The Platner Mess

 

From hopeful, to troubling, to unsupportable: 

A new sexual assault accusation against Graham Platner, the progressive oysterman who won the Democratic nomination to challenge GOP Sen. Susan Collins in Maine last month, appears to be the final straw for the scandal-plagued campaign.

Immediately after Politico on Monday reported an on-the-record testimony of Platner drunkenly entering the house of a woman he was dating and sexually assaulting her in 2021, the candidate posted a video admitting he was taking time off the campaign trail “to reflect on the best path forward.” He denied the assault allegation. 

Meanwhile, seemingly the entire Democratic Party apparatus, from left-wing media figures to center-left reformers to leaders of major parts of the party infrastructure, responded to the accusation with calls for him to exit the race, and for the Maine Democratic Party to step in and select a new nominee. Potential nominees have already begun jockeying for position.  [snip]

By 7 p.m., both the Maine Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had called on Platner to drop out, with the DSCC and the main super PAC for Senate Democrats saying they would not invest any more money into Maine as long as he remained the nominee.  [snip]

A source familiar with the campaign’s internal discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told The New York Times that no final decision had been made about dropping out and suggested that Platner would want a replacement candidate who shared his broad ideology.

“If he was to step down it would only be with a guarantee of being replaced by a candidate who he believes is true to the values and vision and policy agenda of the campaign that Maine voted for,” the person told the paper.  [snip]

Who could the nominee be? Based on conversations with five Democratic operatives in D.C. and Maine ― all of whom requested anonymity to speak frankly about the party’s options ― there are four major names in contention at the moment: former state Senate President Troy Jackson, Maine Beer Company Founder Dan Kleban, former state Centers for Disease Control leader Nirav Shah and Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows.  [snip]

Jackson is considered the closest Democrats could get to a scandal-free version of Platner. A logger who represented a district on Maine’s border with Canada and won it repeatedly even as it voted for Collins and for President Donald Trump, said he is close with organized labor and shares Platner’s populist politics and the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

While Jackson finished third in the state’s ranked-choice vote for governor, one operative suggested he would have a potential leg up because selecting him would not “reverse the progressive victory in the primary,” an important goal for party unity and for earning Platner’s buy-in to drop out of the contest...

He has to, and we believe will, drop out.  The deadline for that is July 13. We hope the Maine Democratic Party chooses a replacement well when he does.

QOTD -- On Platner And Maine

 

"... Maybe I am a bad feminist for wanting Platner to succeed today, but I don’t think so. I think I am a realistic feminist, one who would like to see transgender people not used as punching bags, women dying in hospital parking lots because they are losing a baby and some idiot hears a heartbeat, poor people getting their SNAP benefits back, medical research restarted, not having new evidence every day that Trump and his cronies are looting the government, or knowing that hard-working immigrants leave for work every day wondering if they will see their children that night.

"These are my current feminist goals. All of them mean winning the Senate back: Susan Collins is vulnerable as hell, and the polling suggests that Graham Platner can beat her. If that means supporting a man with a difficult past, one that allegedly includes saying gross things about women and engaging in a peculiarly 21st century form of online marital infidelity?

I can handle it." -- Claire Potter, in her "Political Junkie" Substack, on "Who's Afraid of Graham Platner?"  Platner won the Maine Democratic primary for Senate yesterday with 72 percent of the Democratic vote.  He's the choice of Maine Democrats, so we're with Platner (and Potter and Ro Khanna, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC, etc.).  As Platner said on winning last night,

“I’m still far from perfect, but every day I wake up and try to be a little better, a little kinder, than I was the day before... If you give me a chance, I will be a senator for the people who cannot afford to buy a senator... The national pundits, the political establishment, they keep looking for that one story, that one headline, that one moment in my life that they can define this campaign by... But in trying so hard to understand me, they failed to understand that this is not about me at all. This is a movement about us.”

We can handle it.

BREAKING: Maine Senate Race Shake-up

 

In the closely watched Senate Democratic primary race in Maine, Chuck Schumer's smart-money candidate just folded:

Maine Gov. Janet Mills announced Thursday that she is suspending her campaign for Senate after trailing military veteran and oyster farmer Graham Platner in the Democratic primary, citing a lack of financial resources.

“While I have the drive and passion, commitment and experience, and above all else — the fight — to continue on, I very simply do not have the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources," Mills said in a statement.

"That is why today I have made the incredibly difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the United States Senate," Mills said.

Senate Democrats had touted Mills as a top recruit to take on GOP Sen. Susan Collins, the only Republican senator representing a state that President Donald Trump lost last year. Maine is practically a must-win if Democrats are to net the four seats they need to take control of the chamber in the 2026 midterm election. But Collins has proven a tough opponent in previous elections.

After launching her Senate campaign in October, Mills struggled to gain traction against Platner, who burst onto the scene as a brash political newcomer and quickly built a loyal following. Platner notched endorsements from high-profile progressive leaders including Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. Most importantly, he built major support among Maine Democrats, leading by double digits in recent polls of the primary.

Mills, meanwhile, was backed by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who viewed Mills as the party's best general election candidate... 

We need to get Collins out.  Period.  As the article goes on to note, Platner is an imperfect candidate (and we sure hope he doesn't turn out to be another Fetterman / Manchin/ Sinema), but he's the apparent choice of a growing majority of Democratic voters in Maine.  Vox populi.

Also, the out-of-touch Schumer needs to stop hand-picking Democratic Senate candidates (especially fellow senior citizens) and turn over his duties as Senate Minority Leader to a new generational leader who can inspire confidence in his caucus and in the Democratic base generally.