Maine Senate Race: Progressive Groups Scramble for New Candidate After Platner's Exit

Progressive groups and lawmakers who rallied behind Graham Platner’s insurgent bid for a US Senate seat are now racing to decide where to transfer their support after his withdrawal from the Maine race following yet another allegation of sexual assault.

The scramble and apparent heartbreak underscores the uncertainty facing the coalition surrounding Platner’s anti-establishment message, and the response from more centrist Democrats to proceed with caution. Organizations, voters, volunteers and elected officials that once saw him as a vehicle for a more populist progressive agenda are now weighing whether to unite behind a successor, or hold back until the party’s replacement process plays out.

So far, only a small number of former Platner allies have moved publicly toward a new candidate, leaving a key bloc of progressive voters and activists up for grabs.

The clearest early move has come from Our Revolution, the group descended from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, which said on Thursday it was throwing its “full organizing machine” behind Troy Jackson, the former Maine state senate president who launched a his bid within an hour of Platner’s exit.

“Maine’s progressives didn’t win the primary by a fluke,” the group’s executive director, Joseph Geevarghese, said in a statement, arguing that the primary’s mandate – Medicare for All, a campaign free of corporate money, an end to “forever wars” – survives Platner’s departure even if he does not. “That mandate deserves to be honored.”

Jackson, a fifth-generation logger and longtime union member who ran unsuccessfully for governor this year and landed in third place, campaigned alongside both Platner and Sanders during the primary season and has positioned himself as the continuation of that movement rather than a late entry capitalizing on Platner’s collapse.

Other prominent progressives have begun lining up behind him. Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who had been one of Platner’s most visible congressional backers before rescinding his endorsement this week, shifted his support to being “all in” for Jackson as the movement’s likely standard bearer, as has the streamer Hasan Piker.

The Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which endorsed Jackson’s gubernatorial run in May, has not yet made a formal Senate endorsement but has an existing organizing relationship with his campaign.

Maine People’s Alliance, a 32,000-member progressive grassroots organization that backed Platner early in his campaign, said it has not yet endorsed a new candidate.

Jackson’s record includes an earlier chapter that progressives might not rally behind. He voted against same-sex marriage in 2009 and previously opposed abortion except in limited circumstances, though he has since reversed both positions. On Israel, he moved to calm delegates who had broken into chants of “stop the genocide” and “ceasefire now,” telling the floor only that “there is a time” for protest.

But the fallout over Platner has also given ammunition to Democrats who have long warned that a rush toward outsider, anti-establishment candidates can come at the expense of candidate vetting. Matt Bennett, co-founder of the centrist Democratic group Third Way, said Platner’s exit created an opportunity for the party to reset the race toward a more traditional, moderate candidate.

“Giving up is insane. If we can replace Platner with a normie Democrat in this cycle, we have a very good chance of winning,” Bennett said regarding the Maine Senate race.

Jackson is not the only Democrat maneuvering for the nomination. Nirav Shah, the former director of Maine’s center for disease control and prevention who is seen as more centrist and who came in second in the recent gubernatorial race, announced on Thursday he’s running for the seat, and posted on social media that he would not send aid to Israel and that the catastrophe in Gaza is a genocide.

Other candidates include the progressive former chief of staff to then US representative Katie Porter, Jordan Wood; the state representative Valli Geiger, who said Platner himself asked her to run as his replacement; the state’s secretary of state, Shenna Bellows; and Maine Beer Company founder Dan Kleban – who have all either entered the race or said they are considering it.

Maine’s Democratic state committee voted on Wednesday night to select Platner’s replacement through a nominating convention, rather than a caucus, open to rank-and-file voters. Under state law, the party has until 27 July to certify a nominee to face the Republican senator Susan Collins, who is seeking a sixth term.

For Our Revolution and other groups now organizing for the next candidate, the compressed, delegate-driven process is itself risky, because without a rapid show of unified progressive support, they believe insiders could steer the nomination toward a more moderate alternative before the base Platner built has a chance to regroup.

“We have days, not weeks, to make sure a real progressive is on this ballot,” Geevarghese said. “If we do not organize now, we risk watching the Democratic establishment hand Maine a corporate placeholder while the party that just got outvoted decides it knows better.”