Jul.10

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The Maine Debacle: A Lot of People Are Fighting to Be the Captain of this Ship

The Democrats fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous of is "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" (like, say, in Iran). But only slightly less well-known is this: "People with 'Graham' in their name invariably make terrible senators." Yesterday, the blue team continued to work through the fallout from the Graham Platner mess.

There is certainly a power struggle going on right now, on various levels. To start with, Platner announced yesterday that he will not formally file the paperwork to withdraw from the race until Monday of next week, which is the deadline. Neither he nor his campaign explained why. Could be fundraising, though there are tricks (like immediately forming an exploratory committee for some future election) to address that problem. Also, we seriously doubt that donors are rushing to give the oysterman money right now.

Whatever the reason might be, it does give the Democrats a little something extra to sweat about. That said, every blue-team pooh-bah and every wannabe U.S. Senator who talked to reporters yesterday expressed confidence that Platner would not change course at the last minute and stay in. And if that confidence proves to be misplaced, there remains the option to mount a write-in campaign, as long as the Democrats' preferred candidate files formal write-in-candidate paperwork 70 or more days before the election. This would not be ideal, as some low-information voters, and some Platner superfans, would still vote for him if his name appeared on the ballot. Further, it would be a situation ripe for rodent reproduction. Still, every time Sen. Angus King (I-ME) runs, there's a Democrat on the ballot, and yet most Democrats figure out that King is the party's "real" candidate. So, it's not impossible for a person without a (D) next to their name to beat an unknown/unpopular person with a (D) AND an (R), if that (R) is unpopular enough.

And speaking of Platner superfans, the story of his candidacy's genesis was already known, but The New York Times ran a long piece yesterday putting all the pieces together in one place. The short version is that a couple of progressive activists named Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan saw video of Platner making a speech about labor issues, and they saw a potential star. So, they recruited him to run for the Senate (something he had not previously been considering). The duo (with some assistance from a third progressive activist named Morris Katz) knew that any candidate needs to be vetted, and they arranged for that to happen, but they cut some corners. Maybe this was because they didn't have the money for a full-blown vetting, maybe because they didn't want to hear any bad news, maybe both. Obviously, and as it turns out, cutting corners on the vetting process proved to be a bad idea.

Needless to say, many people are now directing more than a few slings and arrows in the direction of this trio. Certainly they do deserve the blame for the incomplete vetting. However, let us also suggest some empathy is called for, in three ways. First, there is some truth to the old observation by Bill Clinton that "Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line." Platner obviously had skeletons in his closet, but he also has rare gifts. One can understand how Moraff and Fan felt they'd found a real diamond in the rough, and then bent over backwards to make that work.

Second, the weight of the evidence that is now available makes clear that Platner is not a viable candidate. But do keep in mind that when the first several revelations came to light, not all the evidence we have right now was available. The first big scandal, really, was the totenkopf tattoo. It is a BIG deal to end a Senate campaign, especially one with a lot of momentum, and to switch to a new candidate on the fly. If, when the totenkopf story had broken, the question was, "Can the Democrats really stick with a candidate who has a Nazi tattoo, and a history of emotional infidelity, and claims of abuse by ex-girlfriends and a rape allegation?" then that's easy to answer. "Is the totenkopf bad enough that it justifies the damage that will be done by switching gears to a another candidate?" is rather harder.

Third, there are many pieces out there right now that argue, in one form or another, that you just can't pick U.S. Senate candidates with no political background. We mentioned one-such piece yesterday, by Jonathan Martin, though we included that because Martin was highlighting the vetting issue many weeks before it blew up in the Democrats' face. The broader question of politically inexperienced senators is a little trickier than that. We don't have time to address that now, but look for a "Lies Across America" piece on the subject next week.

In short, the folks who made Platner possible proceeded in a manner that was ultimately problematic, but was at least understandable and is, we would say, forgivable. What is considerably less forgivable is the response from some folks on the left who are turning this into Hillary vs. Bernie, Part 827, and insisting that this is a the result of a conspiracy that was always going to bring Platner down, eventually. Here, for example is The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur:

Guess who biggest donors to the Maine Democratic Party are? Israel First and corporate donors. They have been gunning for Graham Platner from day one. They don't care is Susan Collins wins, or whichever party wins, they only care if they win. That's what this has been about.

To take another example, here's independent journalist and podcaster Matt Stoller:

Since lots of gossips are now gunning for me, I'm redoing this thread. It's clear something messed up happened in Platner's relationships, and he hasn't hidden that. But there's a big difference between 'normal people in bad relationships who hate each other' and 'crime.'

So let's be adults. This is a political attack.

Let's be clear, the goal of pushing Platner aside is to destroy the agenda on which he was elected, which is about taming oligarchy and reorienting us from endless war. That is why the Maine Democrats aren't saying 'let's respect Platner voters and transition to someone else,' they are taking a sanctimonious 'he gets NO say in ANYTHING.' Those are not the actions of people who want to win a Senate seat, those are the actions of nasty insiders claiming factional power for themselves.

First, note that "Graham was not nice to some of his ex-girlfriends" might not be a crime (though there WERE allegations of physical assault, so...). But rape most certainly is a crime, and it's one that will not be adjudicated before the election, and will probably not be adjudicated at all. Meanwhile, this talk that both parties are just working for the oligarchs, and THAT is why Platner had to go, is intellectually bankrupt.

We don't know how many Maine voters these two non-Mainers speak for. And we don't know how much this is just sour grapes that will fade once the sting of Platner's fall subsides, and how much of it will linger and possibly cost the new Democratic nominee some votes. But part of the deal with politics is, to borrow a phrase from the Rolling Stones, that you can't always get what you want. If the Cenk Uygurs of the world refuse to put their big boy pants on and accept that is the nature of the beast, then it's hard to take them seriously. How much difference is there, really, between the reaction of Uygur and Stoller here, and the reaction of Donald Trump when HE loses an election? Not much, from where we sit. Either way, it's pout and claim the result was illegitimate and a conspiracy.

We think it is worth pointing out that, for all the scorn and conspiratorial thinking directed at Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), he knows the rules, and he abided by them. Platner proved to be a bad candidate, but so too did Schumer's pick, Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME). And once it became clear she was a terrible candidate, he backed off and threw his support behind Platner, because that's how these things work. He did not change course again until the rape allegation. And when he did so, it was because Platner was unelectable, and that's how these things work.

Oh, and as long as we are on the subject of finger-pointing, Republicans are indulging in a lot of it right now, and enjoying some schadenfreude at the Democrats' expense. Very well, but that is something the GOP should be careful about. First, because talking about it ultimately serves to highlight that Democrats get rid of candidates who are accused of sexual assault, while Republicans sometimes do not (ahem, Donald Trump).

Second, because once rape enters the conversation, some Republicans see that as an opportunity to share their impolitic views on the subject. For example, Federalist co-founder Sean Davis was on The Megyn Kelly Show yesterday, and he explained that if Platner and his accuser were married, there would be no issue. That is because, in Davis' words, "Within marriage, sex is normal. That's what it's designed for. You can do things, and you don't have to worry about being accused of rape or non-consent." Uh, huh. Recall that this is the same party that brought you, among others, Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Robert "if rape is inevitable, lie back and enjoy it" Regan.

Meanwhile, the list of would-be Democratic U.S. Senators from Maine has now grown to five. In the piece yesterday, we noted that former state Senate President Troy Jackson, brewer Dan Kleban and social worker Paige Loud had already filed. Yesterday, they were joined by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows and physician and former gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah.

Bellows is progressive, fairly young (51), and has won elections before, having thrice been elected to the Maine state Senate. However, she has not won statewide, despite holding a state office. In Maine, that position is elected every 2 years by the members of the state legislature. Bellows has twice RUN statewide. The first was in 2014, when she challenged Collins and lost bigly, with the Senator taking 67% of the vote and Bellows taking 31%. The second was this year, when she finished in fourth place in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. This is not a promising track record when it comes to mounting a (second) challenge to Collins.

Shah, who has both an M.D. and a J.D., worked as the Director of the Illinois Department of Public Health from 2015-19 and then as the Principal Deputy Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2023-25. That is the extent of his political experience; he's never served in elective office, and his tenures in both appointed positions were marked by controversy. Shah did run in this year's Democratic gubernatorial primary, finishing second to the ultimate nominee, Hannah Pingree. He has not yet turned 50, and is the most moderate of the five declared candidates.

Yesterday, we ran a snap poll asking readers who they think the strongest of the potential Platner replacements is, allowing respondents to rank up to three choices. We added up the numbers, awarding 3 points for a first-place vote, 2 points for a second-place vote and 1 point for a third-place vote. Then, we assigned each candidate a percentage, based on how many of the possible points they got. In other words, if a candidate got first-place votes from every single respondent, then they would get 100%. If they got third-place votes from every respondent, they would get 33%.

It was, as you can see, an absolute rout:

Our readership is definitely not a proxy for the general voting public. But it's not a bad proxy for Democratic primary voters (who tend to be older, more educated and higher-information). And the readership is probably an even better proxy for the kind of folks who are likely to be involved with their local party organ and to be chosen as delegates to an impromptu convention.

In any event, the message here couldn't be clearer: Jackson took the lion's share of the first-place votes, and got at least some points from nearly every reader who responded. He's got four key selling points: (1) His biography matches Platner's, in that he's a blue-collar white guy; (2) His politics match Platner's, in that he's a blend of populist and progressive; (3) He has no clear connections to Platner, and so is not going to be tainted by association; (4) He's pretty well vetted, by virtue of already having had a long political career. That said, the vetting that you get when running for the Maine state legislature, even when you do it a dozen times, is child's play compared to the vetting you get when you run for the United States Senate. So, there are going to be Democratic operatives, Republican operatives and journalists—each with their own motivations—looking under rocks for dirt on Jackson this weekend, with particular attention to whether or not his zipper has stayed in the locked and upright position when it should have.

More broadly, the readers clearly feel the replacement candidate needs to check three boxes, and in this order: (1) They need to have some sort of established track record; (2) They can't be within a country mile of Platner, personally; (3) They need to represent "change," on some level. Note that the top four finishers are all people with extensive experience in political office, and the next two after that are very well known public figures. Meanwhile, candidates who are promising, but who do not have a well-established public profile, like Shah, need not apply. That's #1.

Valli Geiger checks box #1, having three times been elected to the Maine state House. However, of all the people on this list, she is the one most closely tied to Platner, with both Platner and Geiger noting their support for each other this week. That was... unwise timing, when it comes to Geiger's senatorial aspirations (if she has them). It is not probable that she's going to turn out to be guilty of sexual assault, but Platner is so radioactive right now that anyone in his orbit is going to absorb more than a few gamma rays. That's #2.

Meanwhile, being "old school" and "establishment" is clearly a problem, too. There are many circumstances where Janet Mills would be an ideal candidate. This is not one of them, not according to our readers, not according to polls, not according to Maine voters. That said, at least some readers think "change" isn't as important as the other two factors, hence the somewhat strong performance of Jared Golden. Picking him, which we continue to see as unlikely, would certainly be a very different strategic approach than nominating Platner was (or than nominating Jackson would be). Anyhow, that's #3.

We have comments from readers advocating for each of the frontrunner candidates. However, this piece is already quite long, and over the weekend, the field should be relatively set, and there will probably be some polls. So, we'll run an item with those comments and with other updates next week. (Z)