Maine Democrats are being forced to spend this month looking for a new U.S. Senate nominee following the withdrawal of Graham Platner, whose latest rape accusation was too much for him to overcome.
The party has until July 27 to select a new nominee and is welcoming candidates through July 15.
At least eight Democrats have expressed interest in being the nominee, who will be chosen at a party convention later this month under procedures yet to be issued. Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who ended her campaign when Platner appeared to have sewn up the nomination, is not among them so far.
“There’s more questions out there than there are answers at this point,” Mark Brewer, professor and chair of the University of Maine’s political science department, told JNS.
“I think until we know for sure what the process looks like, it’s going to be hard to say you know what type of candidate has a better chance of coming out of this convention,” he said. “The field’s not even set yet.”
Progressives are pushing for someone in the Platner mode, who was able to energize so many Maine voters that Mills didn’t even make it to the primary before withdrawing.
But others say that the idea is to unify the party with a candidate who may not check all the progressive boxes but is a stronger choice to take on Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) in a race that could decide which party controls the chamber beginning in January.
“They need to remember what the prize is and keep their eye on it and unify,” Julie Roginsky, a Democratic consultant, told JNS.
“They need to stop with the purity tests,” she said. “They need to understand that nobody’s going to get 100% of what they want, but the prize is defeating Susan Collins.”
Platner was critical of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and accused the Jewish state of “genocide” in Gaza. He also covered up a tattoo that he has claimed he was unaware contained a Nazi symbol. Others have said that he told them he knew it was a Nazi symbol.
Two of his biggest supporters, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), have also been fierce critics of Israel, including accusing it of “genocide.”
Roginsky suggested that they and other progressives who championed Platner “have the wherewithal to reflect on what they did, and stop forcing purity tests on people that literally require a noun and a verb and ‘AIPAC sucks.’”
One announced Senate candidate gaining attention is former state Senate president Troy Jackson, who has served in public office but had the support of Platner and Sanders when he ran unsuccessfully this year for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.
He promised to be “a progressive fighter” when he announced his candidacy and has the support of Our Revolution, the political group comprised of Sanders allies.
“Jackson’s not the same type of outsider that Platner was,” Brewer told JNS. “Some of his views, particularly on economic issues, match up with Platner, but he’s a longtime politician who definitely has party leadership on his resume.”
Another candidate, Nirav Shah, former director of the state Center for Disease Control and Prevention, also ran for governor this year and finished second to the primary winner, former Maine House speaker Hannah Pingree.
Then there is political newcomer Dan Kleban, co-founder of Maine Beer Company, who initially entered the Senate race but withdrew when Mills announced her candidacy and endorsed the governor.
Others include Maine secretary of state Shenna Bellows, who lost to Collins in 2014 and finished fourth in this year’s gubernatorial primary, and two unsuccessful candidates in the primary for one of Maine’s two House seats, Jordan Wood and Paige Loud.
“I hope they pick somebody that as many people as possible in the Maine Democratic Party can live with,” Roginsky told JNS. “But pick somebody who understands that the goal here is to defeat Susan Collins. It’s not to fight with the party.”
The Democratic consultant said that all along, she felt that those supporting Platner “were more interested in overthrowing the Democratic establishment than they were in actually winning races against Republicans.”
During his campaign, Platner had withstood allegations of sexual impropriety, the tattoo with a Nazi symbol and online comments that the Associated Press said seemed to use anti-gay slurs, dismiss rape allegations in the U.S. military and endorse political violence.
He finally was done in by the latest allegations that he forced a woman to have sex with him after she told him to stop.
“After the stuff started to come out, there were plenty of Democrats who said, ‘Well, you know, he was young,’ or ‘You know, he had PTSD,’ or ‘You know, he’s grown from that,’ or ‘He didn’t know what it was,’ if you’re talking about the tattoo,’’ Brewer told JNS.
“They were willing to overlook those things until it got to the point where critical mass had been reached,” he said. “There was an allegation so egregious they couldn’t overlook it anymore.”
Brewer said there might not be enough time to properly vet whoever emerges with the nomination, especially another neophyte candidate like Platner.
“You’re talking about less than two weeks,” he said. “I would be concerned about that if I was a delegate being asked to consider a candidate without a lengthy track record of public service who kind of came out of nowhere.”
“I’d be like, ‘Nah. I’m going to pass on that. I’m going to go with someone who has a more established track record,’” he said.
