Politics
Our political journalists are based in the Maine State House and have deep source networks across the partisan spectrum in communities all over the state. Their coverage aims to cut through major debates and probe how officials make decisions. Read more Politics coverage here.

AUGUSTA, Maine — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Friday upheld Secretary of State Shenna Bellows’ decision to keep a referendum banning transgender girls from female school sports off the November ballot.

The high court ruled Bellows was “not only authorized but was constitutionally bound” when she moved in May to throw out more than 1,500 signatures gathered by out-of-state circulators who never agreed to submit to Maine’s jurisdiction.

The unanimous ruling from the six-justice panel closes out a monthslong legal fight that began when Bellows’ office invalidated more than 12,000 signatures submitted by Protect Girls’ Sports in Maine, leaving the petition 532 signatures short of the 67,682 needed to qualify.

The group, backed heavily by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein, had argued Bellows overstepped her authority by enforcing a settlement that ended a 2023 First Amendment lawsuit over Maine’s ban on out-of-state circulators, rather than letting Maine voters decide whether to loosen the state’s residency rules for petition circulators.

The court rejected that argument, finding Bellows was bound by the Maine Constitution’s residency requirement for circulators except where a federal injunction narrowly excused her from enforcing it, and that four nonresident circulators who never checked a box consenting to Maine jurisdiction fell outside that carveout.

Justices also rejected the campaign’s fallback argument that one circulator’s belated affidavit, filed months after the Feb. 2 filing deadline, should have salvaged her roughly 61 signatures, citing a state law requiring circulator affidavits to be filed when the petition is.

The decision effectively ends the campaign’s bid for the 2026 ballot, though the court noted proponents could still gather the roughly 500 additional signatures needed to try again for the 2027 ballot.

A handful of mostly unknown Democrats, including a retired art teacher, a candidate’s husband and a finance executive, will soon have unprecedented influence over the U.S. Senate race.

Maine Democrats are slated to host a 600-member convention this month, with roughly 500 of those members selected by the party’s 16 county apparatuses. Being a county chair is usually a low-key position. After Graham Platner’s Wednesday announcement that he will leave the race following sexual assault allegations, they are suddenly in a position of power.

Here are the 16 people tasked with creating a delegation to pick who will face off against Republican Sen. Susan Collins.

Joseph Zamboni: Cumberland County

As Maine’s most populous county, Cumberland will have the largest delegation at the coming convention. Its party chair is health policy and law professor and pro-vaccine advocate. He currently serves as the chair of Portland’s zoning board and previously worked for the state and the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Kathie Purdy: York County

York, the southernmost county, is the state’s second most populous. Its delegation will be led by Kathie Purdy, a former candidate for the state Legislature. She is a business owner in Saco and a bar manager in Ogunquit, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Harry Sanborn: Penobscot County

Alton resident Harry Sanborn is involved in local government, serving as a member of both the planning board and budget panel. He also serves as the town’s sexton. His wife, Laura, a former lawmaker and county commissioner, is a school board member for Regional School Unit 34.

Joanne Mason: Kennebec County

Kennebec’s Democratic Party chair is Joanne Mason, a nonprofit leader and the wife of Sheriff Ken Mason. According to her LinkedIn, she is president of the Family Violence Project, an Augusta-based nonprofit.

Carl Wilcox: Androscoggin County

From his social media history, Wilcox appears to be on the left of the party. In response to a white nationalist rally in DC last week, he posted that “billionaires control the media and the government sets the rules to funnel ever greater sums to the billionaire class,” echoing Platner’s anti-billionaire language. He hiked the entire Appalachian Trail in 2016.

Alison Willette: Aroostook County

Willette has relatively little online presence, but the Aroostook County Democrats downplayed the chair’s role in a Thursday Facebook post, writing, “the process is still being hashed out, but I assure you all counties have representation involved and it is NOT a ‘cherry picked by the chair’ process!”

Aroostook’s delegation, likely to be the seventh-largest, could be a source of support for former Senate President Troy Jackson, an Allagash native who is running to replace Platner in his populist mold.

Bruce Bryant: Oxford County 

Oxford is one of the only counties with a chair that served in the state Legislature. Bruce Bryant was a Senator between 2002 and 2010. In 2024 he ran for state senate again, but lost to Republican Joseph Martin. On social media he voiced support for Troy Jackson when he was running for Governor.

Marcia Myers: Hancock County

Myers is a former news editor who now lives in Deer Isle. Her social media history shows posts invoking independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders and attending “No Kings” protests. She told MS NOW in June that Democrats in Hancock were “laser-focused on issues like healthcare and cost of living.”

Lise Ragan: Somerset County

Ragan is an Anson resident and former teacher who describes herself on Facebook as a “patriotic, very concerned American.” She told the Bangor Daily News she is “confident” the party can move forward with a new candidate for U.S. Senate.

Greg Marley: Knox County

Rockland resident Greg Marley is married to the city’s former mayor and current state Rep. Valli Geiger, a Platner ally running to replace him. In response to a post by The Midcoast Villager about Valli’s interest, Marley posted that he “stand[s] beside this extraordinary woman every step of the way.” Geiger had been a close ally of Platner, who she says encouraged her to run.

Marley is a clinical director of suicide prevention at Maine’s chapter of the nonprofit National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Stanley Paige Zeigler: Waldo County

Zeigler is a former merchant mariner and state representative. He represented part of Waldo County between 2016 and 2024. He has been involved with environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and the Maine Bike Coalition.

Keith Mestrich: Lincoln County

Lincoln County’s chair is set for one of the smallest delegations, but he may have something that other party leaders lack and that many party voters have shunned over the course of Platner’s campaign — money and connections.

Keith Mestrich got his start in labor organizing and eventually became CEO of Amalgamated Bank, a union-owned financial institution. He is now a founding partner of Percapita, a financial tech firm providing an employee benefit platform for low-income workers. He also serves as the chair of the National Trust for Local News, whose Maine arm owns The Portland Press Herald and sister papers.

Lisa Marin: Washington County

Washington County Democrats are led by a retired art teacher who worked at the Moosabec Community School District in Jonesport. The Downeast resident’s Facebook history shows that she has attended “No Kings” protests. She recently wrote a Press Herald op-ed condemning Republican gubernatorial nominee Bobby Charles.

Wayne Kinney: Franklin County

Kinney represents Farmington on the RSU 9 school board. His online presence is limited.

Deb Dagnan: Piscataquis County

Dagnan will lead the smallest county delegation. She had expressed skepticism about Platner after The New York Times published a story in June detailing claims of abuse by his ex-girlfriends. She told PBS ahead of the primary election that people were “waiting for the other shoe to drop after he gets the nomination.”

“Then what do we do?” she asked.

Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between The Maine Monitor and the Bangor Daily News, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.

The allegations against Platner could constitute gross sexual assault, a felony crime in Maine law used to prosecute rape, according to a Maine criminal defense lawyer.

The recent sexual assault allegations against Graham Platner aren’t just the political flashpoint that forced a rising populist Democrat to suspend a major Senate campaign. They also potentially amount to criminal conduct.

Jenny Racicot, 41, had been casually dating Platner for about two years when he came to the home where she was staying in 2021 and sexually assaulted her, while she repeatedly told him to stop, according to allegations she made in interviews with Politico and CNN.

Those allegations could constitute gross sexual assault, a felony crime in Maine law used to prosecute rape, according to William T. Bly, a Maine criminal defense lawyer. However, he said Racicot, who didn’t report the incident to law enforcement in 2021, would need to decide now that she wants to report it.

“If you take a look at the statutes, you can see all the different ways it could be charged, but it is gross sexual assault,” Bly said.

“A lot of it’s going to come down to victim credibility and what, if any, corroborating evidence can they get?” Bly added.

Racicot said the assault took place in the village of Marlboro, which is in Maine’s Hancock County.

In a lengthy email to USA TODAY, Hancock County District Attorney Bob Granger said his office cannot comment on whether any criminal investigation exists, noting that Maine law criminalizes unlawfully disseminating information from an investigative record.

Granger added that his office wouldn’t ordinarily open an investigation unless a victim makes a formal sexual assault complaint to law enforcement for the area where the crime happened, and that victims of sexual assaults may be reluctant to move forward criminally for “a number of valid reasons,” including “horrendous emotional and psychological pain.”

However, Granger said his office takes formal complaints seriously.

“If a victim exercises the courage to come forward to law enforcement with credible allegations, we owe it to both them and the general public to carefully examine those claims,” he said.

Shannon Moss, a spokesperson for Maine’s Department of Public Safety, told USA TODAY in an email that the Maine State Police haven’t received or investigated any criminal complaints involving Platner. USA TODAY also left a voice message at the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office seeking information on any complaints.

USA TODAY was unable to reach Racicot for comment.

Ryan Barto, the communications director for Platner’s campaign, didn’t respond to a request for comment, but Platner has previously denied that he sexually assaulted anyone.

“This is all false. The things that have been claimed did not happen. It’s not real,” Platner said in a video posted to Instagram July 8, in which he didn’t address the specifics of Racicot’s account, but said her allegations were surfacing in the media in an effort to get his name off the ballot.

“Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end,” he said.

Here’s a look at what kinds of charges could be in play if a complaint were lodged and prosecutors chose to move forward, what penalties they could involve, and what a defense might look like:

Prosecuting rape in Maine

Gross sexual assault, Maine’s central felony rape statute, can be prosecuted in many different forms, depending on the nature of the allegations. For instance, if a defendant compelled another person to engage in a sex act, the person could face a “Class A” assault felony charge, Maine’s most serious class of gross sexual assault.

Other forms of sexual assault in Maine, such as getting someone to engage in a sex act by threat or being criminally negligent about whether the other person consented, amount to lower-class felonies.

Racicot alleged that Platner was heavily intoxicated when he entered her home uninvited and ignored her repeated pleas for him to stop. She told Politico she cut off contact after telling him the incident was not consensual.

If prosecutors were considering gross sexual assault charges against Platner, the time that has passed since the alleged assault wouldn’t prohibit them from moving forward. Maine allows prosecutors to bring gross sexual assault felony charges anytime within 20 years of the offense.

What kind of penalties could Platner face if charged and convicted?

Defendants convicted of the most serious form of gross sexual assault – Class A felonies – can be imprisoned for up to 30 years. Class B and Class C gross sexual felonies allow judges to sentence a defendant to up to 10 years and five years in prison, respectively.

Maximum penalties often don’t reflect the actual penalties defendants receive from a judge. In Maine, judges take various factors into account when determining the appropriate sentence, such as defendants’ age, the nature of the underlying crime, their criminal history, and evidence that reflects on their character.

“It’s not just the classification of the crime, but what are the details that come out,” Bly said. “There’s so many different things to look at.”

What kinds of defenses could Platner raise?

Bly said Platner’s potential defense, if he were to face charges, would be driven by details in the case that may currently be largely unknown.

Still, one potential line of defense is already clear: Platner has suggested that the timing of Racicot’s account is intentional. The allegations emerging just days before a July 13 deadline to remove him as Maine’s Democratic Senate nominee, Platner said, indicate they were politically motivated.

“This was the last week to try to get me off of the ballot. And that’s why this is occurring,” Platner said in his July 8 Instagram video message.

“I’m sure a defense would be that this was politically motivated, the person had a personal issue and an ax to grind,” Bly said.

Racicot told Politico she didn’t go public earlier in part because she believes in Platner’s platform.

“One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” she said.

With all the years gone by, there might also be a lack of physical evidence for prosecutors to present in court, and questions from the defense not just about an accuser’s motive, but her memory.

“The longer in time someone waits to bring allegations, especially when they’re already adults when they occurred, tends to weigh against, I think, the credibility potentially of the alleged victim,” Bly said.

Still, corroboration could persuade prosecutors they have a strong enough case, Bly said. They may be able to point to accounts from people Racicot spoke with after the alleged crime occurred.

CNN spoke with two people who said that Racicot previously disclosed that Platner sexually assaulted her. She spoke with a then-boyfriend in 2023 and a close friend in late August of 2025, around the time Platner launched his campaign. The former boyfriend said Racicot disclosed Platner’s identity to him after Platner launched his campaign. The friend said Racicot initially referred to her assailant as an “oysterman,” but later shared that it was Platner.

According to Platner’s campaign website, he started working on his friend’s small oyster farm in 2018 and eventually took over the oyster farm.