Jul.07

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

Graham Platner's Oyster Is Shucked

Yes, the usual euphemism is "goose is cooked," but we figured we better adjust it here. In any event, as most readers will know by now, Democratic candidate Graham Platner, who aspired to represent Maine in the U.S. Senate, has just been accused of rape by a former girlfriend. This will bring an end to his political career, sooner or later (and probably sooner).

Platner, of course, says he didn't do it: "These allegations are troubling, serious, and false. Any accusation of non-consensual behavior is categorically untrue." The accuser's name is known, but we don't feel the need to share it here and make it (slightly) easier to google. She says that she and Platner were dating casually at that time, and that during the encounter in question, he was both drunk and dealing with psychological issues. She told Politico that "I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, 'This is no longer my choice.'" And in case you are wondering, the accuser says she is a Democrat and that she agrees with Platner in many areas of policy. Certainly, there is no evidence that she is a Republican, or otherwise someone who may be operating in bad faith.

If we were talking about a court of law, Platner would likely be in the clear. There was no rape kit, and no report to the police. The only contemporaneous evidence, according to the victim, is that she sent Platner several private Instagram messages telling him the encounter was non-consensual, and that she never wanted to see him again. However, she has deleted the messages, and has been unable to recover them. That is squarely enough in "He said, she said" territory that a DA would likely not even bring the case. It's very tough to secure a rape conviction, even when the evidence is much stronger.

But, of course, politics is not a court of law. There are three big reasons why Platner is done for, and here they are:

1. It's All Too Much: The last time we wrote substantively about this, we observed that not all "penis crimes" are created equal, and that there simply has to be some discriminating between various levels of offenses. If ALL accusations are treated as 100% valid, and 100% damning, then what will eventually happen is that NO accusations will be taken seriously. This pattern has played out many times in the past, from allegations of sexual misconduct to allegations of being a communist spy.
   
   In that piece, which is just over 3 weeks old, we listed three tiers. At that time, the "Platner tier" was behavior that is concerning, but not illegal. More serious was the "Paxton tier," which is behavior that is extremely hypocritical, but also not illegal. And the worst tier was the "Swalwell tier," which we defined as "actual acts of sexual violence, including rape."
   
   Obviously, Platner has now moved into the Swalwell tier, which is a red line, at least for Democrats. If we lived in a world where it was just the other stuff (sexting while married, the accusations made by former girlfriends), that might have been survivable. Or, if we lived in a world where there had been none of the other stuff, and yesterday's accusation came completely out of the blue, that might have been survivable (but it's a BIG maybe). But everything that's come out? Already, as we pointed out a little under two weeks ago, the information that came out in June had seriously weakened Platner's campaign, turning a roughly 6-point polling lead into a roughly 2-point lead. Add in a rape accusation, and many voters are (very reasonably) going to conclude there's a pattern of behavior here, and that they don't want any part of it.
   
   
2. Brett Kavanaugh: The left-wing populist stuff is helpful, but a huge part of Platner's pitch is that Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) voted to put accused rapist Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. This was Platner's "in" with many moderate, women voters in Maine. Politically speaking, the accusation made against Kavanaugh, and the accusation made against Platner, are not substantively different (one accuser, strong denial from the accused, never adjudicated). And if the choice is between someone who looked the other way and voted for an accused rapist, or someone who is themselves an accused rapist, that is a choice that either produces a vote for Collins, or a decision to leave that line on the ballot blank. Whichever it is, the "I'm angry about Kavanaugh" votes are now largely lost for Platner (the only exception being those voters who think that "Collins allowed for Roe to be struck down" is more intolerable than "Platner is an accused rapist").
   
   
3. July 13: It's 120 days to Election Day. Under different circumstances, Platner might be able to sit back, watch the polling, and see if the dust settles (or if information comes out that calls the rape accusation into question). Another 20-30 days probably wouldn't matter, but the candidate could at least cross his fingers and hope.
   
   However, Maine's deadline for dropping out is July 13. There is no way there will be polling or other evidence by then that says "Smooth sailing, Graham!" If Platner is not gone by July 13, the Democrats will be stuck with a candidate who not only looks like a sure loser, but also a candidate who might have more skeletons lurking in his closet. The pressure on him to drop out is going to be enormous.

Indeed, the Democratic pooh-bahs have already turned on Platner. Here's a partial list of people who withdrew their endorsement of the candidate yesterday, and called on him to drop out:

• Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
• Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
• Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ)
• Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ)
• Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI)
• Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
• Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA)
• Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA)
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
• Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA)

A few notable names are not on the list because they pointedly refused to endorse Platner in the first place. That includes House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Sen. Angus King (I-ME) and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden (D-ME). The only high-profile endorser who has not yet pulled their endorsement is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). Presumably, that announcement is coming today; the Sanders-backed group Our Revolution has already jumped ship, so have progressive activists Hasan Piker and David Hogg.

After everything fell apart for him yesterday, Platner said he is "taking the time to reflect on the best path forward." That means he will talk to his donors and his endorsers and see if they are willing to weather the storm with him. He doesn't actually need to talk to the endorsers, as they've already bailed out. And the donors aren't going to be any more friendly. We would be surprised if he's still a candidate by the time the weekend arrives. Indeed, it's probably about 50/50 that he drops out sometime today.

Assuming Platner bows to the inevitable on or before July 13, then the Maine Democratic Party would have until July 25 to select a new candidate. Fortunately for the blue team, Maine is not Alabama, and so they do have a bench. Needless to say, with time running short, and just having learned a lesson about poorly vetted candidates, the Democrats would have to go with someone who is, or has been, an officeholder. Here are the plausible options that we see:

• Former State Senate President Troy Jackson (D): He served in the Maine legislature, with stints in both the state House and the state Senate, from 2002-14 and 2016-24. The microscope trained on a legislative candidate is rather less powerful than the microscope trained on a U.S. Senate candidate, but one has to imagine that if there were any serious red flags, they would have come to light during his 12 runs for office (3 for state House, 7 for state Senate, 1 for U.S. House, 1 for governor of Maine).
  
  And speaking of running for governor of Maine, Jackson did so this year, and finished in third place, taking 21.1% of the vote in the first round, which became 22.3% in the second round and 28.8% in the third round, at which point he was ranked-choice eliminated. The first-place finisher was Hannah Pingree, who will obviously be busy running for governor, and so is not available to replace Platner. And the second-place finisher was Nirav D. Shah, who has no experience in elective office. Again, we assume that is disqualifying under current circumstances.
  
  Jackson is the candidate most likely to appeal to Platner's young/male/progressive/populist supporters. He's not as charismatic, or as young (at 58 years of age), but his blue collar bona fides are arguably stronger than Platner's; he's a former logger whose first forays into politics came as a result of his leadership of workers in that industry. He was once a Republican, then an independent, and then a Democrat (though the latter covered all but his first 2 years in office). He was once economically populist and socially conservative, but has attributed the latter to his Catholic upbringing and has since become outspokenly pro-LGBTQ and pro-choice. Jackson is, and has been, a big supporter of Bernie Sanders, and in fact cast a ballot for him at the 2016 Democratic convention.
  
  
• Gov. Janet Mills (D): Mills was obviously in the running for the Senate seat, but she dropped out because she didn't gain much traction. In a year with serious anti-establishment and generational-change undercurrents, a 78-year-old 2-term governor and 2-term AG who has spent the great majority of the last half-century serving in one political office or another may not fit the bill. It also cannot help that Mills' lack of enthusiasm for this campaign was palpable, to the point that she did not even see it through to the end.
  
  That said, Mills is as vetted as it gets, and has near-universal name recognition. She did not vote to confirm Kavanaugh, and it is not terribly likely that she'll be accused of sexual misconduct.
  
  
• Chellie Pingree: Pingree represents the D+11 ME-01, and has since 2009. At the start of her career, she won elections by 10 points, but these days she usually wins by 20 (e.g., 58.7% to 36.4% in 2024).
  
  Pingree would offer some of the same advantages as Mills, but without some of the downsides. By virtue of having been elected nine times in a state with only two representatives, she is vetted and is very well known, particularly to Maine Democrats. She did not vote for Kavanaugh, either, and is not likely to have any "penis crimes" issues. She's a shade younger (71), and has not recently demonstrated her lack of enthusiasm for serving in the Senate.
  
  Pingree is overall pretty centrist, however, and would not excite the younger and leftier voters in Platner's base. Also, she has generally been pretty pro-Israel with her votes, which could very well be a problem with that bloc.
  
  If Pingree ends up as the replacement candidate and wins, and if her daughter wins the gubernatorial race, then that will produce a historically unprecedented situation in which a mother is serving in the U.S. Senate and her daughter is concurrently serving as governor of a U.S. state. It may well be an unprecedented situation regardless of gender; we can't find any cases of men overlapping like this. The Bayhs, Romneys, Sununus and Byrds, among others, had a parent serve in one of those offices and a child serve in the other, but in none of those cases did it happen at the same time.
  
  
• Jared Golden: We don't really think he'd be the pick, but we're a full-service site, so we want to be thorough. Golden is currently serving his fourth and final term as the Blue Doggiest Democrat in the House Democratic Caucus. He probably comes to that centrism honestly, though it's also politically necessary if you're going to win four elections in an R+4 district.
  
  A Golden candidacy would be rooted in a very different theory of the electorate than the Platner candidacy. Basically, the idea would be, "Lefties, you had your chance, and he went up in flames. Now, we're going to chase independent and centrist votes, and you're going to have to suck it up and vote for the least bad choice." This is not a crazy theory; remember, Maine's other senator is an independent, and is very centrist.
  
  Golden is far and away the youngest person on this list (43), and obviously he's been vetted pretty well and has wide name recognition. But he had already announced his retirement from the House, and had made clear that he was sick of life in Congress. It would be pretty hard to sell a change of heart to voters.

In these circumstances, sometimes a party will look to an "elder statesman" to run as a "caretaker" candidate. However, we don't see any available person who fits that bill. The most recent Democratic governor of Maine, other than Mills, is John Baldacci. But he's 71 and has been out of politics for 15 years. The most recent Democratic U.S. Senator from Maine is George Mitchell. He's among the most legendary Democrats to come from the Pine Tree State, but he's a little TOO elder, at 92 (and soon to be 93). Remarkable, Mitchell succeeded another Maine Democratic legend in the Senate, namely Edmund Muskie, but Muskie is unavailable by virtue of having been dead for 30 years.

Again, we expect this situation to develop very rapidly. Just in case Platner can't see the writing on the wall, we have no doubt there are pollsters hard at work right now rushing to produce a poll that shows how badly he's been hurt by the rape accusation. So, we will surely have an item sometime later this week headlined either "Platner Drops Out" or "Polls Make Clear Platner Better Drop Out."

We usually run "Political Bytes, Local Edition" on Tuesdays, but we held off today so that if readers have comments on the Maine situation, we can fit those in. Send them to comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)