Graham Platner’s political implosion has forced Maine Democrats into a monthlong dash to replace the disgraced oysterman-cum-political-upstart and challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November. Senate hopefuls have been courting supporters ahead of a July 25 nominating convention. But rushed deadlines, unexpected tragedies and residual frustrations over Platner’s failed campaign have put Democrats in a bind. As of now, no candidate has emerged as a clear frontrunner, and some national party figures are keeping their distance from an electorate still raw after Platner’s downfall.
‘Stakes couldn’t be higher’
Democrats hope to “turn the page from the former standard-bearer” without “abandoning his supporters,” said Roll Call. Progressives who had been buoyed by Platner’s “populist message” are “hoping to maintain their momentum.” The “snap” replacement race is “off to a hectic and dramatic start,” said CNN. Maine Democrats are “scrambling to create a highly unorthodox process” in which candidates have rushed to “collect enough signatures to qualify for the convention and assemble slates of delegates to vote for them.”
Moreover, what was “expected to be an intense two-week primary campaign” has instead “effectively been reduced to one week,” after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot Colombian immigrant Joan Sebastian Guerrero in the town of Biddeford, said The Boston Globe. Candidates have spent time “in and around Biddeford with the community” in recent days, “expressing outrage at the latest death of an individual at ICE’s hands.” But without a front-runner, and most of the candidates in broad agreement on many issues, the “clarity and contrasts that campaigns tend to reveal” are missing for Democrats at a “time when they would be most helpful.”
It’s encouraging how many candidates are “running on Platner’s progressive platform of transformational change,” said NPR, paraphrasing Maine’s state Senate president, Democrat Mattie Daughtry. But voters may be “turned off” by the process. Meanwhile, the “stakes couldn’t be higher” for the party, with Senate control on the line, said the outlet. “No clear front-runner has emerged” from the existing pack of candidates, and it’s unclear whether “one candidate can capitalize” on Platner’s political momentum.
Many of the Democrats’ Senate hopefuls “share something in common,” said NBC. They “all made unsuccessful bids for higher office this year.” For voters, though, “I don’t think it matters,” said party strategist Mike Nellis to the outlet — unless it’s a “perennial loser candidate that’s been running for, like, 1,000 years, which none of these candidates are.”
‘Process for Maine and Mainers’
Faced with the “nearly hopeless position” of rapidly finding a new candidate, the Maine Democratic Party has nevertheless “shown a finesse I never imagined possible,” said Steve Collins at Centralmaine.com. The hyper-compressed campaign schedule and upcoming convention are “not a simple solution or one that will make everyone happy.” But “that was never possible.”
Absent throughout much of this process has been Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). He has been given a “clear message from his party’s voters, candidates and local leaders” in “all-important” Maine,” said The New York Times: “Stay away.” Many of the declared candidates have “signaled interest in replacing Schumer as leader after the midterms.” This is a “process for Maine and Mainers,” said Dr. Nirav Shah, one of the candidates, to the Times.