Maine Democrats seek a Platner-like change agent — ‘without the baggage’

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.