Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced her re-election bid with a two-minute video released by her campaign Tuesday morning.In the first minute, Mainers were seen reading her supportive letters, and in the second minute, Mills replied."You have shown that Maine is stronger than we ever could have imagined," Mills said, depicting her handling of the coronavirus pandemic as one of her achievements during three years in office.Mills, 74, a Democrat elected in 2018, is the first woman to serve as Maine’s governor."I'm running for reelection because there's so much left to do," Mills said in the video.Her campaign points to the administration’s increasing the state share of local public school spending to 55% for the first time, expanding by 90,000 the number of Mainer residents covered by health insurance through MaineCare expansion, and raising the state budget "rainy day fund” to a record $503 billion.Mills said in the video, "You deserve every ounce of hard-won progress we've achieved, and you've earned all the progress yet to come. Together, we will move Maine forward."Republican Paul LePage, 73, Mill’s two-term predecessor, said after her announcement, "I'm ready – let's bring it on."LePage’s was certified for the June primary ballot after submitting his petition last month.He said, “This campaign is going to be about two things. It's going to be about faith, freedom, and trust versus power, control, and mandates. That's what we're going to be, and the other thing it's going to be about is the economy, bringing the economy back.”With a Citgo station selling unleaded for $4.09 a gallon as a backdrop, in Falmouth, LePage proposed cutting Maine's 30-cent-a-gallon gas tax — and turnpike tolls — in half for three months. That's money for road maintenance.LePage said, "I am concerned about our roads, but I am more concerned about Maine people being able to eat than our roads."LePage said he was not blaming Mills for the high price of gas.He did criticize Mills' proposed $750-per-taxpayer rebate to be drawn from half of the projected $1.2 billion budget surplus – a rebate that was a Republican idea.When I told LePage the Mills campaign was now calling the rebates “inflation relief checks," he laughed.LePage said, "The relief check is going to have a bump for a week or ten days. If you reduce the taxes, they go on year after year after year."LePage is campaigning on a promise to phase out the state income tax, which accounts for 43% of state revenue, and I pressed him for details on how he would do that and fulfill the requirement for a balanced budget?“I would reduce the state budget and go back to an affordable budget that we don’t have right now,” LePage said, adding that he could foresee additional revenue from sports betting, liquor sales and tourism.In his remarks on energy policy, LePage addressed Mills' incentives for Mainers to drive more electric vehicles to mitigate climate change.LePage said, "The Mills administration is currently floating the idea of increasing gas tax to build charging stations."But the Mills administration said that's not true—that it has not proposed tax hikes of any kind, and there is $27 million in federal money -- coronavirus relief and infrastructure funds – in the pipeline to pay for a planned statewide network of fast chargers.A 73-page report published four months ago, Maine Clean Transportation Roadmap, by the Governor’s Energy Office, the Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, which handles climate change, and Cadmus, a consulting company, listed a gas tax among six “potential funding mechanisms for transportation under consideration in other jurisdictions” to fund electric vehicles and chargers after 2023 but did not suggest raising the tax.The report noted the Maine Constitution requires gas tax revenue be used only for road and bridge maintenance, repair, and construction or traffic law enforcement.The Mills campaign said it would submit its ballot petition later this week.No other aspiring Democratic or Republican candidates have done so, and the deadline is March 15.