Chip Rubenstein, owner of Chip’s Auto Sales of Milford, says he’s honored to celebrate the dealership’s 50th anniversary alongside America’s 250th birthday.

“I opened Chip’s Auto Sales in 1976, during a chaotic time for our nation in the world,” said Rubenstein, “50 years later, I am so proud of the legacy I’ve created as somebody who always tried his best to do right, and to serve my community proudly.”

PORTLAND, Maine — After a week of political chaos, Maine voters are now left grappling with what comes next — with control of the U.S. Senate on the line. 

“To be kind of let down like that, it feels like I almost got ripped off, you know?” Steve Arsenault, a voter from Rockland, Maine, told MS NOW. 

On Wednesday, Democrat Graham Platner — a populist outsider who won his party’s nomination for U.S. Senate just last month despite many controversies, including an old tattoo of Nazi symbolism — announced he would suspend his campaign. 

Earlier in the week, Platner — who has been mired in a variety of scandals since launching his campaign in 2025 — was accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend in a new story published by Politico. Platner denied the allegations. 

With the party now racing to find his replacement in a process set to play out over the next two weeks, many Democratic voters told MS NOW they’d love to see the new candidate espouse Platner’s anti-establishment, populist and at times pugilistic style. But minus the scandal.

And in a race that is a cornerstone of the Democratic Party’s ambitions to win back control of the Senate in the fall’s midterm elections, those voters want the new candidate to be a change agent 

“I saw Platner as an opportunity to shake things up, to introduce new voices to the party — particularly younger voices,” Francis Weld of Portland told MS NOW. “I hope that we can find someone who continues that.”

“We want change,” Weld continued. “We need to do things differently if we want to be effective.”

“I want to see him,” Daniel Deis of Portland said, adding, “We need him — but someone with a clean bill of health.”

And Linda Holtslander of Peaks Island told MS NOW she wants Platner’s replacement to have  “the platform that he was putting forth to the voters in this state” but “without the baggage.”

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Democrats are poised to pick their new flag bearer to take on longtime Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in a quickly organized convention scheduled for July 25 in Bangor, Maine. More than 600 delegates will vote, winnowing the field of candidates in successive rounds of voting until they have a new nominee. 

Already, several Mainers have announced they want to be considered — including the former president of the Maine Senate, a former state health official, the current Maine Secretary of State, and a brewer, among others. 

Some are already making not-so-subtle overtures at Platner’s populist message. 

In his paperwork announcing his run for the Senate, Nirav Shah, the former director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote that “the passion, energy and urgency that Graham Platner’s supporters brought to this race” will “have a real and important place in this campaign.” 

And Troy Jackson, a former state lawmaker who has already secured the backing of dozens of current and former local officials plus the Maine AFL-CIO, in a social media post claimed to have spent his “whole life” fighting on behalf of a “powerful movement of working class people in the state of Maine.”

“I’m sure as hell not backing down now, when this fight is needed most,” he said.

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One major lingering question is whether Platner’s most ardent supporters will accept the nominee selected through this special process.

When a government whistleblower risks a career to expose corruption to a journalist, the first question is always the same: Will my name be kept out of it?

The same is true when a hospital employee reveals a cover-up, when a church insider exposes abuse, or when a corporate source provides evidence that a company has concealed the dangers of its products.

In 41 states and the District of Columbia, a journalist can answer that question with the weight of law behind the promise. In Massachusetts, a journalist cannot.

That is unacceptable for a commonwealth that calls itself the cradle of American liberty and a birthplace of the free press.

And it is also dangerous, especially now, at a moment when journalists face escalating hostility, when federal officials openly threaten and demean the press, and when the legal protections that make independent journalism possible are under assault from multiple directions.

Two bills pending on Beacon Hill would remedy that. House Bill 4638 and Senate Bill 1253, both titled “An Act Relative to the Free Flow of Information,” would establish a statutory reporter’s privilege in Massachusetts, protecting journalists from being compelled to disclose confidential sources or unpublished information except in narrowly defined circumstances involving national security, imminent violence or a defendant’s constitutional right to a fair trial.

Last fall, both the House and Senate members of the Joint Committee on the Judiciary gave these bills a favorable report — marking the first time a shield law bill has ever cleared committee in Massachusetts. Since then, however, the bills have languished. Now, their fate is down to the wire.

The clock is ticking. The formal legislative session ends July 31. If both chambers do not bring these bills to a floor vote by then, the legislation dies, and the entire effort has to start over in the next session.

We urge House Speaker Ronald Mariano, Senate President Karen Spilka, and the leadership of both chambers to ensure that a shield law goes to a vote before time runs out.

The need is more urgent than ever. Just last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene in the case of Catherine Herridge, a veteran investigative reporter facing daily fines of $800 for refusing to reveal a confidential source. Herridge’s case arose in federal court, where no shield law applies.

But Massachusetts journalists face a similar vulnerability in state court, where judges apply a discretionary balancing test that has produced inconsistent and unjust outcomes. In the Ayash v. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute case, a reporter and his newspaper were held in contempt for refusing to identify a confidential source — even though the underlying claims were ultimately dismissed.

In Commonwealth v. Karen Read, the trial court reversed its own ruling on a reporter’s claim of privilege, underscoring the current standard’s unpredictability.

This legal uncertainty has real-world consequences.

Sources with information the public should know — about government misconduct, about institutional abuse, about threats to public health and safety — are reluctant to come forward.

Reporters at small and local newspapers, the very outlets that cover city halls and school committees and police departments, face the prospect of costly court battles they cannot afford every time a subpoena lands on an editor’s desk.

A statutory shield law would replace that uncertainty with clearly defined protections, replacing individual judges’ unguided discretion with an unambiguous legal standard on which everyone could rely. The commonwealth’s outlier status grows more conspicuous each year.

In March 2025, Idaho became the latest state to enact a shield law, with its Republican-led legislature approving the law unanimously. There is no reason for Massachusetts not to follow suit.

This legislation carries no fiscal cost. It has no formal opposition. It has the support of every major news and press organization in the state, as well as of the ACLU of Massachusetts and Common Cause. What it needs now is a vote. The people of Massachusetts deserve the same protections for a free and vigorous press that citizens in the vast majority of states already enjoy. The Legislature has just weeks to act. It should not let this historic opportunity slip away.

Robert J. Ambrogi is the executive director of the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association.