history and is the first governor since 1966 to win a majority of the vote for her first term.
Source
Condensed and edited from “About Attorney General Janet T. Mills.” https://www.maine.gov/ag/about/message.shtml (accessed 11/21/2018) and
:”About the Governor” from the Governor’s web site at https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/about (Accessed December 31, 2020)